Hi, I am using HRD and can see and decode lots of traffic. I have tried CQing as well as replying to CQs but not got any replys. When I hit send the radio does go into TX mode. Am I doing anything wrong? Is there a good primer document out there. Thanks

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G7SQC Peter Young

Peter,
I don't do PSK very much and I don't use HRD. But, if you have a portable SW radio, put your transmit power to the lowest setting and see if you can hear your PSK signal on the SW radio. Listen to what it sounds like. One of the worst issues is to overdrive the audio output from your PC feeding your radio interface. You may be using too much audio or output power. I usually limit my power for PSK to about 40 watts. If you 'Google' PSK31 and HRD, I'm sure you will find alot of info on it. There may be an HRD Yahoo user group you can join to get info also.
Good Luck
73
Andy - n1ork

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N1ORK Orest 'Andy' Zajac

Peter,

Check

http://www.pskreporter.info/pskmapn.html

this fine site has monitors for nearly all bands.....

and if you are getting 'out', you will be there.

as directed by Andy, limit power to say 10 watts then working yourself up as recommended 40watts in case you are overdriving

Bobby
GA7GAX

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GA7GAX Bobby Freeman

Hi,
Thanks for the info, I have signed up to the above site, and i am being heard. Just got to get someone to reply now. What mode do you recommend fsk or usb
Pete

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G7SQC Peter Young

Disclaimer: I am not an expert!

With FLDigi at least, SSB is the recommended transceiver mode for PSK.

Matt

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M6FNG m6fng

Here's the 60-second primer for PSK.

1. If your radio has adjustable power, set it for maximum. Later, once you know what you are doing, you can learn how to lower it for PSK, but for now, the power knob goes all the way to the right. The radio should be in USB for PSK. Although Binary PSK (BPSK) will work in LSB, other modes won't necessarily work. The convention is USB, so run with that, even on 160 / 80 / 40 / 30.

2. Turn off speech processing on the radio. Turn off your linear, you won't need it for PSK. Make sure your antenna is tuned for the frequency you are using.

3. Bring up your PSK program and transmit idle tone (two lines on the waterfall, no text). While this is happening adjust the volume out of your sound card (and the mic gain on the radio if you are going in the microphone port) until the power meter reads 25% of max power average, or about 40% of max power peak. On a 100 watt radio, you should be at about 25 watts average when transmitting idle tone, or 40 watts peak.

4. While transmitting idle tone ensure there is no ALC kicking in. Any ALC and you are spamming the band. Many radios have a meter that shows ALC. If you've set the idle tone per the previous step, you very likely will not be getting ALC.

5. Stop transmitting idle tone. You are ready to go. When transmitting text, you should see average power around 35% of max, and peak power of about 50% of max (35 and 50 watts on a 100 W radio).

Those settings will work for pretty much any digital mode.

About lowering power: On any radio I've seen, you can't set it up and then just crank down the power. If you do that, you'll get the ALC to engage and splatter the waterfall. No matter where you set the radio power, the rules 2 and 3 apply. So if you've set your TS-2000 for 20 watts, then you want 5 and 8 on idle for 7 and 10 on text, with no ALC.

73 de VE3OIJ
-Darin

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VE3OIJ P. Darin Cowan

I just noticed this was a thread raised from last year's dead.

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VE3OIJ P. Darin Cowan

Thanks for the good info above Darin! This will help to set up PSK.
73
Andy - n1ork

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N1ORK Orest 'Andy' Zajac

Remember turn off your alc....

POB/K8LEN

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K8LEN PAT O'BRIEN

FWIW

There is no "law" that 50w is the max. But there are some good reasons to run 50w.

The digital modes for the most part are a 100% duty cycle to the TX and the same as setting a brick on your CW key. PSK is one of them. For the newbie, setting your TX to 50w insures that you don't accidentally run full power and risk burning out your finals.

Second is that 50w will do 95% of what you want to do. I run 50W all the time out of a attic wire dipole and have done DX to the EU with a sunspot to help me out. Haven't done Asia as I'm not into waking up at 0400 local.

Now more power does have its place. Every once in a while I can hear a DX. RST at 479. A tad weak but do-able. I send a call and I get back "QRZ kn". Time to kick in the power. Now I've taken the time to listen and know this station just wants a sig report and maybe a name or QTH. Nothing else. TX will be short. So I crank the power up to 75w and send again. I've yet to miss that DX and my box is still running strong.

Wonder what W1AW is running when they send their daily bulletin by PSK. Happened to ask when I called them up the other day. Two 5-element stacked beams each being fed by 100w. Yeah. 200w into stacked beams. See any splatter? A very strong signal yes but that sig is clean and crisp.

One tidbit that nobody has asked. What band are you working? If it's 10, and 12m. I've gotten nearly zero traffic. Zero on 12m actually. 15m and 17m isn't that bad but it's more refuges that are fed up with 20m. My QSO count went up drastically when I finally got a 20m antenna up.

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K5HDE Henry Ellis

While there's no law that says 50W is the max, i've seen very few 100 W radios that can go much over 50W peak on PSK without the ALC kicking in and splattering the band.

I've run 300W PSK with my amp just to see if could do it with a clean signal (yes!), but doign that isn't super useful.

12m contacts are rare, but if the opening is good, people will go up there to get contacts for the various online club awards.

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VE3OIJ P. Darin Cowan

Hi,
there is no need for qro. I'm working PSK with a FT-817. Just 5 Watt into a 60-m-longwire. Results (from Berlin, JO62pn): YB5, KP4, BV4, W, TR, PY, YV ... and most countries of Europe. The ODX is 12025 km to LU - that makes 0.415 mW per km! All you need is a little patience.

Good luck!

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DC7XJ Bernd P. Kieck
Edited by DC7XJ Bernd P. Kieck on Aug 6, 2010 at 05:28 PM

Hi all
Im a operator out of Tanzania i managed to make a lot of dx contacts on 6/10/15/17/20/40m but using ssb i have n Icom 706mk2g with HRD and and an icom ci-v 17 interface i can decode data modes but are not able to transmit data can someone please help and what additional equipment do i need?

Thanks 73
Jaco
5H3CMG

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5H3CMG Jaco Cronje

Hi, I have used PSK31 for some time and find that if I limit my output to 25 watts and check the audio out is very low, it works fine and does not cause any interference, you can check your output by putting your transmitter into tx and adjusting your audio out from your pc/laptop, your meter should fluctuate according to what the audio is set to. You will only be able to force out what the radio is set to and any more will give problems, turn the audio out down till you see your output fall on your meter then adjust slightly to get the output to coincide with radio settings. This way things will be fine and you should have a clean tx.

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G4ZRL Harry Hall

You need a way of hooking up the audio-output of your computer to the audio-input of your radio. Then the sound card in your computer can produce the tones needed to transmit digital modes.

There are many ways to do this. You can fashion the appropriate cabling, for example, or purchase a TNC such as a RigExpert, RigBlaster, Signalink, etc.

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73 de
VE3OIJ Darin Cowan

I found this easy to put together, and works a treat for me......

http://www.g4ilo.com/usblink.html

Cheers, 73, Fred

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G4ZWI Fred Cooper