FreeDV

[A. Maitland Bottoms]

Alex Fraser <beatnic at comcast.net> writes:
>         I  heard my first freeDV stations on
>       14236 (Saturday 4:20pm East Coast United Snakes).

I wasn't active Saturday, but this (Sunday) afternoon there
was more FreeDV there. I heard N9NJY's first few DV contacts.

The people I am hearing have better antennas and more power
than I do. The good signals come from 20m Yagis atop towers
and 35 to 80 W RF power.

My little Yeasu 817 and non-resonant dipole do not seem
to attract attention. I took the opportunity today to
swap out the CW mechanical filter for the SSB filter, but
so far other than darker edges on the waterfall I don't
notice a difference in decoding ability. I'm guessing
my power out is about 2W (I've backed down the drive
a bit in search of linearity, CW is about 5W on the rig.)
How much power actually radiates is anyone's guess.

I do have a good start in my PTT software mod...
The interface I am using is a DMK engineering USB
radio interface. Like other C-Media sound fobs, it
handles the audio as a USB audio device and has
GPIO pins that can be toggled with the USB HID
interface. The cable from the interface plugs into
the PS2-like Data connector on the 817 for a neat hookup.

Good Luck!

73 de aa4hs,
-Maitland