While taking part of my morning brew I noticed an issue with my blog. I have a list of the blogs that I follow and blogger calls it a blog list gadget. The little squares beside each of the blogs I follow is supposed to be a solid color and it is not. That is not a big deal but at the bottom of the blog list is a link that says "Show all". Now when I click on it the remainder of the followed blogs do not appear, nothing happens. I tried it both on my Windows and Mac pc with the same results. The max blogs you can show it 10 that you follow. When the Show all link is clicked the rest of the followed blogs should appear. I went to the gadget and played around with different settings and nothing was successful. I then went to AE5X blog who has the same setup for followers as mine. His too the squares were not a solid color and the link at the bottom of the blog list did not work either. Now I am not sure if it is just an issue here or if it is wide spread across all blogger blogs? If you have a blogger blog with this gadget give it a try, give the link on my blog a try at your end and if this is a wide spread issue does anyone have a fix.
Next up is my Python script for shutting down my contest station. That probably makes it sound like I’m running some massive, high-end operation—but in reality, I just really like things to work smoothly. I find it incredibly handy to simply double-click a Python shutdown icon on my desktop and have everything taken care of automatically. Some might call that lazy, overly dependent on a PC, or a bit geeky. I prefer the last option, and I’m fairly certain my dear wife would agree.
The reason I use a Python script for shutting the station down is the same reason I use one for startup: everything shuts down in the proper order. The shutdown process is essentially the reverse of the startup sequence, with a few hiccups that required some creative workarounds.
One issue was that certain applications—Win4Icom in particular—take noticeably longer to shut down than they do to start up, so I had to extend some of the timing in the script to allow for a clean exit. Another problem was that Win4Icom was not shutting down my Icom 7610 as it’s supposed to. As a result, the radio was staying powered on until the Wi-Fi plug turned off, cutting power to the supply and abruptly killing the radio. That obviously doesn’t allow for a proper shutdown sequence.
In the video, you’ll see that the Icom 7610 now shuts down cleanly at the very end of the shutdown process. I accomplished this by adding Python code that sends the appropriate Icom HEX command to power down the radio correctly.
I
have been working on some Python scripts to automate tasks that I would
rather not do manually. The video above shows my contest station
powering up from start to finish.
Why
do this, you ask? The part of the amateur radio hobby that really
interests me is CW contesting. Now that I am retired, I take part in
four weekly one-hour “mini” contests and, in an average month, I spend
two or three weekends CW contesting as well.
The
programs I use need to be started in a specific order. For example, I
must start my virtual port program (VSPE) first, and then start the
radio and contest programs in a certain sequence. If this order is not
followed, I get flooded with error messages.
Some
say I over complicate things, but I am somewhat of a perfectionist and
like everything set up just so. Python lets me achieve that with a
single mouse click. There has been some fine-tuning of the Python code
along the way. For example, my radio control program Win4Icom is
delivered as a complete new program with each update, rather than as an
add-on to the original, as the N1MM+ contesting program does. Because of
this, I wrote the script for Win4Icom so that it always checks for and
runs the highest revision number of the program; otherwise, it would
just continue to load the same old version.
I
also had to introduce delays between the startup of some programs.
After VSPE starts, I delay Win4Icom by five seconds, because VSPE is
still initializing in the background and Win4Icom would otherwise throw
errors. I also added a step to minimize VSPE to the taskbar once it
starts, so it does not sit on the screen. As Win4Icom starts, I added a
10-second delay while it powers up my Icom 7610 and sets up the COM port
configurations for N1MM+. I found N1MM+ needs to wait for those steps
to complete before it begins its own startup. Finally Reverse Beacon Network web page is setup to open with my call sign showing spots where it is heard.
Here's the sequence shown in the YouTube video:
WiFi smart plug powers on.
Astron power supply powers on seen in the lower left corner .
Raspberry Pi 4B boots (red power LED visible on desk), launching HamClock.
VSPE starts and minimizes to taskbar.
Win4Icom launches, powering on the Icom 7610.
Reverse Beacon Network loads/refreshes as HamClock continues to load.
N1MM+ Logger starts.
Next
up: Python shutdown scripting (with its own challenges). I'm also 3/4
through a script to generate ADIF file of contest contacts that exports and auto-upload to N3FJP, Club
Log, LoTW, CWops, and QRZ.com. Stay tuned!
The January NAQP is always a contest I
look forward to. It starts at 2:00 PM local time, and my plan was to
operate for about eight hours of the ten-hour event. This contest is
always well attended, and with the maximum power limited to 100 watts,
everyone is on a level playing field.
As always, I reviewed the previous
year’s results, the bands I used and when, and my balance between
running and search-and-pounce. Last year, 10 through 40 meters were all
open and I made good use of those bands. This year was quite different —
10 meters was poor and I spent only a short time there. The best band
turned out to be 20 meters, followed by 15 meters and then 40 meters. I
knew going in that solar conditions were not going to be as favorable as
last year.
The contest started off a bit slow,
and I initially wondered if many operators had seen the predicted solar
conditions and decided to sit this one out. Like last year, I spent
about 95% of the contest running, and things did begin to pick up later
in the afternoon. My highest hourly rate was 115 contacts, and three
hours in, it was time for dinner. I was very pleased to have logged 300 contacts by that point.
After dinner, however, that’s when
things really went downhill. Before the break, the Kp index had been
holding steady at 3 and the Bz index was around −6 to −8. After dinner,
the Kp jumped to 6 and the Bz index dropped as low as −19. I was
wrapping up my time on 20 meters and transitioning to 40 meters as
evening set in, but under these new solar conditions my hourly rate
dropped from around 100 contacts to barely 25.
The deteriorating band conditions
brought severe QSB stations would be there one moment and completely
gone the next. The combination of high Kp and strongly negative Bz also
made CW signals sound as though they were gurgling underwater. Given
these conditions, I decided to pull the plug at 8:00 PM local time and
call it a day.
