IARU HF World Championship - 2021
Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD
Class: SOAB(A)CW HP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs):
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160:
80: 2 2
40: 83 15 6
20: 81 13 16
15: 1 1
10:
-------------------------------------
Total: 167 0 31 22 Total Score = 22,843
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
This was a part-time, shakedown cruise for my new "local remote" setup
with a
Flex 6600M in an outbuilding and my operator position in my home office,
150 feet away. Just to add to the excitement, I installed a new Netgear
Orbi wifi setup Saturday afternoon on a new subnet. Hey, I said it was
a shakedown cruise, right :-) ?
One of the main motivations for the Flex 6600M was its remote capability.
My initial attempt was running Smart SDR on my office desktop, with N1MM+
and my various amp/tuner/rotator/antenna switch applets also running locally.
I found this setup to have latency issues (I have 100MB wired ethernet to
the remote shack) with audio breakup, and after an hour of hit-or-miss
results, I decided to try running all the software on my remote PC, the one
sitting next to the Flex. I tried both RealVNC and Google Remote Desktop
to view the remote PC's desktop. The free RealVNC client can show both
of my remote monitors, an important consideration with N1MM+ taking up one
monitor and the Flex panadapter taking up the other. But the free RealVNC
does not support audio. Google Remote Desktop also can show multiple
remote monitors, and routes the remote PC audio to my office PC. However,
the CPU load of Google Remote Desktop was very heavy compared to VNC - 35%
CPU vs under 10%. But... the screen refresh was much smoother, and
my PC could handle it, so I settled on Google Remote Desktop.
The next thing I noticed was the lack of a CW sidetone from N1MM+,
which was disconcerting. A Google search led me to connect a stereo
mini-phone cable from the powered speaker output of the Flex to a USB
sound dongle plugged into the remote PC next to the Flex. Then I used
DF3CB's Remote Audio client/server to route the remote PC audio to my
office PC. It worked! Full radio audio including CW sidetone.
I next set up Carl N4PY's Pegasus Plus on my office PC, with a NuMark DJGO2
Midi controller to control the Flex. This works great. My Maestro is on back
order, but the Midi controller really gives you most (all?) of what you need
assuming you can use the display on your PC (vs. the Maestro's built-in
display).
Turning the "VFO" knob on the Numark and watching the receive slice
move across
the panadapter on the remote PC desktop was faster than clicking "next
spot"
in N1MM in that no time was wasted listening where N1MM showed a spot but
I wasn't receiving anything here.
I'm running a KPA500 with the Flex, and have a KPA1500 on order. I could
work 98% of what I heard with 450W, so the 1500 is probably overkill for my
antenna (Spiderbeam 40-10) and ears. But always nice to have a little extra
pileup busting power.
I spent most of my time Saturday on 20M and for the couple of hours I was
actually operating vs. messing with configurations, the bands were moderately
good. 20 was fair in the morning, good in the afternoon. Not superb
conditions,
but enjoyable. I spent some time on 40 in the evening, and it was open nicely
to EU as well as the Americas. Sunday morning was a bit of 80 and the rest on
40, with a few VK's as well as KH6 in the log. I'm using the 40M dipole add-on
to the Spiderbeam.
I originally planned to enter CW+SSB but ended up doing CW-only, deciding
that my "fiddlilng around vs operating" ratio was already too high.
Looking forward to the next test and continuing the shakedown of local remote!
Thanks for the Q's and 73,
Rowland K4XD
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