I'm pretty sure now that it's lack of shielding. The device works for 20 minutes straight, which is outrageous, considering the previous performance, but as soon as I remove the wire that connects the make-shift aluminium shielding to my rig's gnd, I get the same old I/O error as before. Nice.
About that digimode interface that I fixed: no, I didn't. Turned out on 40m the darn thing wouldn't work. Another thing got me curious: 1W went okay, 2,5W was critical and 6W killed the device right away. I'm currently hypothesizing that I have an RFI problem and experimenting with aluminium foil for shielding. Looks promising.
So with my home brew digimode interface finally working I tried a couple of times to do a QSO in FT8. No dice. After sunset the band is dead. Before sunset the FT8 subband is crowded like hell. And I still got too high an SWR. Then, again, pskreporter saw my signals all over Europe. I don't really understand it.
For testing, I replaced the sound card in my digimode interface with a different type and it seems to work like a charm. Maybe using a USB sound card for like 2 EUR wasn't that good an idea.
My home brew digimode interface still makes fldigi and WSJT-X act up. I guess I'll have to debug it again, this time focusing on the UART to USB converter. I'm this close to buying a digimode interface but I'd really prefer to build at least some of my stuff myself. Then, again, I could also imagine myself operating for a change. #firstworldproblems
Forgot to mention that the VNA measured the SWR to be 6-ish at the lowest point and mostly over 10. Yeah. I don't know, either.
Just set up two anchor points in trees in my garden so next time I can take another shot at putting up my inverted V. #babysteps
@Shufei This reminds me of a fun story.
Once upon a time it was illegal for US amateur stations to make contact with their Cuban counterparts.
One day a US station hears a Cuban station down on HF (I forget what band). US station says to his buddy "It's a real shame we're not allowed to talk to Cuba because I'm hearing <callsign> 59 here."
Cuban station then says to nobody in particular "It's a shame we cannot talk to the US because I hear <callsign> 59 here."
No regs were broken that day.
Can we please, please β PLEASE! not make the nonsensical US date format month/day/year the default in applications? π€¦ββοΈ
PRE π TTY π PLEASE
And to all users of that format: it makes no sense, it's counter-intuitive, it makes collaboration frustrating, it introduces inconsistencies and errors... Just stop. Please. Use international standards.
(And don't get me started on your other units of weights, volumes and distances. Bloody hell.)
Boost if I'm right.
Ham radio operator. I know. Quite the surprise.
#nobot