Enjoy it while you can. Microsoft will probably claim they've patented it and charge you a license fee.

"Automatic Signal Classification for Software Defined Radios," QEX Dec 2003.
"Robust Signal Classification Using the Wavelet Transform for Feature Extraction," http://groups.winnforum.org/p/cm/ld/fid=56.

This is a little misleading. About Deep Impact as a Flex project I have nothing to say. However, the Virtual Radio design, on which Deep Impact might have been based, did indeed progress considerably further as the Virtual Radio Kernel, vrk. The first prototype was distributed in December 2008.

My subsequent work in this area has been paid for and is proprietary, so I'm not really in a position to discuss the matter any further.

73
Frank
AB2KT

Duane said it all (and you couldn't be getting it from a better source), but just to toss in 2 cents, no it's 432 SSB & CW. The antennas are starting to get real small up there, so an FT-817 or something with 5 watts goes a long way.

I built a large corner reflector for 432 that worked wonderfully well, but it was heavy and clumsy, and it scared all the dogs and children, so I scrapped it. I guess the point is you can have fun with some unusual designs on 432 and up, and you can also do very well with extremely simple designs.

Enjoy.

By all means, do the Single Op Portable category. It's a *lot* of fun. Part of the fun is being a new player among a group of players who know one another pretty well. Like a tiny taste of being rare DX for awhile. Everybody wants to work you, especially if you have multiple bands.

Couple of things I've concluded about running in that category after doing it for a few years:

(1) 2 meters is your bread and butter, and not just SSB. There's plenty of CW activity too. You can do OK with pair of stacked loops.

(2) The payback for having a decent 70cm rig is enormous because of the band multiplier. An 11-element cheap yagi for 432 is only about 5 feet long in the boom and easy to handle. If you're really concerned with score, it helps a lot to have 432 when you've hooked up with a multiband station. I won my section once in the single op portable category largely on account of the band mult. I'm trying real hard to get 1296 and maybe 2400 up and running also this year.

(3) 6 meters is *almost* a waste of time in that category. It's the one place where you're at a complete power disadvantage compared to the full-up contest stations. And the 6m openings are really brief. By the time the big guns have finished, the opening is gone.

6 is worth doing to go after a few outlying or unexpected grids, but you spend a lot of time chasing without catching much. Without power, you're still stuck with a marginal antenna, probably. A two or three element beam isn't so superior to rotatable dipole as to justify the extra complications, in this setting. Most of the time you'll be using the directionality of the antenna to null out any nearby big gun 6 stations. If you're serious about 6 you definitely need at lest a 4 or 5 el yagi and a lot of patience. Oh, and be sure to try CW on 6 especially.

So, do it, and have fun, lots of it. Guaranteed. The contesting crew is very friendly and encouraging.

73
Frank
AB2KT

What power will you be running?

In a recent issue of CQ VHF, Kent Britain WA5VJB published a design for a two-fer pair of his cheap yagis arranged Arrow-style, along with a very simple and effective diplexer. IIRC the limit was about 20 W. The diplexer might be exactly what you're looking for.

73
Frank
AB2KT

"I can't believe it is that much harder from the east cost."

Larry, most of my operating lately has been on 40 and 80 CW between Midnight and 6 AM EST. We're about 30 miles from the Atlantic coast. From here the path deep into EU and RU is such that often you can't copy US stations for the Trans-Atlantic QRM during the late night shift. And, oddly enough, the South Pacific is extremely reliable almost every night, VK, ZL...but no JA. Haven't heard a peep from JA  on those bands in 4 years.

No doubt they're there, but you need a lot better antenna on the low bands than I've got to hear them, and some TX power to go with it. 12, 15, 17 are better bets anyway and it'll be awhile before they come back from the grave.

73
Frank
AB2KT

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/status.php

will tell you what's up and what's running.

73
Frank
AB2KT

In your situation it's a lot harder to receive a decent signal than to transmit one. Noise is a huge problem in the city. You can always boost your transmit power to get out. Suppressing noise on receive is not so simple, especially when you have such a variety of nearby sources -- AC wiring, tracklight switching supplies, above all automobile ignitions packed together in heavy traffic...

I've operated HF portable from a number of European cities. The biggest enemy is the public transportation system. Trams generate a *lot* of hash. It's pretty hopeless. NYC is manageable by comparison.

You can probably get by with some pretty small antennas if you're prepared to work hard on the receive part. DSP will certainly help. Maybe you'll need something more like an active noise canceller. You might also get good results from a smallish magnetic loop, or a separate RX loop antenna with a preamp.

In any case, you deserve a lot of credit for wanting to work HF from a city QTH. A big city is one of the most adverse RF environments known to humankind.

How about half of this?

http://degood.org/coaxtrap/

Each leg is 28' 8" long. It covers the pre-WARC bands + 30m.

73
Frank
AB2KT

If it's that strong, there's a good chance it's not amateur at all. Possibly PACTOR, MIL-188-110A, or one of the STANAG digital varieties.

73
Frank
AB2KT/VE7

<<I am taking a trip...do I just need to signify KQ6UP/VE1.>>

That's all. Have a great trip and enjoy operating from a new location.

73
Frank
AB2KT
and
AB2KT/VE7

The S-band BBQ-grille dishes are still very easy to come by, for use with WiFi systems. There are lots of them for sale inexpensively on ebay, as "mesh WiFi" antennas.

I recently bought one brand-new, together with a feed rated up to 100W and mounting hardware, for a little under $30 plus shipping. What it doesn't have, of course, is an S-band->2m downconverter, but that's not an issue in my application, which is portable and uses a short feedline directly to a preamp and a USRP and computer running GnuRadio.

Ditto on both the Elk and Gulf Alpha antennas, BTW.

73
Frank
AB2KT

Since the frequency ratio between 10 meters and 6 meters is less than an octave, you might think about a log periodic. The KMA 2856 covers 28-56 MHz with 12 elements on a 15' boom. Looks like a large TV antenna.

73
Frank
AB2KT

Which size dish? The old C-band dishes are about 3m in diameter. The current Ku-band dishes run from around 43cm to 1m.

A 3m dish would make a heck of a 70cm antenna, but it would also need a heck of an Az-El rotor to make it useful for LEO operation. The smaller dishes are probably too small to be helpful.

The tradeoff with a 70cm downlink antenna seems to be getting enough gain without making it too hard to aim. If you're talking homebrew, something like four phased biquads over a flat-panel reflector might be what you're looking for.

73
Frank
AB2KT