Can you please elaborate on the QSO freq. problem?
Did you tried flrig with the TT Omni 7?
73 de Fer

Ethernet cable should not be the cause of noise in HF captured by the outdoor antenna, except maybe if you have a long run of CAT5 parallel to the antenna or a similar configuration which close couple both.

I have a somewhat extensive Ethernet cabling in my house and it's impossible to discern a change in the level noise here in the shack with an internal telescopic or ferrite-loop antenna and a portable receiver when computers are running with the switches off and Ethernet cable disconnected, versus all of it running in normal condition.

Although computer noise level is kept to a minimum, my conclusion is whatever the Ethernet noise level is, it's level is masked by the noise the computers produces.

However, equipment associated with networking (switches, routers, modems, APs, etc.) *could* be very noisy: most modern electronic equipment in this class have one to several switching PS (internal/external switching principal PS, sometimes a brick,  plus internal CC converters). Those PS could be _very_ noisy and poorly designed Ethernet transformers could couple common mode NOISE currents into the cabling, which will perform as an antenna and will radiate that noise. However is possible to "cure" with shielded cable or installing ferrite chokes, the most effective way is to remove the offending equipment and replace it for quiet units.

I've found that small (4 to 8 ports) or cheap switches have a noticeable level of RFI (HF). I prefer professional equipment (16/24/48 ports) of recognized brand, with internal PS and metal cabinet. Those can be acquired at convenience price used. Their only disadvantage is 
that they are bulky.

73 de Fer

Hi. Sorry about the late response.
You should set up both equipment accordingly to it's function. To be able to uniquely identify them, you'll need to change one at least.


73 de Fer

Best way is probably a metal plate, ground-bonded or better being itself you SPG, with bulkhead connectors installed on it. Low in the wall near the ground.

Said that, whenever I need to go through a wall, I take my hammer drill and put it against the obstacle in a downward, interior to exterior 15° to 20° inclination. Usually, it takes more time to re-spool the extension cord that to make the hole.
 
73 de Fer

How is Xastir configured? Specifically, you have different callsigns (callsign + identifier, v.g. LU2DFM-1 in Xastir itself, and LU2DFM-9 in the mobile radio)?

Is the GPS in the remote radio working?
Can you see your remote radio incoming traffic (in Xastir, menu View, Incomming data window) showing it's coordinates?

I've extracted this from aprs.fi:
2010-12-12 01:34:03 UTC: KF5EFR>SUPXXQ,SANDIA*,WIDE2-1,qAR,W5AOX-10:`r:bl-'>/"FX}
2010-12-12 01:51:28 UTC: KF5EFR>APT311,SANDIA*,WIDE2-1,qAR,W5AOX-10:>TinyTrak3 v1.1
2010-12-12 01:51:36 UTC: KF5EFR>SUPXXU,SANDIA*,WIDE2-1,qAR,W5AOX-10:`r:_l>->/"G2}
2010-12-12 01:56:33 UTC: KF5EFR>APX199,TCPIP*,qAC,T2PUEBLO:=3508.93N/10630.48WMPHG2020XASTIR - Darwin
2010-12-12 02:04:02 UTC: KF5EFR>APX199,TCPIP*,qAC,T2PUEBLO:=3508.93N/10630.48WMPHG2020XASTIR - Darwin

The last two lines are from Xastir in your computer, the second one is from  a TinyTrack device, both have the same callsign.

73 de Fer

George,
I've found myself hitting the "Post" instead of the "Preview" button when writing on the forums.
Can be "Preview" (along Spell Check) the only button in the form in the first iteration, kind of a compulsive preview?

I know that I'm the idiot, but also the Post is _before_ the Preview in the form index.

(The shortcuts not always works, ALT-S is Hi_s_tory menu (FF 4b7 Linux) and ALT-P is a window manager assigned combo.)

Thanks a lot.
73 de Fer

George,
Yes, I'm really aware of the importance of GA. I do housekeeping for some community/not-for-profit sites and most important money incoming frequently comes from there.

I don't know if both incomes (GA and subscriptions) are overlapping, i.e. if the subscribers are also the clickers in the adds. I suspect that the 4M hit should include a lot of non-subscribers, but you'll have to do the math yourself ;-)
Anyway, I stand by my statement that the real problem is not the advertising by itself, but the annoyance that some of the advertising produces. I do know that you have little or no control over that.

I'm sorry for rising up the question on adblock. The fact is that it's not reasonable to expect the current status quo in this area to persist too long into the future, so it's good for everyone to think about alternatives now before adsense comes to a stop.

PS: sorry about the interpolation in the previous post, it slipped.

It's very clear that his issues are not the ads themselves, but his inability to properly deal with today's www.

I made a similar decision years ago too and I don't feel like missing anything important.

The fact is that for some time on, web ads will be there because if their impact or effectiveness is questionable, one thing about them is that  they provide a mean for community sites like this one to partially fill the bill, which can grow very fast as the user base expands. At the very least, setting an option for members to disable ads, they constitute a good incentive to get new subscribers.

I do use adblock and noscript of course, but as a member of some community sites where I'm not a subscriber (like here) I let the ads run and click on some of them time to time to let the site get a click count.
But eHam really needs a policy to limit announcers: here I'm typing next to two ads, one for the N3ZN paddles which is an image, and perfectly fine with me, and the bottom one with bees that's the most stupid and annoying thing you could ever conceive if you had lost half your brain. This kind of ad is what compels people to hit Ctrl-W ASAP, or install adblockplus.

73 de Fer

Hi George et al,
Even when I'm not very concerned by the topic posted by the OP, nor I endorse the impoliteness and lack of education that his post evidences, I realize that this problem can in fact be frustrating to other users.

GA and external server ads are a problem not only in eHam, of course; most ISPs these days force www through a compulsory proxy so the perceived speed of serving a page for the user POV is really much faster than if the request were actually served from the internet. These scheme has some advantages but a key con is the fact that request that cannot be cached in the proxy must concur in the ISP's pipe and those pipes sometimes are sub-dimensioned particularly in peak traffic hours. The perceived effect is a slowdown.

Here's for me another chance to bring up Slashdot that I'm rush: jump on your 1997 Malibu, go to the airport and take a fly to 2010certainly not letting pass over: /. sets and option for "good karma" users to permit them block ads. Since eHam doesn't have a karma system, could you George consider to let subscribers set a no ads option?

Anyway, I can't believe there are people out there without AdBlock Plus... it's 2010, come on (I do realize that this line could be counter productive...)

73 de Fer

(Emphasis is mine). I generally agree with your post, but the better the filters you have, the better experience you will get out of any band conditions you may encounter. I recently went from a somewhat old and modest transceiver to a rig with roofing filter (2500, 500 and 300 Hz)  and DSP continuous  variable BW, and the fact is that the filtering is much more useful in _good_ band conditions than the rest of the time: relatively strong signals propagate better when the band is collaborative, and there are lots of weak signals there to work that you don't ever notice when conditions are poor. You need the filtering to reduce BW getting a better S/N and combined with PBT and notch, strong nearby signals can be put out of the WF.

People tend to use wide filtering (whatever the rig BW is for SSB) for the WF to show the good portion of the sub-band. This is ok for casual operating and for seeing what is going on, but for making contacts, a narrow filter is a must.

73 de Fer

These days the swiss tool is a Knoppix live CD. Boot a *complete* (CLI and GUI) fully functional OS in almost any hardware, and work from there.  A pendrive is a good complement to it (you can store your Knoppix config in the pendrive, and use it to copy to/from the box HD).

You can completely wipe an HD doing something like this (as root):
   dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda bs=1M
This will write a random byte stream to the first SATA/SCSI disk in 1024 kB blocks.  However this is _not_ needed to reformat or change the partition table on the disk. This is a measure for somewhat safely removing (overwriting) data on the drive.

You can use fdisk or cfdisk to edit it's partition table; those tools support most partitions types out there.
You can format some partitions, depending on it's type with
   mkfs.xxx /dev/dddd
where "xxx" is the fs type: ext2, ext3, ntfs, xfs, etc. and dddd is the _partition_ (not the whole disk device) you want to format, e.g. sda1, hda3, etc.

You generally don't need to perform any kind of "wipe" prior to reinstall an OS or any of the tasks descripted  above except you really need to make the data almost impossible to recover.

For disk diagnostics and forensics there are other tools in the standard Knoppix live CD distro; perhaps it's worth mentioning the SMART monitor and control tools for drives that support this feature.

73

Hi.
Here's the explanation: http://www.davidpace.com/physics/em-topics/capacitance-cylinders.htm

And here is a calculator: http://www.ajdesigner.com/phpcapacitor/cylindrical_capacitor_equation.php

73 de Fer

ZXM:

try downloading and burning a KNOPPIX live image CD (www.knoppix.net).
Boot from that (set your computer BIOS to boot from CD, or hit F8, F11 or whatever is your boot menu key when booting the computer if your computer has a boot option menu) and let the knoppix start.

Take look at the knoppix howto to get and idea of how things should work.

This should get you a full functional GNU/Linux OS on your computer from _the CD_, without touching your hard drive. It's somewhat slow in this way, because it's running from the CD instead of hard disk, but you can see if knoppix properly discover and configure your hardware.

If this works, then a recent Ubuntu install disk should install on your box too without problem.

73 de Fer

In ubuntu, or any other Debian derived distro, the package manager will show you what's available for installation. That's apt on the command line, dselect or aptitude in console mode, and synaptyc in X (graphics) mode.

For logging, xlog and twlog are common use, and klog is a KDE integrated package. Neither or them generates the QSLs cards but they have fields to record sent/received cards in each QSO. All of them support ADIF and importing. Xlog can integrate with fldigi and automagically import the fldigi's logbook in real time.

For VHF and up logging/contest there is tucnak2.

For CW keying, logging and contesting there is TLF (I'm not much into contesting) which seems to be a very good console (curses based) program for that task (based on TR-LOG for DOS).

fldigi is a CW/Digimode software. It can generate CW from keyboard/macros and can control some rigs by means of hamlib. hamlib is a interface to transceivers, a software abstraction layer between the application and the equipment, there is support for several radios.

For satellite tracking there is gpredict, which also uses hamlib and can control a AZEL rotor also.

There is no eznec for linux, and, since eznec file format is a closed binary and incompatible with NEC2 implementation (for whatever reason) you are out of look because although there is antenna modeling software in FOSS universe (NEC2, xnec2c, xnecview, antennavis, inter alia) you can's use eznec files  with other software.

For short and long path calculation there is gcb. minimuf shows, well, MUF.

pythonprop http://www.qsl.net/hz1jw/pythonprop/ is not yet in Debian/Ubuntu repositories, but is a VOACAP based prediction program for GNU/Linux (and other OSes).

You can optimize yagis and find worst case tolerance variation with yagiuda.


Hope this helps.
73

Brian,
well, ie is not exactly the best option out there ;-)

Anyway, the way the tooltip balloon is showed whenever the mouse is over the link is a browser specific implementation. The site code has nothing to do with it, and there is no way for the site to alter the browser setting/behavior (perhaps there is some javascript hack or workaround for specific browsers, but I really don't know).

I don't know about the ie version that comes with w7, but ie6 and ie8 I think had a 5 second timeout for the tooltip in A tags (anchor tag, links) tittle attribute. That's a questionable implementation at least whenever the user deliberately sets the pointer over a link... The correct implementation should be the current in FF4beta, i.e. show the tooltip as long as the pointer is over the link, and hiding it immediately when the pointer leaves the link, with a small amount of delay in displaying the balloon so they not become annoying when rapidly moving the pointer over several links on the page.

As said, FF3.x had this same problem too (IIRC there's a plugin to correct the "problem"). Browsers (on win XP) I know to set a much longer or no timeout on A tittle attribute are Opera, FF4 and Chrome.

73 de Fer