If you wire up a relay so it's pulled in when there is power and drops out during a power failure, it's a failsafe design, since a relay coil failure would be the same as a power outage and trip the alarm.

The weakest link here is the battery. Without monitoring the battery condition, how can you be sure the battery has enough juice to activate the alarm? If power outages are infrequent, monitoring battery condition becomes even more important, as the unit may go untested for months or even years.

Personally, I would go with the KISS design and use a relay. Much less to go wrong with a simple relay than solid state devices. Unlike transistors, triacs, and scrs, relays are relatively imune to voltage spikes.

I forgot to mention in the last post- to remove a satellite from the SELECTED column, just double click on it, and it will move back into the AVAILABLE column.

At the top of the main program screen, click on SATELLITES. In the SATELLITES pop-up window, select which satellites you want to track from the AVAILABLE column in the middle of the box. Double click the mouse on each one of the sats you want to track.

When you double click on a sat, you will see it appear in the SELECTED column in the right hand side of the box. Click on the sats you are most interested in first, and work your way down. This will place the sats you're interested in the most at the top of the list. The letters between the AVAILABLE and SELECTED columns match the little letter boxes which appear on the bottom right hand side of the main screen. When finished, click OK and the SATELLITES window should close.

In the main program screen, clicking on any of those little letter boxes on lower right hand side will track the satellite associated with that letter (as selected above). If the box is highlighted, that satellite is currently visible. If the box is greyed, out, that sat is below the horizon. If the letter in the box is greyed out, it means that position does not have a sat associated with it (free slot).

Hovering the mouse pointer over each letter will cause a little baloon to pop up with the associated satellite name. The top of the main program screen (title bar) shows the name of the satellite that is currently being tracked (right after SatPC32).

Hope that helps
Tom, KA1MDA

It's an Icom thing. I had an IC-706MK2G and an IC-746, and neither one of them would hear much below 80m, and pretty much nothing below the AM BCB. The Kenwood TS-430S I had before the 746 heard fine down there, as does the TS-2000X that replaced the 746 (all using the same antenna).

For example, in the 4 years I had the 746, I could barely hear 1 local NDB, and only if I disconnected the antenna shield. The first night I had the TS-2000X, I logged about 20-30 NDB with no problem! I've also received numerous LF SW broadcasters in the 130-190 Khz range (Iceland, Morocco, and France) with the TS-2000, all with a ground mounted Hustler 6BTV vertical. Perhaps it's just different front end design philosophies..

"To be honest, you do not know for sure whether it is legal or not"

To be honest, we DO know for sure whether it's legal or not, and it's NOT..

If you have an Icom or Yaesu radio with a CI-V or CAT interface hooked up, this works quite well:
http://www.seed-solutions.com/gregordy/Software/SMeterLite.htm

Tom

Try reheating and reflowing the solder on the relay contact pins. I've seen numerous consumer electronics items where the solder connections to relays had microscopic cracks in a circle around the pins. Reheating and reflowing the solder on the pins fixed the problems.

Tom

Maybe you should hunt around and find a QSO involving a conversation on digital modes. You may feel more at ease talking to someone about a topic you are familiar with. Plus, since you seem to enjoy the digital modes alot, your passion for the subject may even make you forget you're nervous once you break the ice with your call sign!

Tom

Check page 28 of the manual. Look under the heading QUCICK QSY. It shows how to set tuning increments for the MULTI/CH knob. Use the VFO knob for fine tuning, use the MULTI/CH knob (when in VFO mode) to tune with larger steps (ranging from 500Hz to 100 Khz, depending on mode). I use this function on my TS2000 all the time. I go to the AM BCB band, set it for 10 khz, and just step my way through the band.

Tom

If you can find one, the 6 Khz AM filter is also a very worthwhile addition, as the TS-430 makes a very nice BCB AM and SWL receiver with the filter installed.

At least he's consistant in his trolling!

http://www.papays.com/dogqrz1.wav

Electret mic elements with only 2 wires (hot and shield) usually require the bias to be provided on the mic line (phantom power). The easiest way to do this is to take the 8 volt bias from the radio's mic connector and feed it to the mic element "hot" line through a 1K - 10K resistor. The resistor protects the radio in case of a short. Audio output is taken from the same mic lead, and fed to the radio though a DC blocking capacitor, typically between 1-10 microfarad, depending on what you want for low frequency roll off. The other lead from the mic is ground.

Tom

I used to swear by the Beckman hardhat series of DMM's, especially for industrial use. They were pretty much indestructible. But then they sold off the line to Wavetek (I think) and those things were roral pieces of crap! I went through 3 of those at work in 2 years! Many of them failed or lost accuracy after barely being used. I would definitely avoid those!

Since then I've switched to Fluke. I accumulated 3-4 Fluke DMM's over the years, and they all still work with no problems. Try to avoid the "idiot" models- the ones with only 2-4 buttons on the front, and automatic everything. Those are designed for a "specialty market" (ie- use by barely trained, entry level field service people who have almost no concept of electrical measurements). Although the lure of auto everything may seem appealing, there are times when specialty measurements need to be made, and having full manual control over function and range selection is a big plus.

The newest Fluke I use is a work issued 3 year old model. One of the handy features it has is a LOW-Z mode, which drops down the meter impedance from 10 Mohms to 3K ohms. This basically makes it equivalent to an analog Simpson 260 style meter, which loads down the circuit to eliminate false readings from leakage through SCR's, quencharcs, etc. The Low-Z feature could possibly come in handy when working on older tube equipment.

Make sure the HEX address of the radio matches the hex address for the radio in software. Also, check your menu settings and make sure TRANCEIVE MODE to OFF.

The manual is a little bit misleading in the examples it gives of the commands. If I remember correctly, they state something to the effect that the command value range is an 8 bit word between the values of 0 and 255, but they forget to mention this has to be entered in hexadecimal! So if you are trying to control volume, the hex values of 00 would be 0%, 7F would be 50%, and FF would be 100%.

An easy way to convert decimal values to hex is to use the standard windows calculator app. Start the calculator app,  and under the VIEW tab select scientific. You'll see 2 radio buttons on the left side under the display window. Click on DEC, enter the decimal value you want from the keypad, and then click on HEX to get the conversion to hexadecimal.

Tom