My son and I started out with our Tech license and a 2m HT in Dec 2017. By April 2018 we moved up to Generals and we joined in on the many club activities. Today we hold Extra licenses thanks to the great training courses offered by NARS.
* 2018 Summer Field Day, Tower team
* 2019 Winter Field Day, Tower Team
* 2019 Summer Field Day, Tower Team
* 2020 Winter Field Day, Tower Team
* 2020 Summer Field Day - Work from home
* 2021 Winter Field Day - Work from home
Hi. My name is Keith Sangillo, KZ1Z (formerly KC1IMK). I would like to thank the Nashua Area Radio Society for hosting the 2020 Student-Teacher Contest. The ICOM IC-7300 radio that I won is in good hands and being put to use.
The first thing I did was take the NARS Extra class in December 2020 and get my Extra license so that I could use “all the bands and frequencies”. It turned out that the weather was a bigger challenge than the test questions. After two days of an online class, a snowstorm turned off the power. My dad and I missed most of the Day 3 class sessions as we searched for friends with power. We arranged to take the test at a friend’s house 30 minutes farther south. The VE’s watched us take the test in a basement storeroom during the pandemic when we were not supposed to be visiting friends.
The first big test for the new radio was Winter Field Day 2021. We pushed out the lawnmower and set up the station in the utility shed.
WFD “shack”
We hung a 20 m inverted V dipole in the adjacent tree and ran the feed line in the window so that we could close the doors when it was windy. We did not use our existing antenna for the shack in the house.
WFD Setup: Deep Cycle battery powering radio and laptop
We went for all the bonus points. The shed is non-insulated and considered outdoors. It was far enough away from the house to be remote. We used battery power.
ICOM IC-7300 from Youth Contest
And yeah, we had no heaters either. We dressed up in ski gear and warmed our hands on several cups of hot chocolate and tea so that we could log contacts with N1MM linked to the radio.
Cold, 5 deg F night OPS
With a single band antenna and part-time operation, I made 27 contacts. With bonus points from freezing my butt off, I sent in 4552 points for NARS. Thanks again for putting on the Student-Teacher Contest and hope to see folks sometime soon.
When the Nashua Area Radio Society’s Student/Teacher Contest Series was first set up, Fred and Anita (AB1OC/AB1QB) offered up their station to my son Keith (KC1IMK) and other students that do not have a station at home. Fred and Anita have an amazing station at their QTH and you can find more information on it here.
Then COVID arrived and sharing mikes, headphones, and keyboards at other people’s houses are no longer acceptable. We cannot risk getting each other sick. Another way is necessary. Remote Operation is here!
Fred (AB1OC) and Jamey (AC1DC) worked out the kinks for setting up Remote Operation first. Then Fred invited Keith and me to try it out. After a couple of hours online with Fred to set up, we were on our own. Contest Calendar showed the Helvetia Contest that night so we pointed the beams toward Switzerland and called CQ. Several stations pounced on Keith at once. He worked hard with the mouse, bouncing from the radio PTT button to logging in N1MM. Once the pile-up was cleared, he pulled off his headset and said “I really wish I had a footswitch like Field Day“.
Remote PTT Switch for SmartSDR
Driven to maintain my “Super-Dad” status, I went to work. I found a few references at the FlexRadio site:
Looked pretty straight forward to build a Remote PTT Switch. Configure a SmartSDR CAT interface to monitor hardware flow control pins in a standard serial port. The hard part today is to find a serial port. They have all been replaced by USB.
I dug out a 15-year-old Belkin adapter from the back of my shack and installed it. A new Com3 port showed up in Windows 10 device manager.
USB to Serial Adapter
SmartSDR CAT will detect if RTS is shorted to CTS in a Com port.
This is a very standardized interface and it was easy to find the pin definition.
Pin 7 is RTS
Pin 8 is CTS.
Easy to spot as they are the center two pins of the row of four.
I also had the mating 9 pin D connector in my bin of parts. One could probably solder to the pins of the adapter, but I would recommend a connector. I cut off the 1/4″ plug from a footswitch I bought from Amazon. The two leads were soldered to pins 7 & 8.
To test it, I downloaded ComTestSerial from Microridge https://www.microridge.com The test software confirmed the hardware worked. Each time I pressed and released the footswitch the CTS light in the top right corner changed between Red and Green.
Configuring FlexRadio SmartSDR
Now to configure the software. Open SmartSDR CAT and add a port. Give it a name. Set Port Protocol to PTT, set Port type to Serial, set Serial Port to Existing, and set CAT COM to your new Com port. Mine was Com3. Set VFO slice A. Select RTS. Hit save.
CAT settings
I found some open spectrum on 20m, crossed fingers, and pressed the switch.
Voila! It transmitted!
With prolonged use, I found my old adapter was not up to the job. The drivers were not meant for Windows 10. It missed about 1 out of 10 switch presses. I have since upgraded and the new Remote PTT Switch works great.
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