Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Opinions regarding Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I was W6TAM 55 years ago. (extra-class license)

I have not really shopped around for a rig yet, so do not
know how the Yaesu FT-817ND rig compares to
its competitors in the $700 price range.

Any advice gratefully appreciated -

Mark Conrad

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

"Mark Conrad" wrote in message
...

Opinions regarding Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I was W6TAM 55 years ago. (extra-class license)

I have not really shopped around for a rig yet, so do not
know how the Yaesu FT-817ND rig compares to
its competitors in the $700 price range.

Any advice gratefully appreciated -

Mark Conrad

Hello Mark.

They are great fun. I believe there isn't anything directly equivalent (i.e.
HF / VHF / UHF portable) from the other manufacturers.
Best wishes,

Roger.



--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article ,
Mark Conrad wrote:

Opinions regarding Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I was W6TAM 55 years ago. (extra-class license)

I have not really shopped around for a rig yet, so do not
know how the Yaesu FT-817ND rig compares to
its competitors in the $700 price range.

Any advice gratefully appreciated -

Mark Conrad

I use mine mainly for working satellites. I've been on the birds for
nearly a year and a half and have used it to make about 1500 contacts
with at least 80 different stations. I've worked over 25 American
states as well as 5 Canadian provinces and one of its territories. My
furthest contact with it was the K4T DXpedition a few days ago, which is
about 4100 km from my QTH.

I made my first contacts with just the stock rubber duck antenna but
I've been using an Arrow dual-band Yagi for more than a year.

I'd say that my FT-817ND was worth the investment.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote in :

Opinions regarding Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I was W6TAM 55 years ago. (extra-class license)

I have not really shopped around for a rig yet, so do not
know how the Yaesu FT-817ND rig compares to
its competitors in the $700 price range.

Any advice gratefully appreciated -

I don't have one, though I have the 817's bigger brothers the 857D and
897D.

Two of my friends *do* have 817s, and _LOVE_ them.

--
A computer scientist is someone who, when told to "Go to hell," sees the
"go to," rather than the destination, as harmful.
-- Dr. Roger M. Firestone

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:

Opinions regarding Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?

The original 817 had a problem with batteries. The off switch did not
actually turn off the power and the finals being able to function
from 1.8mHz to 450 mHz went into oscilation and burned out.

Has this been fixed? The popular fix at the time was to remove the batteries
when the rig was not in use.

The biggest problem with the Yaseu is the tiny screen. The ICOM 703 has a
much larger screen. The 703 only goes up to 6m though.

The 706 does have the same frequency coverage as the Yaseu. You can adjust the
output power down to 5 watts, so it may be a viable option. It also has
a more features than the Yaesu.

If you are using it in a location where size and weight don't matter that
much and nor does the increased battery drain, it may be worth the
money for it so that you have 100 watt HF output if you need it.

The ICOM rigs include a removable front panel, so you can mount them
elsewhere and just have the control head at your operating position.

Looking at Universal radio the current price for a new rig is
$600 for the 817ND, $730 for the 703+ and $945 for the 706IIG.
So you have a big range of price, power and features to choose from.

The Yaesu is the grandson of the FT-290 and simlar rigs, which were
portable VHF/UHF multimode rigs, while the ICOM grew out of shrunken
HF rigs, the Kenwood TS-50 being the first. Surprisingly, Kenwood no
longer has anything to offer in that line.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Wow, thanks everyone for the great reports on
the lttle Yaesu transceiver!

I am contemplating it mainly for its ears.

I wanted to order the optional Collins 300 cycle filter
for CW work, but had hazy memories from 55 years ago
that such filters tended to cause unwanted "ringing"
of the output audio, kinda like a steady loud output "hiss".

When I left Ham Radio in 1955, the QRPp experts were
playing with "active filters" for low power QRP work.

If I remember correctly, such filters would block _all_ the
signal, noise and everything, then open up a 30 cycle "window"
for a brief while when the "start" of a dot or dash
was liable to occur.

The entire mess, transmitter and distant receiver was sync'd with
the WWV time signal, to open and close the receiver's active filters
during automatic CW transmission.


The incoming dot or dash audio would be re-generated artificially
by a separate audio circuit in the receiver.

QRP advocates claimed they could get on a crowded voice band,
and pump a low power CW signal through at a slow speed
of a few words-per-minute.



Switching Gears -
*********

Does anyone know if the FCC still requires at least 50 RF watts
to legally drive a linear amplifier?

There was talk that they might change that requirement so that
low power rigs like the Yaesu could drive an amplifier.

Of course, nothing to stop a ham from building his own
intermediate amplifier, but cleaning up all the harmonics is
a major concern.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article ,
Mark Conrad wrote:

Wow, thanks everyone for the great reports on
the lttle Yaesu transceiver!

I am contemplating it mainly for its ears.

I wanted to order the optional Collins 300 cycle filter
for CW work, but had hazy memories from 55 years ago
that such filters tended to cause unwanted "ringing"
of the output audio, kinda like a steady loud output "hiss".

Sharp frequency-domain filter cutoff, comes along with blurry
time-domain cutoff... you can't entirely avoid that.

Narrow-bandwidth filters aren't all equal, though, even for the same
-3 dB bandwidth. Different filter alignments cause different amounts
of frequency-domain (pass-band and stop-band) ripple, and different
amounts of ringing and phase shift. Some types seem to be easier on
the ear (and the whole ear/brain system) than others.

Another, more modern approach is to use digital filtering techniques
(either with a DSP chip, or with a personal computer acting as a DSP).
By using finite-impulse-response digital filters, you can get a wider
range of time- and phase-relative behaviors than you can with an IIR
analog filter.

When I left Ham Radio in 1955, the QRPp experts were
playing with "active filters" for low power QRP work.

If I remember correctly, such filters would block _all_ the
signal, noise and everything, then open up a 30 cycle "window"
for a brief while when the "start" of a dot or dash
was liable to occur.

The entire mess, transmitter and distant receiver was sync'd with
the WWV time signal, to open and close the receiver's active filters
during automatic CW transmission.


The incoming dot or dash audio would be re-generated artificially
by a separate audio circuit in the receiver.

QRP advocates claimed they could get on a crowded voice band,
and pump a low power CW signal through at a slow speed
of a few words-per-minute.

This sounds like the "synchronous CW" approach. As you indicate, it
requires extremely careful time-base matching at the sending and
receiving ends.

I do recall reading of some work being done with computer-assisted CW
some years ago. It seems to have lost out in popularity to other
digital modulation modes such as PSK31, which have many of the same
benefits for narrow bandwidth but which don't require
tightly-synchronized clocks.

At the other end of the speed range, are some very-high-speed CW and
digital modes used for things like meteor scatter communications.

Switching Gears -
*********

Does anyone know if the FCC still requires at least 50 RF watts
to legally drive a linear amplifier?

The current standards (Part 97, sections 315 and 317) say:

- Commercially-built amplifiers capable of operating below 144 MHz must
be certificated in order to be sold or modified.

- To be certificated, an external amplifier may not amplify the RF
input signal by more than 15 dB.

- To be certificated, an external amplifier must not amplify signals
between 26 MHz and 28 MHz at all (0 dB gain maximum).

- The above restrictions do not apply to external power amplifiers
which are made by, or modified by, a licensed amateur radio operator
for use at an amateur radio station.

So, yeah, if you want to buy a amplifier which can deliver "legal
limit" power of 1500 watts of HF, you need to plan on driving it with
at least 50 watts or so. If you want a hotter rig, you'll either have
to construct it yourself, modify a commercial amplifier, add an
external intermediate amplifier stage, or cheat.

There was talk that they might change that requirement so that
low power rigs like the Yaesu could drive an amplifier.

Well, low-power rigs *can* drive an external amplifier... just not all
the way up to legal-limit in one step. A 5-watt Yaesu could drive a
15 dB linear amp up to around 150 watts of RF output - this is more
output than most "barefoot" single-box HF rigs are capable of, and is
less likely to accidentally ignite the neighbor's cat than a
legal-limit setup.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:


Wow, thanks everyone for the great reports on
the lttle Yaesu transceiver!

I am contemplating it mainly for its ears.

I wanted to order the optional Collins 300 cycle filter
for CW work, but had hazy memories from 55 years ago
that such filters tended to cause unwanted "ringing"
of the output audio, kinda like a steady loud output "hiss".

When I left Ham Radio in 1955, the QRPp experts were
playing with "active filters" for low power QRP work.

If I remember correctly, such filters would block _all_ the
signal, noise and everything, then open up a 30 cycle "window"
for a brief while when the "start" of a dot or dash
was liable to occur.

The entire mess, transmitter and distant receiver was sync'd with
the WWV time signal, to open and close the receiver's active filters
during automatic CW transmission.


The incoming dot or dash audio would be re-generated artificially
by a separate audio circuit in the receiver.

QRP advocates claimed they could get on a crowded voice band,
and pump a low power CW signal through at a slow speed
of a few words-per-minute.



Switching Gears -
*********

Does anyone know if the FCC still requires at least 50 RF watts
to legally drive a linear amplifier?

There was talk that they might change that requirement so that
low power rigs like the Yaesu could drive an amplifier.

Of course, nothing to stop a ham from building his own
intermediate amplifier, but cleaning up all the harmonics is
a major concern.

Mark

There is an amp made specifically for the FT-817. The Tokyo Hy-Power
HL45B. I use one with my barefoot K3.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , mikea
wrote:

Any advice gratefully appreciated -

I don't have one, though I have the 817's bigger brothers the 857D and
897D.

Two of my friends *do* have 817s, and _LOVE_ them.

Yeah, they are cute little buggers. Here, we are all way beyond
cell-phone range, so a few hams sprinkled around here can do a
lot of good in an emergency.

I will check out the 857D and 897D, just to make sure I have
covered all the bases; thanks for mentioning those models.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

Mark Conrad wrote:

Opinions regarding Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?

The original 817 had a problem with batteries. The off switch did not
actually turn off the power and the finals being able to function
from 1.8mHz to 450 mHz went into oscilation and burned out.

Has this been fixed? The popular fix at the time was to remove the batteries
when the rig was not in use.

The biggest problem with the Yaseu is the tiny screen. The ICOM 703 has a
much larger screen. The 703 only goes up to 6m though.

The 706 does have the same frequency coverage as the Yaseu. You can adjust the
output power down to 5 watts, so it may be a viable option. It also has
a more features than the Yaesu.

If you are using it in a location where size and weight don't matter that
much and nor does the increased battery drain, it may be worth the
money for it so that you have 100 watt HF output if you need it.

The ICOM rigs include a removable front panel, so you can mount them
elsewhere and just have the control head at your operating position.

Looking at Universal radio the current price for a new rig is
$600 for the 817ND, $730 for the 703+ and $945 for the 706IIG.
So you have a big range of price, power and features to choose from.

The Yaesu is the grandson of the FT-290 and simlar rigs, which were
portable VHF/UHF multimode rigs, while the ICOM grew out of shrunken
HF rigs, the Kenwood TS-50 being the first. Surprisingly, Kenwood no
longer has anything to offer in that line.

Geoff.


Thanks for the comprehensive rundown, I will check them all.

Regular telephone service in these mountains of northern CA
is unreliable, quite a few older folks here are in a real pickle
when the phones go out.

That is one of the reasons I decided to reactivate my ham ticket.

Main reason of course is just out-and-out fun :)

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article
, BMJ
wrote:

I use mine mainly for working satellites.

That sounds great, were no satellites when I was active.

Another thing I want to do is to get a quarter-wave antenna
up for the 160 meter band, to shove a ground wave.

I think that would be a vertical about 132 feet high, I had
better check the local FAA/FCC regulations in these mountains,
to see if that is legal for the helicopters that sometimes
cruise this area.

Probably not legal, so better think in terms of a top-loaded
vertical about 60 feet high, voltage-fed at the ground end.

In the old days I shoved a ground-wave 400 miles, from a
10 foot whip antenna on the rear end of a sailboat, with 10 watts.

A decent antenna should do much better.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , Dave Platt
wrote:

Well, low-power rigs *can* drive an external amplifier... just not all
the way up to legal-limit in one step. A 5-watt Yaesu could drive a
15 dB linear amp up to around 150 watts of RF output

Ahh, that is great, 100 watts of RF will keep me happy.

In the old days I had a neighbor whose porch light went on/off
when I was active. I had to crawl under his house and bond the
joints of his water pipes to get rid of his blinking porch light.

Seems to me the upper power limit in those days was 1,000 watts,
but I probably remember it incorrectly.

Thanks for the latest regulations, my 2010 ARRL handbook
has not arrived in the mail yet, due any day now.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:
Seems to me the upper power limit in those days was 1,000 watts,
but I probably remember it incorrectly.

I'm not sure when, but it changed from 1500 Watts input to 1,000 Watts output.

1,000 Watts is a lot of power and may not be of much use, depending upon
what you want to do with it. The difference between 100 watts and 1,000 is
not very much when the band is open and not crowded, in a contest it may be
the difference between making contacts and getting lost in the pileup.

You mentioned you were in the hills of California, if you want something
that is (almost) 100% reliable for an emergency a satellite phone might
be better.

In another thread in an another group, I mentioned the ELT (emergency
locator transmitters) that at one time were sold only for airplanes being
available for hikers, etc. The original poster said they are now down to
around $100 each, which makes them a viable option for your car if you
think you may end up in a ditch with no cell phone coverage and out of the
range of any radios.

Welcome back, btw, you can ask for your old call if it has not be taken
by someone else.

73,

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

Seems to me the upper power limit in those days was 1,000 watts,
but I probably remember it incorrectly.

I'm not sure when, but it changed from 1500 Watts input
to 1,000 Watts output.

Ahh, so _that_ is what it is now, 1000 watts RF _output_ ,
okay.



You mentioned you were in the hills of California, if you want
something that is (almost) 100% reliable for an emergency
a satellite phone might be better.

I used to have one about ten years ago, when a bunch of us
motorcycle riders commonly cruised the scenic mountains
here in northern California, again well beyond cell-phone
range. If one of us bikers got in trouble, it was my job
to call in a chopper.


Beware, OT Rant Coming Up
*****************

My 'cycle license is still valid, but now I have enough
sense to avoid motorcycles. g

For 7 years, I worked as a motorcycle messinger in the
Los Angeles area, never had an accident, except for
one time.

An older gentleman edged onto the freeway from an
on-ramp, going about 20 mph, cutting across all lanes
into the fast lane, where I was going the "legal L.A. speed
limit" of about 85 mph, along with all the other idiots.

I _almost_ managed to keep the bike upright, but
not quite - - - dumped the bike at the last minute with
my leg trapped underneath the heavy bike while it was
sliding to a stop.

Last I saw of the old gentleman, he was still chugging away
in the fast lane at 20 mph. g

I was lucky, a trucker behind me swung his rig broadside
to block the fast lane, until the ambulance arrived to scrape
me off the freeway.

Like with a horse, you have to get right back on again. I was
back on the job in a few months, but very careful to avoid
older car drivers.


What really bothers me is that the youngsters today do not
properly train themselves to ride a motorcycle. I traded in
a new heavy Honda "Valkyrie" model, for an even heavier
Honda "Gold Wing" model, the murdercycle that has
a reverse gear, because it is too heavy to back up by
using your feet, if you are on a slight downgrade.

A youngster bought my "Valkyrie" from the dealer I
sold it to.

Youngster promptly killed himself a few weeks later,
when he lost control of the Valkyrie on a turn.

I really think the laws should be changed, to force the
youngsters to take the $50 3-day course from the MSF.
(Motorcycle Safety Foundation)

MSF will not authorize a motorcycle license unless the
youngster demonstrates competence by passing some
rather stiff riding tests.

End of OT Rant -
*********


Welcome back, btw...

Thanks very much, I should have returned to ham radio
long before now, as it is a great endeavor, in my opinion.

My daddy introduced it to me when I was about ten years old,
it lead to a 34 year career in electronics, working in the
research labs of what then was called Hughes Aircraft,
later to be called Hughes Aerospace.

Many interesting projects during my career, such as
working on the old robot series of spacecraft named
"Surveyor", paving the way for manned spaceflight
to the moon.

Back to beating the bushes, the enjoyable task of deciding
which shiny new rig to purchase :)

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:
In , Dave Platt
wrote:

Well, low-power rigs *can* drive an external amplifier... just not all
the way up to legal-limit in one step. A 5-watt Yaesu could drive a
15 dB linear amp up to around 150 watts of RF output

Ahh, that is great, 100 watts of RF will keep me happy.

In the old days I had a neighbor whose porch light went on/off
when I was active. I had to crawl under his house and bond the
joints of his water pipes to get rid of his blinking porch light.

Seems to me the upper power limit in those days was 1,000 watts,
but I probably remember it incorrectly.

Thanks for the latest regulations, my 2010 ARRL handbook
has not arrived in the mail yet, due any day now.

You'll notice the K3 is the #1 transceiver in every class (depending on
configuration). While it costs twice what the Yaesu does, it can grow
with you. It is made in USA and is the best radio ever made.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Mark Conrad wrote:
Seems to me the upper power limit in those days was 1,000 watts,
but I probably remember it incorrectly.

I'm not sure when, but it changed from 1500 Watts input to 1,000 Watts output.

When cheap Wattmeters became ubiquitous?

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article ,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

Seems to me the upper power limit in those days was 1,000 watts,
but I probably remember it incorrectly.

I'm not sure when, but it changed from 1500 Watts input to 1,000 Watts output.

The current limit on most bands is 1500 watts, Peak Envelope Power
(which is an output-power measurement). It has been quite a while
since the limit was specified in terms of input power to the final
amplifier.

1,000 Watts is a lot of power and may not be of much use, depending upon
what you want to do with it. The difference between 100 watts and 1,000 is
not very much when the band is open and not crowded, in a contest it may be
the difference between making contacts and getting lost in the pileup.

Correct.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , dave
wrote:

You'll notice the K3 is the #1 transceiver in every class (depending on
configuration). While it costs twice what the Yaesu does, it can grow
with you. It is made in USA and is the best radio ever made.

WOW !!! - Thanks, that is one serious rig from elecraft.com

Downloaded their pdf file and drooled over the features and spec's.

Egad, everything seemed so simple, now I have to decide what I
_really_ want in a rig.


You know what this means, I will need to park my carcass in the
parking lot of the nearest Walmart, hold up my cardboard sign
begging for money for Ham Radio gear.

I do free volunteer work for the local hospitals here in N. California,
trying to beat them into submission to adopt faster/better ways of
processing their mountains of paperwork.

Presently, most of them still use chisels and clay tablets
to document their medical procedures.

Only about 10% of USA hospitals take advantage of faster
speech recognition processing of data. (SR for brevity)

As a half-vast user of SR myself, I am used to stomping out
medical data on my Macs and PCs by voice, commonly dictating
complex 600 word medical reports with zero text errors
in four minutes time, wrestling phrases such as:

"perioperative transesophageal echocardiography"


Have to admit though, sometimes my tongue gets wrapped around
my eye-teeth so I can't see what I am saying.


Back on topic -
********

Seems the Elecraft K3/100 HF Transceiver would be ideal for
expediting emergency medical data in case of a national
catastrophe - - - one problem might be that FCC reg's do not
allow encryption of sensitive medical data, if I recall correctly.

I expect in a national emergency that FCC edict would
be quickly waived, allowing common sense to prevail.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

On 2010-03-19, Mark Conrad wrote:

medical data on my Macs and PCs by voice, commonly dictating
complex 600 word medical reports with zero text errors
in four minutes time, wrestling phrases such as:

"perioperative transesophageal echocardiography"

Using what awesome software?

nb

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , notbob
wrote:

medical data on my Macs and PCs by voice, commonly dictating
complex 600 word medical reports with zero text errors
in four minutes time, wrestling phrases such as:

"perioperative transesophageal echocardiography"

Using what awesome software?

Practically any modern SR software.

It is kinda like ham radio, not so much what you have,
but more important is how you use it.

In this case, I used "MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.8" on a 3-year old
MacBook Pro.

Mac has to be one of the newer Intel-based Macs, software
will not run on older Macs.

One can get the same results using "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
- - - the "Pro" version 10.1 - - - which I also run on my
old Mac hardware, using the Vista OS from Microsoft.

About the only modern speech software that is difficult to
achieve such accuracy and speed is "Windows Speech Recognition",
(WSR) - which comes free with both Vista and Windows-7 OS.


SR is a very inexact science at the present time, best estimates are
that it will take another 20 years before it is anywhere near as good
as a human, when it comes to converting speech to text.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/a...ml?printable=1


Scroll to near the end of the above website, to this sub-section:

"Building HAL 's Language Knowledge Base"

Read all the way to the end, that will give you a good idea
what our children will be doing with SR 20 years from now.



BTW, Nuance (Dragon) recently bought MacSpeech, so they are
all one company now.


A typical newbie SR user will be lucky to get 70% accuracy.

As he gains experience, that will edge up to about 98%.

In restricted speech like medical, where the same phrases like
"perioperative transesophageal echocardiography" are used
over and over again, the raw accuracy will edge up to 99%.

....or in my case 100%, in 3 out of 4 tries on that 600 word
example - - - the bad "4th" try is invariably my fault,
for mis-pronouncing one of the 600 words.


Too much time way OT, but I gave you a decent answer
to your question.

My post immediately following this will show the entire text
of my medical dictation, with 100% raw accuracy, no correction
required, total dictation time 240 seconds.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:
In . com, dave
wrote:

You'll notice the K3 is the #1 transceiver in every class (depending on
configuration). While it costs twice what the Yaesu does, it can grow
with you. It is made in USA and is the best radio ever made.

WOW !!! - Thanks, that is one serious rig from elecraft.com

Downloaded their pdf file and drooled over the features and spec's.

Egad, everything seemed so simple, now I have to decide what I
_really_ want in a rig.


You know what this means, I will need to park my carcass in the
parking lot of the nearest Walmart, hold up my cardboard sign
begging for money for Ham Radio gear.

I do free volunteer work for the local hospitals here in N. California,
trying to beat them into submission to adopt faster/better ways of
processing their mountains of paperwork.

Presently, most of them still use chisels and clay tablets
to document their medical procedures.

Only about 10% of USA hospitals take advantage of faster
speech recognition processing of data. (SR for brevity)

As a half-vast user of SR myself, I am used to stomping out
medical data on my Macs and PCs by voice, commonly dictating
complex 600 word medical reports with zero text errors
in four minutes time, wrestling phrases such as:

"perioperative transesophageal echocardiography"


Have to admit though, sometimes my tongue gets wrapped around
my eye-teeth so I can't see what I am saying.


Back on topic -
********

Seems the Elecraft K3/100 HF Transceiver would be ideal for
expediting emergency medical data in case of a national
catastrophe - - - one problem might be that FCC reg's do not
allow encryption of sensitive medical data, if I recall correctly.

I expect in a national emergency that FCC edict would
be quickly waived, allowing common sense to prevail.

Mark

This may be my last solar max (at least without drooling ;-) I figured
my heirs want their dad to have the very best.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , dave
wrote:

Seems the Elecraft K3/100 HF Transceiver would be ideal for
expediting emergency medical data in case of a national
catastrophe - - - one problem might be that FCC reg's do not
allow encryption of sensitive medical data, if I recall correctly.

I expect in a national emergency that FCC edict would
be quickly waived, allowing common sense to prevail.

Mark

This may be my last solar max (at least without drooling ;-)
I figured my heirs want their dad to have the very best.

Go for it !

As soon as win the lottery, I am going to do the same.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

On Mar 19, 2:42*am, Mark Conrad wrote:
*Opinions regarding *Yaesu FT-817ND * transceiver?

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I haven't got a '817... I instead opted for its 100W cousin, the
'897D. The catch with all of these more modern "all-band" radios
though, is the high level of integration. While it does shrink the
size, it does mean the radio is more complex -- and thus repairs will
be more expensive and difficult.

In my case, I'm waiting to hear from the insurance company about
whether they'll cover the replacement of my set following lightning
damage that took out a few diodes in the power section, fried the
microphone preamp and finally nuked a DDS chip responsible for
generating the carrier sidetone. The end result is a radio that at
first, would not run off external power (this has been fixed), won't
demodulate SSB (sounds like an AM receiver with the volume turned
down), won't transmit AM/SSB/CW, and won't modulate a FM carrier. Due
to the usage of multi-layer PCBs, it's impossible to fix tracks that
may be damaged within the layers of the PCB... and the DDS chip in
question is no longer manufactured or supported. In short, a write-
off.

The lightning struck a tree in the neighbour's back yard, the
resulting earth potential rise caused the above damage, as well as
cooking some network equipment in our house, another neighbour's
computer, and several electrical goods within the property where the
strike occurred. So the old wisdom of unplugging everything is
especially true for the modern rigs -- not just the antenna, but
station earth and power as well!

Apart from this, they are great radios. Mine was brilliant, and I
hope to get it replaced at some stage. Interestingly, on 2m SSB, I
find my FT-290R II (with 25W linear) outperforms it on occasions, but
given the capabilities of the '897, it's worth the money. I dare say
the '817 is in much the same league, and are very popular amongst
microwave enthusiasts as they are all-mode and low-enough power to not
fry the backside out of transverters.

Regards,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article
,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I haven't got a '817... I instead opted for its 100W cousin, the
'897D. The catch with all of these more modern "all-band" radios
though, is the high level of integration. While it does shrink the
size, it does mean the radio is more complex -- and thus repairs will
be more expensive and difficult.

Thanks for your comprehensive post on "all band" radios.

Sorry about the lightning frying your expensive rig; here I have
the same problems with lightning, came to the same conclusion
as you did, namely completely unplug _ALL_ leads to my rig.



I have not yet decided which way to jump as regards buying
a rig after my long 55 year absence from ham radio:

1) Completely portable (ordinary alkaline battery powered)
very low powered rig such as the Yaesu FT-817ND

2) Larger 100 watt mobile rig such as the Elecraft K3
or the Yaesu 897D

The Yaesu 897D certainly has impressive spec's


Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

With the Elecraft, I lose the mobile capability, however
Elecraft advocates are very impressed with that fine rig.

Decisions, decisions... g

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article ,
Mark Conrad wrote:

Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

The Elecraft K3 seems to have one of the best RF front ends currently
available on an amateur radio. It does extremely well at pulling in a
weak signal, when there are very strong signals on nearby frequencies.
If you're into contesting, DX, or Field Day competition, this looks
like radio to have.

For what's worth - the FD-857D is almost the same as the FT-897D in
most respects - just in a smaller package. These two radios give you
2-meter and 440 capability, in addition to HF and 6 meters.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote in :

I have not yet decided which way to jump as regards buying
a rig after my long 55 year absence from ham radio:

1) Completely portable (ordinary alkaline battery powered)
very low powered rig such as the Yaesu FT-817ND

2) Larger 100 watt mobile rig such as the Elecraft K3
or the Yaesu 897D

The 897 will accommodate two battery packs and (or is it _or_?) a built-in
power supply. They're on my purchase list -- after we get the tax refund or
when I win the lottery.

The Yaesu 897D certainly has impressive spec's

Enough so that I have, and use, two of them. In their price class, they are
very impressive radios. I just swapped my Yaesu FT-450AT for one yesterday,
and that rig got K7SDW on 20 m with 10W output CW yesterday afternoon,
first crack off the bat.

Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

I suspect that the K3 is, overall, the better radio, though it doesn't do
70 cm. At least it doesn't do 70 cm _yet_; I suspect a 70cm transverter
board is in the works, though I have no hard info on that. I'll get one
when I win the lottery.

With the Elecraft, I lose the mobile capability, however
Elecraft advocates are very impressed with that fine rig.

I've certainly read rave reviews on the K3. Acquisition is dependent on
coming into a sizeable bolus of cash, though. I'd also like to have a
Flex 5000 to play with, and an Icom 7[678]00, and a KW TS-2000, and a
Yaesu FT-2000, and some W-J or Cubic receivers, and ... .

Decisions, decisions... g

Yeah, but not the kind that hurt.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO

Tired old sysadmin

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

On Mar 21, 3:45*am, Mark Conrad wrote:
Thanks for your comprehensive post on "all band" radios.

Sorry about the lightning frying your expensive rig; *here I have
the same problems with lightning, came to the same conclusion
as you did, namely completely unplug * _ALL_ * leads to my rig.

He he... yeah... I've gone one step further -- using solar and
batteries to power my radios now. So that's one less bit of wire that
lightning can come in on. The experience has taught me the diligence
to unplug the rest.

Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D *as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

With the Elecraft, I lose the mobile capability, however
Elecraft advocates are very impressed with that fine rig.

Decisions, decisions... * *g

Indeed. I haven't looked at any of the Elecraft radios, my decision
was between the Icom IC-706MkII G, the Yaesu FT-857D and Yaesu
FT-897D. I wound up going for the latter because above all, I wanted
a radio that I could take with me portable, or stick in the rear
basket/luggage rack on my bike for bicycle mobile operation.

I rejected the Icom in the end on two grounds:
(1) Having used one during last year's JOTA... I found it difficult to
access what I considered, very rudimentary controls. I found its
menus awkward to use. I dare say it'd be better if I had the time to
read the manual more carefully, but that was my experience.
(2) Its small size meant it could not efficiently dissipate heat.
This meant the radio was prone to overheating problems. (I suspect
the FT857 would suffer this too.)

The '897 had two nice features: I could embed two batteries inside
with a combined 9Ah capacity, and there were two auto-tuners on the
market that could bolt onto the side. So I'd be able to pick up one
unit, and have almost a complete radio station -- just add antenna and
microphone. For the antenna, a squid pole works nicely, can be set up
almost anywhere and is lightweight. A dipole is also pretty easy to
carry and set up. So for a portable rig, the '897 was ideal.

My only gripe is that Yaesu for some reason decided that it would use
NiMH cells in its battery packs... Li-ion would have been lighter and
higher density. Heaven forbid, gel-cell batteries would do better
than NiMH! But that's the choice they went with, and we all have to
live with it.

I think the real questions a
(1) How often are you going to use it portable/mobile? (For me, I'd
was using my '897D portable at least once a week... and when my
handheld died -- I was using it mobile daily -- even on public
transport.)
(2) What bands are you likely to use? The K3 offers up to 6m with a
2m option, the '897D offers up to 70cm as standard. (I use 2m a _lot_)

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article
,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

I think the real questions a
(1) How often are you going to use it portable/mobile? (For me, I'd
was using my '897D portable at least once a week... and when my
handheld died -- I was using it mobile daily -- even on public
transport.)
(2) What bands are you likely to use? The K3 offers up to 6m with a
2m option, the '897D offers up to 70cm as standard. (I use 2m a _lot_)

I agree that we have to try to anticipate our needs.

The all-in-one rigs offer *so* many great features that it is
downright befuddling trying to take advantage of all the features,
in one lifetime.


In the end, emotions and expectations affect a lot of us when it
comes to these purchases, rather than hard facts.


However, I *will* say that rig performance in a crowded band
can reveal a lot about the quality of one rig versus another.

That is why I have an emotional attachment to QRP rigs,
particularly CW QRP rigs, using exotic methods to fish out very
weak signals in a crowded environment. Fun, fun, fun.


I expect it is a lot more difficult to fish out a weak SSB signal. g

Wonder if any hams are experimenting with liquid nitrogen cooled
RF front ends to their rigs, to reduce thermal noise.



Getting back to reality for a moment, I have almost decided to base
my personal choice on whatever rig has the best receiver for weak
CW signals, in a crowded band.

If all rigs are essentially equal in this respect, then I get to
consider _other_ aspects of their performance.


If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

(assuming of course diversity antennas to minimize fading)

Playing with CW is just a personal choice, in my case.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote in :

Wonder if any hams are experimenting with liquid nitrogen cooled
RF front ends to their rigs, to reduce thermal noise.

With the high background noise floor already present on Earth, would he
few tenths of a dB or so of thermal noise reduction from cryocooling
make any perceptible or significant difference? Above HFis a different
story, I think, but the noise floor on HF -- at least around here -- is
really rottenly high.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO

Tired old sysadmin

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , mikea
wrote:

With the high background noise floor already present on Earth, would he
few tenths of a dB or so of thermal noise reduction from cryocooling
make any perceptible or significant difference? Above HFis a different
story, I think, but the noise floor on HF -- at least around here -- is
really rottenly high.

Yeah, guess you are correct, not to even mention the RF
coming in from the cosmos, let alone man-made RF.

Okay, time to break out my next hare-brained idea,
short million-watt pulses, bounced off all the space junk
we have floating around.

Lemme see, one-watt input, pulse length a billionth of
a second, one thousand pulses per second.

Hmm, where is the FCCs phone number, now all we have to
decide on is what frequency to use. Very low infrared band not
being used for anything right now, I could mount an infrared
window in my roof, and let a Yaesu modulated laser handle the rest.


Now ya see what happens when an old ham is away from his ARRL
handbook for 55 years.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

My only gripe is that Yaesu for some reason decided that it would use
NiMH cells in its battery packs... Li-ion would have been lighter and
higher density. Heaven forbid, gel-cell batteries would do better
than NiMH! But that's the choice they went with, and we all have to
live with it.

It's because lithium cells are a disaster waiting to happen. If you charge
them improperly they will catch fire. If you discharge them to "empty" they
are permanently dead.

They also die after around 300 charge cycles. ANY power put in is a charge
cycle, so laptops made in the last couple of years will no longer "float"
a lithium battery. They let it discharge to at least 95% left before
recharging it.

The latest NiMH batteries will go through 1000 cycles. Compared to litium
batteries they are bulletproof. They are also a lot cheaper.

The main reason they are so common is that people don't understand their
problems and like them because they are so light in comparison to
NiMH cells. The lightness disapears when you find out a 450mAH battery will
be trash if you use it anywhere near that amount.

BTW, they are dangerous corosive trash, much worse than NiMH cells.

Companies like them because they can claim the device has a long battery
life, low weight and in 6 months to a year be back buying a new battery.
Since the battery is proprietary at best and permanently installed at worst
it's a win win for them either way.

The bigest problem I have with NiMH batteries is that they no longer sell
large size batteries to the general public. Yes you can get real C or D cells
from battery specialists (which are rare here), but generally all you can get
is AA batteries or C or D cells which are just sleeved AA cells (with the
corresponding capacity).

I would not mind if I could get the sleeves, but no one carries them here. :-(

After all, in my 290RII which takes a lot of C cells, sleeved AA batteries
with 2700mAh capacity would far out last the NiCad ones I had in it.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:


If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

dave wrote:

That would be the K3.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

Maybe forehead above, but certainly not head and shoulders. One receiver test
does not make a radio and many people prefer the Ten-Tec to the K3.

It's a matter of taste, ergonomics and what you want to do with the radio.
If you like full QSK, the older Ten-Tec and Drake rigs with their almost
noiseless receviers, exact PTO tuning, and "good sound" are more
comfortable in a relatively empty band.

Being able to extract that one weak signal in a pile-up is a different matter,
but many people don't care to. I would not want to spend an entire afternoon
listening to a 250Hz filter, no matter what it was made of (crystal, mechaincal,
digital, etc). Someone else might.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:


If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

(assuming of course diversity antennas to minimize fading)

Playing with CW is just a personal choice, in my case.

Mark

That would be the K3.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , dave
wrote:

If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

(assuming of course diversity antennas to minimize fading)

Playing with CW is just a personal choice, in my case.

Mark

That would be the K3.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html


I must admit, I was overwhelmed by the technical
terms in that website.

Are there any books that explain the practical
significance of those terms as applied to rating
one rig higher than another rig for a particular
purpose or use?

I somehow doubt if the ARRL handbook will go into
enough detail about those terms.


I realize that all-in-one rigs are a compromise,
some manufacturers favor one use over another.


Imagine the extreme difficulty of building a rig from
scratch, trying to build one that has all the features of
a commercial rig.

What surprises me is that all the commercial names that
I recognize from 55 years ago are still in business. g

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

Mark Conrad mused...
If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

If you like full QSK, the older Ten-Tec

Good Grief, do they still sell the Ten-Tec, I used to own one
in the old days, a nice little full break-in rig.


Being able to extract that one weak signal in a pile-up is a
different matter, but many people don't care to. I would
not want to spend an entire afternoon listening to a
250Hz filter, no matter what it was made of (crystal,
mechaincal, digital, etc). Someone else might.

What! - watch it, that would be heaven for me ;-)

Of course I would demand a few modern touches, such as
automatically generating morse code by first speaking
into a microphone and converting my voice to text,
(very easy to do, BTW, using modern
speech recognition software, like "MacSpeech"
for the Mac, or "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
on a Windows computer)
- then feeding that text into a device that would change
the text into morse code and store it temporarily in
a computer buffer - - - to be dumped into the xmtr
at a touch of a button for morse-code transmission
to the distant station.

I fantasize about finding a device that will change
morse code into text, because modern computers
can easily change text to an artificial voice,
which nowadays sounds exactly like a real person.

Perhaps the very high speed "burst" guys (RTTY?)
know of such a device.

As regards listening to the high-pitched hiss of a
narrow CW filter, seems to me in the old days that I
kinda got around that by first using a somewhat wider
filter, like 500Hz, then shutting off my receivers
BFO entirely. (is shutting off the BFO still possible
on modern CW rigs?)

Then I would fire up a small independent BFO I kept
on the table next to my rig, to generate the necessary
audio signal for my ears.

The independent BFO was extremely weak by design,
so that any strong CW signal next to the weak one
was reduced to the same weak audio.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:

Good Grief, do they still sell the Ten-Tec, I used to own one
in the old days, a nice little full break-in rig.

Ten-Tec is alive and well, still selling ham rigs. Their current top of the line
the Orion II is as good as or better than the K3, depending upon whom you ask.
I've never used either, so I am not one to ask. :-)

Their older rigs still work, Ten-Tec still fixes them when they can, and
just recently stopped selling the manuals and now has them online for free
download.

There may be some changes coming, the head of the ham radio division just
left. He bought Vibroplex, is moving the company to where he lives and will
run it. There were some joint Ten-Tec Vibroplex projects in the past if I
remember correctly, maybe there will be more.



Being able to extract that one weak signal in a pile-up is a
different matter, but many people don't care to. I would
not want to spend an entire afternoon listening to a
250Hz filter, no matter what it was made of (crystal,
mechaincal, digital, etc). Someone else might.

What! - watch it, that would be heaven for me ;-)


How long has it been since you've been on the air? It may not be as wonderful
as your memories. If it is, good there are plenty of rigs with filters like
that out there for you to buy. There are also DSP audio filters to add on
as you please.



Of course I would demand a few modern touches, such as
automatically generating morse code by first speaking
into a microphone and converting my voice to text,
(very easy to do, BTW, using modern
speech recognition software, like "MacSpeech"
for the Mac, or "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
on a Windows computer)
- then feeding that text into a device that would change
the text into morse code and store it temporarily in
a computer buffer - - - to be dumped into the xmtr
at a touch of a button for morse-code transmission
to the distant station.


Sure but why? Why not just use SSB.



I fantasize about finding a device that will change
morse code into text, because modern computers
can easily change text to an artificial voice,
which nowadays sounds exactly like a real person.

My AEA Morse Machine 3 did that, I expect there are programs around to do that.
Come to think of it so did my PK-232. My guess is that there are a lot of
people out there using such devices (keyboards to morse and morse to ascii)
than you would think. It's easy to tell the spacing and timing is too perfect.

As regards listening to the high-pitched hiss of a
narrow CW filter, seems to me in the old days that I
kinda got around that by first using a somewhat wider
filter, like 500Hz, then shutting off my receivers
BFO entirely. (is shutting off the BFO still possible
on modern CW rigs?)

What is a BFO? Seriously, the high end rigs don't use them. They detect CW
using the product detector (SSB) or some similar method.

If that's what you want there are still a lot of older rigs out there,
lovingly maintained and updated.

There are yahoo lists for Yaseu (fox-tango) and other lists for ten-tec and
drake. You should be able to find someone with the exact rig you want if that's
what turns you on.

BTW, there is no law that limits the amount of radios you own, and since
you are in the US, you don't have to register them when you buy them and
notify the authorities that you sold them. You don't even need a license to
buy them so you can scrounge around, buy an older rig (or a new one if you
want) and start out by listening.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

On Sat, 20 Mar 2010, Mark Conrad wrote:


Now ya see what happens when an old ham is away from his ARRL
handbook for 55 years.

If you know about Ten-Tec, and coherent CW, then it hasn't been 55 years.

Ten-Tec started in '68 or '69.

Coherent CW didn't arrive till the early seventies.

Michael VE2BVW

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

Mark Conrad wrote:
Good Grief, do they still sell the Ten-Tec, I used to own one
in the old days, a nice little full break-in rig.

Ten-Tec is alive and well, still selling ham rigs. Their current
top of the line the Orion II is as good as or better than the K3,
depending upon whom you ask. I've never used either,
so I am not one to ask. :-)

Okay, then that is yet another rig for me to check out.



How long has it been since you've been on the air? It may not
be as wonderful as your memories.

I am guessing at 55 years, and as you state memory is a very
fickle thing, often wrong. I had two licenses, both extra class
over a period of years, after I let one of those licenses lapse.

I am not certain of the call sign, I think it was W6IXC, but the
other I am _certain_ was W6TAM because one of my friends
suggested that meant "Terrified Ancient Mariner" after my
sailboat exploits offshore the California coast in various small
sailboats ranging in size between an 8 foot "sabot" to a 27 foot
"Ericson" sailboat.



Of course I would demand a few modern touches, such as
automatically generating morse code by first speaking
into a microphone and converting my voice to text,
(very easy to do, BTW, using modern
speech recognition software, like "MacSpeech"
for the Mac, or "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
on a Windows computer)
- then feeding that text into a device that would change
the text into morse code and store it temporarily in
a computer buffer - - - to be dumped into the xmtr
at a touch of a button for morse-code transmission
to the distant station.


Sure but why? Why not just use SSB.

No rational reason, there is no accounting for why some
people prefer to do things the hard way. ;-)



I fantasize about finding a device that will change
morse code into text, because modern computers
can easily change text to an artificial voice,
which nowadays sounds exactly like a real person.

My guess is that there are a lot of people out there using
such devices (keyboards to morse and morse to ascii)
than you would think.
It's easy to tell, the spacing and timing is too perfect.

Hmm, I suspect I did not get across my exact meaning,
my fault, sorry about that.

I _meant_ a device that will change the _incoming_
morse code dots and dashes to an artificial voice.

In other words, change this code at 60 wpm:

_ _ . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _


....into this artificial voice from an audio speaker:

"Best Wishes, Old Man"


....such that a ham newbie who did not even know the
morse code would be able to listen to a CW signal
rattling along at 60 wpm and have that signal
converted to speech that he could understand.

In theory it is possible, given a loud clean
CW signal.

I would hate to be the guy to design such a device,
it would not be a trivial project.



What is a BFO? Seriously, the high end rigs don't use
them. They detect CW using the product detector (SSB)
or some similar method.

Well that shows how behind the times I am. Heck, I still
think in terms of vacuum tubes (Fleming valves?)

The below website considers the ancient BFO technology,
explains it in words even a senile old ham like me
can understand:

http://www.tpub.com/neets/book12/51.htm





Consider using a very weak RF Beat Frequency Oscillator
(BFO) to discriminate between four very close CW
signals, such as:

7,250,500 Hz (desired signal)
7,250,520 Hz (interfering signal #1)
7,249,500 Hz (interfering signal #2)
7,249,520 Hz (interfering signal #3)

A very weak, very stable, tunable BFO can create a local
RF signal at a frequency of say 7,250,000 Hz

Two resulting audio "beat frequecies" result, assuming
a ham can "turn off" the regular BFO or "product detector"
that usually creates the audio coming out of the speaker:

1) 500 Hz
2) 520 Hz

Heh, I am in deep doo-doo, so I shift my local RF BFO
to a slightly different frequency of 7,251,000 Hz

Four resulting audio "beat frequencies" result:

1) 500 Hz (desired signal)
2) 480 Hz (interfering signal #1)
3) 1500 Hz (interfering signal #2)
4) 1480 Hz (interfering signal #3)


An audio filter should be able to separate the
desired 500 Hz audio from the 480 Hz audio,
I hope.


Anyone have any experience with those audio
filters for a CW signal? I never used one,
do they really work?



BTW, there is no law that limits the amount of
radios you own, and since you are in the US,
you don't have to register them when you buy them
and notify the authorities that you sold them.
You don't even need a license to buy them...

Good Grief, are those restrictions common in a lot
of countries?

USA will likely become that way also, if our present
political ding-ding gets his way to turn this country
into a socialist paradise, with Big Brother taking care
of all our problems from cradle to grave. [sic]

I am so old I can remember when the people ran the USA,
now the politicians are busy taking away a lot of our
freedoms, one by one, and they have no intention of
ever returning control to the people.

Mark

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

Mark Conrad wrote:

Hmm, I suspect I did not get across my exact meaning,
my fault, sorry about that.

I _meant_ a device that will change the _incoming_
morse code dots and dashes to an artificial voice.


No, I got that. My AEA MM3 could do that, and so could my Pk-232. I still
have the MM3, I traded the PK-232 to someone who had better use for it
when I moved here in 1996.

In other words, change this code at 60 wpm:

_ _ . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _


...into this artificial voice from an audio speaker:

"Best Wishes, Old Man"


...such that a ham newbie who did not even know the
morse code would be able to listen to a CW signal
rattling along at 60 wpm and have that signal
converted to speech that he could understand.

In theory it is possible, given a loud clean
CW signal.

I would hate to be the guy to design such a device,
it would not be a trivial project.

Actually it is quite trivial. There is lots of digital decoding software
for the PC out there and morse code is one of the simplest forms of
digital encoding. Since probably 99% of all high speed code is machine
generated, either by computer or keyer, it's uniform enough to be
easily decoded.

There is basicly 3 levels of code out there, the slow hand code which ranges
from really well done to almost impossible to copy sloppy, the mid range
keyer code and bug code where the individual characters are perfectly spaced,
but the spacing between them varies as the operater has to think between
them and the computer sent buffered code, where all of the thinking is
done before the send button is pushed, so it all comes out perfectly timed
and spaced.

The last two really are trivial to decode compared to any digital mode,
and the first ranges from easy to almost impossible.

A few years ago, it was theorized that one of the highest scoring stations
in a CW contest was exactly what you asked about. A ham who could barely
copy code using a decoding and sending program. It extracted the
callsign from the received code and replied with a signal report of 599
in perfectly sent perfectly spaced machine generated code.

A web search on "morse code decoding programs" found plenty, and
this is probably the cheapest device on the market:

http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Produc...ductid=MFJ-461

73,

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Opinions about Yaesu FT-817ND transceiver?
 

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

I would hate to be the guy to design such a device,
it would not be a trivial project.

Actually it is quite trivial. There is lots of digital decoding software
for the PC out there and morse code is one of the simplest forms of
digital encoding. Since probably 99% of all high speed code is machine
generated, either by computer or keyer, it's uniform enough to be
easily decoded.
A web search on "morse code decoding programs" found plenty, and
this is probably the cheapest device on the market:

http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Produc...ductid=MFJ-461


Great, I will also search the web for others, as you suggested.

I can see I have quite a lot to catch up on. With any luck,
my books should arrive today at my rural post office.

Really looking forward to getting back, only hope my
ancient brain is up to the task.

Most of my neurons have mutated into morons,
my synapses have not snapped in ages. My brain has
shrunk so much that I am afraid to shake my head,
for fear of hearing a rattling noise.

Mark