The Digimode-4 arrived

The Digimode 4  from XGGComms arrived yesterday.

 

The size is good. It did however take me a few hours to completely comprehend some of what I needed to know to make it work with the IC706Mk2G.

The two killers in getting it going were quite simply: 

- It needs RTS for PTT. The CAT control will not do PTT. Use RTS. Period. 

- VSEND. It's an option in the setup menu (Turn off radio, hold Lock, press on, go to menu item 30). It needs to be set to OFF.  The IC706Mk2G has separate PTT pins for HF and V/UHF on the 13 pin DIN accessory port. Setting this to off links all PTT to the H-send pin. 

I was sent up the garden path with WSJT-X initially as it complained about me going near RTS. It wasn't until I grabbed the trial version of Ham Radio Deluxe that I worked out this was actually a thing. Then I was able to go back and configure it. Cool.

So, I spent a lot of time futzing around trying to get it to work. Now, it works. 

That was a learning event.

The audio interfaces are firstly far superior to the inbuilt sound card. The levels are higher and definitely need some adjusting. 

Windows behaved well with the additional audio interface, and I'm able to tell the various applications what audio devices to use. 

I was surprised that I was able to see quite a lot of traffic via the dipole, and managed to pull of a DX to the US on 40m without much drama.

I also learned some other things:

- The ATU-100 is a pain when it gets flat, which will happen quickly when one is playing around trying to make a setup like this work. It tends to turn off and on. The SWR on the dipole @ 40m isn't great.. the ATU needs to be on. 

- I need to get some toroids for the IC706. If I have both radios on together they seem to interfere with each other regardless of the band when I TX on one. I expected this to occur only on the same band in close proximity to the TX frequency.. and maybe its harmonics. Nothing quite like what I am seeing.

- The IC706 is definitely not as power efficient as the G90. When the G90 transmits, I barely see the meter move on the power supply. When the IC706 does a TX, a blind man could see it move. That said, over half the scale is 0-10A. The rest is the next 20A. I probably should get a separate power/SWR meter and put it inline on there to confirm what is coming out of the radio.. just to double check the readings from the ATU-100.

- Having the waterfalls of both radios and their antennas on the same band can be interesting just to see what one is seeing that the other isn't.

In other pointless news, the new X200A seems to be doing OK so far. I briefly heard a VHF net on a repeater about 100km away with a solid S9 signal. I didn't jump on as family commitments needed my attention, but I was otherwise happy with that. I need to explore this further.