13 March 2024

Thinking Outside The Box

Pet peeve time.

Ham radio is in love with the go-box. You can't attend a hamfest or club meeting without seeing presentations on, or hearing discussions about, go-boxes; what goes in them, how they are built, how to power them, how to connect to them, etc. Suffice to say, ham radio is go-box batty. Proof? Just Google 'ham radio go box'. 

The go-box concept is good, but it can be limiting in both capabilities and scope. Just the mindset that all your capability has to fit into a single box, and if it doesn't fit, then you don't need it, is a silly way to approach a problem. 

I haven't seen too many go-boxes that were built to meet a specific mission or requirement. For example, I once asked a person demonstrating his go-box why he included a VHF packet modem. He admitted there wasn't a clear need for it - it was there 'just in case'. This in a region that hasn't seen any public service related packet activity for over 15 years.

I don't want to disparage the concept of the go-box, but the 'box' mentality and the lack of a requirements-based approach seems to lead to a lot of implementations that look like solutions in search of a problem.

Let's think beyond the go-box and instead think about the concept of a mission-focused communications hub or, as we used to call them in the Army, a 'comms center'. A comms center is just a place - a table, a room, a shelter, a tent. Heck, it can be the tailgate of a pickup truck. But it is the place at which you build out a communications hub in support of an event or incident, and build it out tailored to the mission requirements.

A comm center can be anywhere, even in a sandbagged bunker

I use the term 'mission focus' a lot, and it really is the key to the comms center concept. You build capability to meet a specified mission. Let's use a county-level ARES group as an example. Do a mission analysis and ask yourself (and your EMA) these questions: 

  • What are your served agencies? 
  • What are the missions of these served agencies? 
  • What communications capabilities do they need to meet their missions? 
  • What are their organic communications capabilities?  
  • What are they lacking? 
The answer to 'What are they lacking?' is what should drive your mission focus. Once you identify and understand that gap, and build capabilities to close it, you are on the path to establishing a formal comms center.

The comms center concept is also fluid. In the Army, I've been in situations where the comms center started out as just a single VHF radio mounted in a truck, a map board and a message log. Over time it morphed into a dedicated shelter with multi-channel voice and digital HF and VHF capabilities, a landline switchboard and a SATCOM link. What all this gear wasn't, was stuffed into a single box. That was impractical and unwieldly; each communications system required more elbow room than a boxed enclosure could offer.

Far-fetched for a civilian operation? Not at all. With growing reliance on systems like Winlink and other HF-based digital tools like JS8CALL, Fldigi, VarAC, and use of internet-linked VHF voice and data modes like DSTAR, C4FM, DMR and Echolink, the technology stack in a civilian comms center can easily match that found in military units. And let's not forget the vulnerability of terrestrial-based internet. There's a reason a Starlink package is a standard part of many civilian communications centers.

But a comms center isn't really about comms equipment. The job of the comms center is moving information, and the synchronization of communications across systems, agencies and departments. With this in mind, a comms center's key functions include:

  • Establishing and maintaining communications support as directed by the event director, incident commander or incident communications leader
  • Maintaining the event/incident radio log
  • Conducting an overall 'radio watch'; ensuring all comms systems are up, operating and proactively monitored
  • Interfacing communications systems. For example, establishing radio-wire interfaces, making sure information received via radio is 'hopped' to the appropriate systems like WebEOC, internal chat systems, status boards, etc.
  • On-boarding new personnel, departments or agencies that show up to support the incident, making sure their organic communications systems are integrated into the communications architecture
  • Radio set-up and programming
  • Troubleshooting communications issues
So... while a go-box can serve as a component of a comms center, it should never be considered an all-encompassing solution. For this reason I'm not a big fan of the 'box' solution. It seems to impose conceptual restrictions, trying to force the mission requirements to fit the box, not the other way around.

So let's stop focusing on go-boxes and instead focus on flexible, mission focused comms centers. Start thinking outside the box.

W8BYH out

03 March 2024

A Small KX2 Upgrade

I continue to be impressed by Elecraft and their long-term support for products that other manufacturers would consider 'end-of-life' and not worth investing time or effort on. Case in point is the KX2, introduced in 2016. While eight years isn't really that long for an amateur radio to be in production, it is unusual for a radio to see firmware improvements and factory hardware upgrades this far into its production life. Yet 'obsolete' and 'end of life' don't seem to be in the Elecraft vocabulary; they continue to provide support for rigs that have been out of production for years. There are no orphans in the Elecraft line-up.

Case in point with the KX2 is the recent release of the KXIBC2 internal battery charger board. The KXIBC2 replaces the internal clock board and adds the ability to charge a factory Li-ion battery inside the rig and provides a real-time clock. This is a big improvement, and addresses one of the major complaints many have of the KX2. As designed, the battery pack had to be charged outside of the rig - open the radio and remove the battery, plug it into a charger, when fully charged re-install it in the radio. Elecraft originally designed the radio this way because back in 2015, when the design was finalized, Li-ion charging technology wasn't what it is today, and Elecraft thought it was smarter and safer to require charging outside the radio. Nine years on, Elecraft figured out a power management system that allows the Li-ion pack to be charged safely while inside the radio. The KXIBC2 board is available as a factory option, or a user installed kit.

The kit arrived a week ago, and yesterday I decided it was time to dive in and do the upgrade. In typical Elecraft fashion, the installation instructions are well thought out and easy to follow. It's a simple matter of pulling out the old clock board, popping in the new charger board, soldering two jumpers to the main board and adjusting the radio settings to recognize the new board. In my case I needed to do a firmware update (v3.00 to v3.02). 

The KXIBC2 board installed (right side of the picture. It replaces to old real-time clock 
board, but provides a charge controller plus real-time clock. The red and white pins
will be soldered to the main board. The large open space will be taken up by the Li-ion battery

The KXIBC2 board seen from the 'outboard' side

Jumper wires soldered in place on the main board

Battery pack in place, time to test. The LED on the charger board is a steady
yellow, so the battery is charging and all's good!

A quick firmware update brings everything up to snuff

The little rig is merrily charging away, getting ready for the next radio adventure!

There you have it. A dandy little rig made even better, courtesy of a company that actually listens to and engages with its customers.

W8BYH out

04 February 2024

So Close, Yet Still Oh So Far

I got bored yesterday and decided to put together yet another one of my ham radio transceiver evaluation spreadsheets. This time I wanted to evaluate QRP and 100 watt HF rigs against the same criteria, but not have them compete in the same space. So I decided to take a look at 100 watt rigs and QRP rigs separately.

My evaluation criteria change around the margins from year-to-year, but there are always a core set of requirements I'm looking for. These are MY requirements, the features and capabilities that matter to me. I also only evaluate rigs I've got personal experience with, or rigs that have caught my eye. For example, as kind of a toss-in to see where the market is today I decided to add the new(ish) Yaesu FT-710 to the evaluation. I have no personal experience with the rig, other than about a 15 minute test session at my local HRO showroom, but felt it deserved to be evaluated against some of its older siblings like the FT-897 and the FT-891.

Some of the radios I evaluate are out of production, so their scores really are not relevant to anyone other than me. But, since they are in my radio arsenal, I figured they would serve a useful purpose to highlight how far current rigs have (or have not) improved in terms of features and capabilities.

Let's talk briefly about the evaluation criteria. As I said, these are features that matter to ME. However, I know from talking to a lot of hams that like to operate outdoors that many of you are interested in these features, too. I also weight the evaluation criteria. For example, I consider the a built-in sound card interface to be critically important, so I give it an evaluation weight of 3, as opposed to having back-lit buttons, which only gets an evaluation weight of 1. While I think back-lit buttons are important, I consider a built-in sound card interface to be three times as important. 

Let's review some of the criteria:

  • Built in panadapter. This implies the radio has a real-time panadapter and waterfall display. Over the years I've found this a very useful feature, particularly when doing digital modes. A panadapter isn't absolutely critical; some high performing rigs on this evaluation, like the KX2, don't have them, but if the radio does have one that's a plus
  • Sound card interface. I've already discussed this above. My feeling is this - with a modern rig of any type, if you are a manufacturer and don't include a sound card interface, you are half-stepping it
  • Ease of digital mode configuration. It's one thing to have a built-in sound card. It's another to have a firmware set that makes it easy to configure for and run sound card digital modes. In my experience, Icom clearly excels at this. While no manufacturer's digital mode configuration settings are exactly 'easy', Icom's configurations are the least confusing and aggravating to set up and troubleshoot. 
  • Internal battery. It used to be only QRP rigs came with internal batteries (and not all of them, at that). I can understand 100 watt rigs not having internal batteries due to cost and technical complexity (although that excuse is becoming harder and harder to swallow, given recent improvements in battery chemistries and charging technologies), but there is NO reason today for a QRP rig to not have replaceable, rechargeable internal batteries or, in the case of rigs like the IC-705 and the Lab599 TX-500, a battery holder that securely attaches to and integrates with the main radio body
  • MARS mod. This is important to me, but likely not to many others. I'm a licensed MARS operator, so the ability to do a wide-band TX mod on any radio I own is important. The good news is that just about any radio can take a MARS modification. The challenge is the cost and difficulty. Most radios need some physical modification - either the removal of diodes or, in the case of some Yaesu rigs, adding a solder bridge across two open pads on a board. But the all-time winner is Elecraft. Their MARS mods are done via software - quick, easy, elegant and reversable
  • Tuners. Most tuners built into 100 watt rigs are anemic, handling (at best) a 4:1 antenna mis-match. They'll tweak up an 'almost resonant' antenna, but choke when the SWR crawls above 5:1. But what if you are dealing with some serious mis-matches under something like disaster response conditions? Spare me the talk about only using resonant antennas. I operate in the real world, where I've got one antenna up, and it's got to work on 10 - 40 meters and, if possible, at reduced power on 80 meters. This is why I want a more robust tuner in my radio. I'm OK with a tuner that can handle a 4:1 mis-match, but if you can give me one that'll handle 10:1, and build it into the radio, you get an extra point in my evaluation
  • IP and MILSTD ratings for water/dust resistance and ruggedness. Every rig fails at this, but I keep it as aspirational evaluation criteria. Both Yaesu and Icom know how to build IPX and MILSTD radios - they do it every day for the military, marine, aviation, commercial and land mobile markets the serve, and they also do it for some of the ham radio UHF/VHF handheld radios they currently make, like the Icom ID-52. There is no reason why they can't put just one HF radio in their lineup that meets these standards
  • Factory ruggedized. This is the most subjective evaluation criteria I have. It is different from IP and MILSTD ratings, but the end goal is the same - a radio that offers improved water and shock resistance for field use. There two radios on my list that manufacturers have either implied or outright stated as built to a higher standard - the Icom IC-7200 (now out of production) and the Lab599 TX-500. I've opened up my IC-7200 several times, and I can tell you that radio is about as water resistant as a submarine with screen hatches. It looks rugged, but it's really just a plastic shell surrounding a huge heat sink. A good radio, yes, but in no way water resistant. Icom should be ashamed of itself for implying in their product literature that the IC-7200 was in some way more water resistant than other radios on the market. The TX-500 is a different story. Lab599 proudly states that the radio is built to offer a higher level of water resistance. While the radio doesn't meet IPX or MILSTD ratings, reports from the field are that the radio really does offer serious water resistance in light rain and snow (it's a Russian design so, yeah, snow). The TX-500 is the only radio I give an extra point to for being truly rugged 

What's not in this evaluation criteria? UHF/VHF capability. Since I'm only interested in HF, I don't take into consideration any UHF/VHF capabilities the radio might have. Both the IC-7100 and the IC-705 offer UHF/VHF, but I simply don't care when it comes to what I'm looking at here. I also don't evaluate for CW capabilities. I'm not a CW operator. HF voice and digital only.

So, winners? Here's a few:

  • In the full-size 100 watt category, the IC-7300 is the winner. I've said this many times in the past - if you want an HF radio that works great in the widest number of scenarios, the IC-7300 is it. After over a decade in the market it really hasn't been beat. It's not a perfect radio by any means, but compared to all the others in it's market niche, it is still the best.
  • In the QRP rig category, the IC-705 is the clear winner. Like the IC-7300, it works best in the widest set of circumstances and offers those used to Icom's command and feature set a very similar menu structure. In fact, if you can operate a current Icom HF radio (7300, 7610) you can operate the 705 with ease. Performance on HF digital, with one exception, is a dream. It is hands down the easiest to configure and run digital QRP radio on the market. That one exception? RFI interference via the USB connection. This is a very serious issue, one that Icom has acknowledged, but not likely to address. The way around this is to run the radio on digital modes via wi-fi. There are several apps you can use for this, but I've had the most success with Icom's own RS-BA1 software 
There's no losers, per-se. Just several second place finishers, and a few radios that should have been spared this comparison (like the Yaesu FT-818 and the Xeigu G90). The #2 finisher in the 100 watt category is the Icom IC-7100. Even after 15 years of production, this is still a very viable design, with an excellent feature set and great digital mode performance. Icom kinda' sorta' killed it off in early 2023, then resurrected it for another production run (and with a corresponding price increase). Speculation is that the 7100's replacement has been delayed due to chip shortages (boy, that excuse is wearing thin), and Icom scraped up enough parts to do a final production run or two of the 7100 as a 'gap filler' until the new radio can make it to market. 

Some observations regarding other radios. The Yaesu FT-891 remains the radio that could have been. If  you look at the score it received, a respectable 9, and then consider where that radio would have placed if Yaesu had put a sound card interface in it (giving the rig 3 more points), that would have put the radio in a solid 2nd place, ahead of the IC-7100. But considering Yaesu has a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Jeezus guys, just a simple sound card interface!

The Yaesu FT-710 looks like a solid performer, and I have to admit that I quite liked the interface when I played with it at HRO. Far, far better than the awful interface on the FT-991A. But I've also heard some of the same stories regarding digital mode configuration with the 710 that I heard with earlier models. Again, an overly and unnecessarily complex command set. I'll be doing more research on this rig before making a final assessment.

In the QRP category, while the Elecraft KX line remain strong contenders, their single biggest weakness is digital mode operations. The KX2 is a bugger to configure and run on digital modes, and the rig heats up very quickly. It just seems that digital operations were an afterthought with these rigs. On sideband they are unmatched in their class - even better than the IC-705. The venerable old FT-818 is such a simple rig that it's actually easy to configure for digital modes, and it'll run all day long on its 5 watt output. Sometimes simpler is better. Too bad the old girl isn't really competitive in any other category. But hey, it's almost a quarter century old design, so it can be forgiven.

OK, this is it for now. Remember, these are MY selections based on MY criteria. I'm sure many of you will disagree, so let me have your comments!

W8BYH out

15 November 2023

Digital Multimeters For Ham Radio

A few days ago I stumbled on this video, put together by Tom Wilkinson, N8FDY, for the Northern Ohio Amateur Radio Society (NOARS). Tom has been doing a variety of meter evaluations over the past year, and I've come to respect both his approach to evaluating meters, and how he presents his results. Watching Tom evaluate a meter is like watching my grandpa do it, even though Tom and I are probably not too far apart in age 😄. His approach is slow and methodical.

What sets this video apart from many other evaluation videos put together by bloggers like Dave Jones (EEVBlog) and Joe Smith is that Tom starts the video by discussing terms like CAT ratings, digit counts, accuracy and test certifications - something few other reviewers do.

I'm familiar with several of the meters Tom highlights in this video, particularly the Brymen models. Brymen is not a brand we hear much about in the US, but they are very popular and well respected in the rest of the world. Here in the US, Brymen has a distribution agreement with the electronics tool supplier Greenlee, so if you want a Brymen meter just buy one of the Greenlee branded meters. Or, you can do what I did and order a Brymen meter from overseas suppliers who will ship to the US. That's how I got my Brymen 869s, which has become my most used bench meter.

As you watch the video you'll note one brand that's missing from the presentation. Big Yellow is nowhere to be seen. While Tom, in other videos, describes himself as a bit of a Fluke fanboy, he also admits that they are not good value-for-money for the kind of work hams use their meters for - mainly low voltage CAT 1 (DC) and CAT 2 (household 120v) applications. I have to agree with him on this.

If you are not interested in meter reviews, just watch the first half of the video where Tom discusses all the meter safety and accuracy topics - that alone is worth your time.

Tom is also building a library of individual meter reviews, and what he's reviewed so far is quite interesting. There may be a Uni-T 181A meter in my future, since I want something that will do logging.

Thanks!

W8BYH out

12 November 2023

NVIS Exercise Wrap-Up

On 07 October, Georgia ARES and AUXCOMM conducted a state-level NVIS exercise. It was designed to test voice and digital comms between ARES groups around the state and the two Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) operations centers. GEMA runs one state operations center (SOC) at its headquarters in Atlanta and a back-up ops center in Forsyth, Georgia. As far as we know, this is the first time an exercise like this had ever been held. 

A few days ago I did the final wrap-up on the exercise by holding the on-line AAR briefing. You can view the presentation slides at this link, and view the AAR session here:

Overall the exercise was a success, and it helped us better identify some issues that I believe ARES and EMCOMM here in Georgia need to focus on.

Before going further, I need to remind all readers that this is my blog, and these are my observations and recommendations, and they do not represent any official Georgia ARES positions or recommendations.

  • Participation. For decades, Georgia has been struggling with low ARES and Amateur Radio participation in the largely rural southern and eastern parts of the state. Georgia is a big state - the biggest east of the Mississippi in terms of contiguous land area. Most of the population is concentrated in the Atlanta metro area, but that only consists of 14 counties out of a total of 159 (9%). Amateur Radio activities, participation and infrastructure in the Atlanta metro region, and all the way down the I-75 corridor to Macon, is strong. However, participation in any ARES activity from the areas east and south of the Atlanta - Macon line is weak. In fact, the region below a curved line running from Augusta to Columbus is known as the 'silent crescent' (the shaded area in the map below). ARES and Amateur Radio have very poor representation in this region - it's just hard to find the people to participate in activities like this exercise. Yet, it's these counties that end up needing disaster recovery and communications support the most. They are square in the target area for spring and summer storms pushing into the state from the west, and any hurricane or tropical storm pushing up from the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic coast hits these counties hardest. It's accurate to say that tropical storms coming up from the Gulf vent their fury as dying hurricanes in these southern counties before wandering north towards Atlanta as little more than moderate rain and wind events. 
There is no easy fix for this lack of participation. It's due to a combination of factors - mostly rural areas with low population densities and lower income levels certainly has a lot to do with it. I don't have a solution to this problem, but it is something ARES needs to work on going forward. 
 
The 'silent crescent' encompasses all counties south of the Augusta - Columbus line

  • Digital vs. voice. Honestly, I didn't anticipate this being as big an issue as it turned out to be, but two separate issues quickly coalesced to bring the digital vs. voice issue to the forefront. As we planned this exercise we knew we wanted to have a digital portion to see if participating stations found a difference in their ability to connect to the SOCs on voice and digital. Although Georgia ARES runs regular digital nets on PSK-125 and MT-63, most folks show up for just the voice nets. The digital portion of this exercise was just supposed to be a confidence builder - a quick check-in with the SOCs to confirm that their digital setups work. But a lot of stations, including the SOC at GEMA HQ in Atlanta, struggled with properly running Fldigi. In general, many participants struggled with digital operations - less than 2/3 of the stations that made successful voice contacts on 80, 60 & 40 meters made successful contacts on digital. This doesn't mean digital doesn't work, it means we need to pick a better mode (we used PSK-31) and improve the digital operations experience base for all of Georgia ARES.

Early in the planning process we identified the need for a simple back-channel chat tool that would allow the SOCs and participating stations to coordinate activity without interrupting the exercise operations. This chat tool became more important than we anticipated, as poor operating conditions had us moving band-to-band to find a usable frequency. The tool we picked, like all the tools we looked at, was web based. This meant everyone using it had to be on the internet. However, one of the goals of the exercise was to simulate a cyber-denied scenario - no internet at all. In this scenario all of the chat tools we're familiar with - Slack, Telegram, FB chat, Discord, Groups.io, etc. would not be available. The need for a chat tool doesn't go away, just the ability to use it. It's precisely this scenario where several good point-to-point HF communications tools pop up, and are all digital - Fldigi running MT-63 (already an adopted Georgia ARES standard), JS8Call and VarAC (Vara Chat). All of these tools have the capability to fill the one-to-one or one-to-many operator chat and coordination tool role.

Digital operations offer huge advantages over voice. MT-63 running in Fldigi and JS8Call offer great weak signal performance, particularly JS8Call, which is based on a modification of the FT8 protocol. JS8Call can decode traffic when it can't even be seen on the spectrum waterfall. VarAC uses Vara as the soundcard transport mode, and Vara is world famous for it's ability to hold a connection through rough band conditions. If a connection is lost, VarAC can be configured to automatically try to re-establish the connection. It's tenacious. This all means that digital modes offer more reliable and overall faster traffic throughput than voice communications. These tools can also run in unattended mode, pass small messages, and in the case of JS8Call and VarAC, can handle automated band and frequency changes based on time of day. They can also stage and pass traffic through intermediate stations using a 'traffic parking' function. In short, these software packages can be configured to automate a lot of the functions that an ARES operator would normally do manually. Again, reduced error, improved throughput and reduced operator workload.

What about Winlink? Nothing I propose here impacts Winlink; it remains the primary tool for passing email, ICS traffic and small files. It's the heavy-weight tool that will handle most of the formal traffic. What's proposed here is an adjunct tool that sits side-by-side with Winlink and handles those real-time coordination tasks

Pulling this all together, I believe the future of  HF-based emergency communications support lies in digital, not voice. If we're serious about providing robust communications that actually fill a need, it'll have to be more than a bunch of guys and gals talking into microphones. The great news is that we've got excellent digital tools that were not available to us just five years ago. It's time to leverage them. Let's flip the paradigm and make digital comms the primary standard in Georgia ARES, voice the secondary. Then pick a tool, but just one tool! Build a state-level communications architecture around it; installation packages, documentation, configuration files, even a virtual help desk, and train hard against real world scenarios.   


Not to toot my own horn, but heck, why not. I wrote about this issue back in 2020 in a series titled The EMCOMM Layer Cake. If anything, our software options have improved since then. Winlink's gotten better, JS8Call's gotten better, VarAC has hit the streets. Even Fldigi has seen improvements. The emergence of Vara as an unofficial standard that rivals Pactor in speed and connection reliability has had a huge impact on Winlink operations. I expect to see other applications, similar to VarAC, build out dependencies on Vara to take advantage of its excellent connection properties. If you are involved in emergency communications at any level and haven't bought a Vara license yet, I would just go ahead and do it; it's almost inevitable that having one will be a requirement in the near future. 

  • NVIS. This was billed as an NVIS exercise, so did NVIS work? As I emphasized in the run up to the exercise, it's not about how far you can talk, but how close you can talk on 40, 60 & 80 meters. We all know we can talk from Dalton to Kings Bay (about 350 miles) with no problem on our 80 and 40 meter dipoles, but can we talk from the State Operations Center in southeast Atlanta to the EOC in Fayette County (about 20 miles) on 40 or 80 meters? That was the challenge the exercise posed. Although I don't have hard numbers, I can say based on our experience at the Atlanta SOC at GEMA HQ the answer is yes. The antenna we used was the Chameleon CHA-NVIS, a modification of the US Army's AS-2259/GR NVIS antenna. We got excellent signal reports from most counties in the immediate metro Atlanta area on 40 meters. Was it the antenna? Was it just good 40 meter propagation? We can't tell for sure, but based on my limited use of this antenna for other NVIS work I have to say that this particular antenna configuration offers excellent NVIS performance.

That wraps it up for this exercise overview. If you have any questions or comments you can add them below in the comments section, or contact me directly at w8byh@arrl.net. Thanks!

W8BYH out

01 October 2023

Toss It In The Bag

Lately I've been spending some time with my stable of shortwave receivers. I do this every now and then when I just want to listen and I don't want to be bothered with the drama of setting up a portable ham radio station on my porch. I'll pull out one or two of my portable receivers and play around a bit, seeing what I can catch on the airwaves.

Like so many my age, shortwave radio listening was my gateway drug into ham radio. I've written about this a bit in this blog. I'm old enough to have caught the tail end of the golden era of shortwave broadcasters. This was when major players like the Voice of America, the BBC, Radio Moscow, Deutsche Welle and others conducted a surrogate Cold War on the airwaves. This was the time when shortwave receiver dials were marked off not just in frequencies, but in the various theaters of Cold War operations - New York, London, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Peking, Havana. It was a glorious time to be a shortwave listener. 

Now that the Cold War is over most of the major players have abandoned broadcast radio as an information outlet, or shut down entirely due to lack of audience, funding, or mission. The survivors have moved their operations to the internet or satellite radio, leaving a lot of dead air on the shortwaves. But if you are willing to spin the dial there are still some interesting things to catch. Small national broadcasters, a few commercial operations, ham radio operators, utility stations, military and government operators, aviation and maritime operators, and more. You just have to hunt around a bit.

So, to the point of this posting. Let's say a hurricane is coming to town (and if you live in the southeastern US, a hurricane is always coming to town between August & November). The authorities have ordered an evacuation. You've got an hour to pack and get on the road. You need to take along a receiver for situational awareness, but only have room for one. What do you pack?

Let's look at the implied requirements:

  • Compact & lightweight
  • Runs on common batteries. I call this the Dollar General test - if the batteries I need to run any piece of important gear can't be found at any Dollar General then it doesn't get packed, regardless of how good it is
  • Good overall performance on the AM & FM broadcast bands, shortwave bands and the Amateur Radio HF bands (implying USB/LSB capability) and the NOAA weather channels
  • Good performance on all bands using the stock whip antenna
  • Has an built-in speaker - no headphones or ear buds required. Sound clarity is the most important thing. We're interested in information, not entertainment, so the speaker can be small as long as it offers good clarity. 
  • Easy for a non-techie to figure out; can your non-ham spouse pick up the radio and tune it to the band and frequency of their choice without waking you up for help?

My collection is modern, consisting mostly of radios that are in current production. All are SDR-based rigs that offer outstanding performance compared to earlier designs, and in much smaller and more power efficient packages. Some of these radios will fit in a shirt pocket. Of course, bigger radios with bigger speakers = better sound, but many of the smallest radios will surprise you with their audio punch and range. And of course, with headphones or earbuds all of these radios sound great. 

My small collection consists of:

  • Sangean ATS-909X2
  • Tecsun PL-880
  • Tecsun PL-330
  • Tecsun PL-360
  • Eton Elite Executive
  • C.Crane Skywave SSB
All are very good performers, but a few have some shortcomings that take them out of consideration as a 'bug out' general purpose receiver. I won't be evaluating the Tecsun PL-330 or the PL-360 since they lack USB/LSB coverage. These are nice (and inexpensive) little radios offering good performance, but I consider USB/LSB coverage essential to this mission.


Let's start the evaluation with the Tecsun PL-880. This radio is the best performing portable shortwave receiver in my lineup. In fact, many in the shortwave listener community consider it the best portable shortwave receiver on the market. I can't argue. Shortwave and medium wave sensitivity and selectivity are great, the audio quality is outstanding (not the best, but very close to it), and AM & FM performance are first rate. The build quality is very good. Would I toss it in the bag? No, for three reasons. First, it uses much less common lithium-ion 18650 batteries, and can only charge via a mini-USB port, and the charging rate is s-l-o-w. Second, it lacks NOAA weather broadcast frequency coverage. Third, the user interface is overly complex and somewhat 'kludgy'. If I'm using the radio I can get it figured out in short order, but if my wife had to use this radio to tune in to a local AM station, she'd just get confused and frustrated. I consider this a niche radio - excellent performance but really focused at the shortwave geek. This same argument runs through the Tecsun PL-330 and the PL-360. Great performers but an overly complex user interface. Good for the geeks, but not for someone running from a devastating storm.


Next  up is the Sangean ATS-909X2, This is the most disappointing of the lot. This radio is the clear winner in ergonomics, user interface and build quality, and is the best sounding radio of the bunch, edging out the Tecsun PL-880 for audio quality on FM and AM. Sangean is a Taiwanese company that has been making quality portable radios for decades, and its earlier ATS-808 and 909 line of portable shortwave radios were highly regarded receivers. I used an ATS-808 extensively while stationed in Germany in the late 1990s, when there was still a lot of shortwave activity, and it was a great performer. The current ATS-909X2, however, is reputed to be 'deaf' on shortwave when using the whip antenna, and I've confirmed that myself. I mean, really deaf as compared to the Tecsun PL-880. Sangean struggled for several years to fix issues with the first generation 909X, which was supposed to be an upgrade to the venerable ATS-808, but the radio had a number of firmware bugs and just didn't perform all that well, Sangean pulled the 909X from the market, re-worked it and while they fixed the firmware issues, they never really got the shortwave reception issues figured out. Sadly, it won't make it into the bug-out bag.

Sangean ATS-909X2. Beautiful to look at, but so-so performance

A surprise performer in the group is the Eton Elite Executive. Eton released this radio over three years ago and nobody paid it much attention until a few shortwave bloggers like RadioJayAllen and the Oxford Shortwave Log took a look at the radio, almost in passing, and were surprised at how good of a performer it is. My informal testing backs this up. This is a remarkable receiver, and hits almost all the points needed to qualify as a bug-out radio. Shortwave performance is almost as good as the PL-880 - great sensitivity and selectivity, although the filter (bandwidth) selections are not as good as the Tecsun. The user interface is much better than the PL-880 for the casual user, and the speaker audio is surprisingly good; not as good at the PL-880 or the ATS-909X2, but better than you'd expect for a radio this size. I'd almost toss it in the bag but for one issue - no pre-set NOAA weather radio channels. But for general shortwave and AM & FM listening, this is a really good little radio. I've seen this radio go on sale regularly for some remarkably good prices. I got mine on a Woot special for $80. At that price, it's well worth it if you are a shortwave geek.


What are we left with? The tiny radio from C. Crane. About the size of two packs of cigarettes - just a bit bigger than the classic AM & FM pocket radios of the 1960s. Although small, the Skywave SSB* is a remarkably good performer across the board; top-notch performance on FM and AM, and surprisingly good performance on shortwave, including USB/LSB. I don't mean 'surprisingly good performance for a small radio'; on shortwave this radio rivals the Tecsun PL-880 and the Eton Executive Elite. It has very good sensitivity and selectivity, and very good bandwidth options. The user interface is simple and easy to figure out. And huzzah! It has really good NOAA weather channel coverage. Of course there are trade-offs due to the size - the sound out of the small speaker is nowhere near as good as the three radios already reviewed. The quality is good, and punchy, but it's impossible for a small speaker in a small cabinet to achieve the richness of the speaker in the Sangean or Tecsun reviewed above. There's other trade-offs, too. A few the firmware bells and whistles found on the larger radios are lacking on the Skywave SSB - no RDS functionality on FM, no synchronous AM detection, no ability to assign alpha tags to memory slots, and a few others. But given its size, the feature set is remarkably good - FM stereo output through earbuds (included with the radio), air band coverage, alarm clock function, adjustable tuning speeds, external power/charger capability, and more. Plus, it runs for hours on just two AA batteries. 


As it comes from C. Crane, the Skywave SSB includes a set of C. Crane's excellent earbuds and a clip-on reel antenna. The hard clamshell case you see in the photo is an extra option available from Amazon and I highly recommend it. It protects the radio and provides space for the earbuds, user manual, and a spare set of AA batteries.


I think you can already guess what my choice would be if I had to bug-out and could only take one receiver. The C. Crane isn't the choice because it's small. It's the choice because it offers all the features I need and it's performance is great. Its small size is just a bonus.  

*C.Crane now offers an upgraded version of this radio called the Skywave SSB2. Reports are that although there are slight improvements in performance with the SSB2, along with the addition of an external antenna jack, performance of the two radios is pretty much the same.

W8BYH out

16 September 2023

The Bench

A few weeks back I posted some pictures on Facebook showing how I replaced the clock memory battery in my IC-7300.


 

Some readers contacted me and asked about the tools I used to do this job, so I figured it was time for an abbreviated tour of the workbench. Timely, because the memory battery has crapped out on my second IC-7300, so I'm setting up to get that one fixed.

To begin, my 'bench' is really a table that sits in the middle of a room full of junk. Literally, in the middle of a room full of junk. Junk to the left, junk to the right. Junk straight ahead and behind. There's even junk piled at my feet. Electronics gear, fishing gear, radios, camping gear, you name it. 

The bench started out years ago as a table that I did all my fly tying work on. Yes, I used to tie a LOT of flies for fly fishing, so many that I'm still using flies I tied up over 5 years ago! As my interest in electronics grew I started plopping more and more test and builder gear on the table until one day I decided I needed a dedicated electronics work bench. I packed up all my fly tying gear and put it in storage. I fully intend to get back to fly tying one day (it is a very relaxing and artistic way to spend a few hours), but for now it's all about pushing electrons around. 

Like most electronics hobbyists the collection of stuff grew slowly as my needs evolved. Nothing on this bench is 'lab grade'; most of it is good quality hobbyist gear that came out of China or the far east. Regardless, it all fits the bill nicely. So let's have a look:



Let's start with lighting, since that is probably one of the biggest issue I face in this cave. I depend highly on the LED magnifier lamp on the swing arm you see in the picture. It's absolutely essential for focusing light on the work area and magnifying the project. It's the true unsung hero of the workbench. It wasn't cheap, but it was a solid investment. I use it every single day.

Next, the soldering station. It's a Hakko FX888 digital station, and it is the single tool on the bench that has allowed me to tackle so many projects. In the past I used various single wattage/single heat irons that were clumsy performers. This soldering station, with it's digitally controlled temperature settings and interchangeable tips has allowed me to tackle projects that I just couldn't in the past. Again not cheap (but not too expensive either), but well worth the money.

Multimeter. I've got a small collection of multimeters - a few Fluke's (to include an 87V), a few Brymens, some off-brands. The one that has become my standard bench meter is the Brymen 869s. I bought this meter on the recommendation of several reviewers, particularly David Jones, author of the EEVblog website and YouTube channel, and Joe Smith, who does destructive testing of multimeters. Both heaped high praise on this meter for its features and accuracy. While not as physically rugged as a Fluke, it carries a UL and German TuV certification, so it more than meets it's electrical overload protection ratings. Plus it offers far more features than the highly vaunted Fluke 87, at about half the price, and the display is far easier to read. Because Brymen does not sell its meters in the US (they have a marketing agreement with Greenlee) I had to order this one from a distributor in Poland, of all places. This is another tool that gets used almost every day.

Hiding away behind the Brymen multimeter is a Siglent bench power supply. While most of my power testing requires 12 - 14 volts, something easily supplied by one of my ham radio switching power supplies, I occasionally have to take things down to 9 or 5 volts. Hanging off to the side is a collection of test leads I can connect to the power supply, allowing me to hook up to just about anything. 

The Quick 8610 hot air rework station sitting on the shelf is a recent acquisition. I needed it to do some SMD component replacements on an amplifier project, and it works like a champ. I've used it on several other projects since, and I'll be using it on the upcoming IC-7300 battery replacement (Icom solders the OEM battery directly to the board, making it hard to get off with a conventional soldering iron). Honestly, it can be frightening how fast it works. While this is not a top-end unit, it gets very good reviews from folks who do board-level repairs on computers and other electronics. Louis Rossmann, who runs a business doing Apple board-level work and has a very active YouTube channel, actually prefers this rework station to the much more expensive Hakko systems he previously used.

The blue mats are a combination of an electrostatic grounding mat and a silicone soldering mat. When working on sensitive electronics I'll use a grounded wrist strap that snaps to the mat and connects to the house ground. Very cheap insurance.

In the middle of the blue mats sits one of those inexpensive hobbyist 'third hand' tools that I have to admit is all but indispensable. Yes, I've got much more expensive electronic component holders, including a rotating circuit board work holder that can support a full-sized computer board, but this cheap little tool gets used the most for simple tasks like soldering two pieces of wire together. You'll also see a small PanaVise head sitting off to the right. That gets used a good bit, too. 

Hand tools. I've got a large assortment of hand tools - screw drivers, cutters, wire strippers, pliers, scissors, tweezers, small rulers, X-acto knifes and more. Honestly, I don't know where a lot of this stuff came from. Some I used in my fly tying activities, some I just had laying around when I started this hobby. The two hand tools that get use most on the bench are sitting right up front - the red handled side cutter and the miniature pliers. I go through a set of these about once a year, particularly the side cutters. When they get dull don't even think about trying to sharpen them. Just toss 'em and get another set.

Magnifiers. I have to admit it, my eyes are not what they used to be. When I joined the Army in 1979 I had 15/15 vision. Today I can't even get out of bed without glasses. I'm almost 67 and have a bit of cataract forming in both eyes. I need both good light and magnification. I've got a number of small hand-held magnifiers that live on my bench, plus I've got an OptiVisor headband magnifier with an LED light attachment, something I find I'm using more and more. 

I do have an oscilloscope - a Siglent digital model, but I've had little use for it over the past year so it's sitting in storage on a shelf in the far back. 

Last, but certainly not least, are all the consumable supplies sitting on or near the bench - 
  • denatured alcohol for cleaning just about everything electronic
  • Q-tips
  • spools of solder, paste flux and liquid flux, along with solder wick and a surprisingly effective spring loaded 'solder sucker'
  • electrical tape
  • double sided tape
  • heat resistant tape (really needed when doing hot air re-work stuff)
  • small zip ties
  • a box of toothpicks
  • a tube of silicone glue
  • a bottle of superglue
  • paper towels
  • glass cleaner
  • a roll of twist-tie material
  • Sharpie markers
  • small parts containers - little plastic salsa 'bowls' that I steal from local Mexican restaurant chain whenever we go there for lunch or dinner
  • pens & pencils, and a notebook
  • Yeti coffee cup full of my favorite coffee 😄
And wire. Lots and lots of wire. When working on the bench most of my wire needs fall into the 18 - 22 gauge arena. Lately I've been going through a good bit of 22 gauge Teflon coated wire. I keep two spools of red and black on-hand. 

I think that's about it. If you have any questions about anything you see just drop a comment below.

W8BYH out