Taking the truSDX on its first CW POTA activation! Can it activate? We'll find out!
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- čas přidán 28. 07. 2024
- Click here to read full details about this activation, including all equipment links, at QRPer.com:
qrper.com/2022/04/video-takin...
Chapters:
0:00:00 Introduction & setup overview
0:02:14 Checking out the (tr)uSDX
0:13:52 Start of audio recording
0:16:11 Start of Activation
0:32:25 QSY to hunt in SSB
0:43:11 End of Activation and Audio Recording
Please note that the audio was difficult to fine tune in this video because the output volume of the (tr)uSDX and noise floor were quite high. I attempted to make the audio in this video comparable to how the audio sounded to me via headphones during the activation.
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Thanks for watching!
73,
Thomas
K4SWL - Věda a technologie
Hey Tom, Thanks for your great Video and honest Opinion on it. Just some thoughts: , Yes the OLED is not brightest. But it´s cheap and available worldwide, that´s why we chose it.... The On-Board Speaker was meant more of an Emergency Solution rather than a serious thing... In case you forgot your headphones at home. Nothing more. I am dissapointed about it on a regular basis ;) Regarding Noise-Floor: The AGC is doing it´s job here.... Once there is no Signal it will crank up the Gain, what you hear as Noise. Rewind your Video and look what happened when signals were present... There was no more noise in the Background. To test this, you can switch it off in the Menu. On Headphones I usually work it around Volume 11 with AGC on.... And that´s enough. Thanks anyway, it was fun to watch and I hope you and (tr)uSDX will get along and you will consider taking it with you then ;) 73 Manuel; DL2MAN
Great way to take critical feedback! One day…i hope to design a radio myself; I know it won’t compete with all the metrics you shot for with this. Fun to see
Thank you so much for the feedback, Manuel. I will take all of your advice!
Frankly, I find this project to be absolutely fascinating especially with how you've achieved so much with such a modest amount of hardware. I tried to make it a point in the article that this isn't marketed as a high-performance radio--it's a QRP experimenter's radio--but it is without a doubt a very capable little portable! I'm going to tweak it and look forward to building the kit form (which I was notified by roWaves just shipped).
Thanks again and I always welcome your advice and input. Thanks for all of the amazing work you've put into this.
Cheers,
Thomas
K4SWL
considering it has a 8bit MCU, and 10bit ADC.. this is not bad at all. As a software engineer, I really appreciate how the developer squeezed every last drop of performance out of that MCU. Most people use it to blink leds :D
It is a marvel of engineering! The (tr)uSDX project simply pushes the limits blows my mind.
Hi Thomas, makes me happy to see the antenna in action 😀 Really interesting to see the kit radio too. Best 73 Steve MW0SAW
Thanks for the review, Thomas! My assembled radio needed to be calibrated. I used DL2MAN's CZcams video to calibrate, took about a minute. As for the audio: I wouldn't bring it to a summit *without earbuds or headphones*. Treat that speaker as an "emergency only" speaker. Bring corded earbuds, put it on 11, and you will not miss any signals. The external speaker you recommended in another video (Anker, I think) is in my kit, and this radio pairs VERY nicely with that. Just use the volume adjustment on the speaker. I've done activations with SSB and CW. Very usable little radio.
Thank you for the feedback, Mark!
I have the Chinese model with internal battery. They have excellent cw decoders. I think they make great SHTF HF radios for CW. Cheap enough to carry and keep in a bug out bag. Thanks for sharing!!
This is by far one of the greatest ham radio channels on YT
Thanks for posting!
Thanks for another real time, real life activation video. And thanks for a thorough review of the truSDX. Audio was rough, as you noted. The -18 dB really helped! I am really happy with my US-supplied TR-35. It is a little bit more costly, but also more refined, pleasing to the ears, usable... 73 de Brian - K3ES
Just about to build my TR-35, can’t wait 🤞🏼
@@ryanv7075 I went for pre-assembled instant gratification, because I had a beach trip in the works. Glad I did, since it got me multiple DX stations running 5 watts from OBX, and a couple of successful park activations, too! I think you will really like yours. Best 73 de Brian - K3ES
It is a real fun radio. I was looking forward to your video and review on this radio.
I have just finished assembly of my Rowaves B3 kit. The assembly is the most fun part and it is a great way to understand how the components interact.
Still waiting for the USBAsp to program the boot loader.
Again thanks for your review and honest opinion on this little radio.
73 de DL1GKC, Chris
Thanks so much, Chris! I look forward to hearing your thoughts once you've got the firmware loaded. GL OM! Thomas
Hi Steve also made the same antenna for me it's so good .
Vary interesting first look Thomas. I too would be interested in others experiences who own one. We'll see how my experience compares once it arrives and I get it out together.
I can't wait to read about your experiences with it, Charlie!
I may have to take mine for a whirl next time at K-0662. I did get some small PCBs to make a kenwood mic adapter for it, so may the CW gods forgive me if I work SSB. :)
I saw a video of a guy running one of these radios with a tiny self powered speaker plugged into it and it sounded pretty good.
Thomas. I so enjoy your content. I learn much. And you are easy on the ears. Thank you for sharing...
73 de KF4LBG
Thank you!
I enjoy my (tr)uSDX. The other hams are right, calibrate the freq at menu 8.3. I turned down my tx as it was distorted. If you hear how to avoid overdriving the audio, please let me know. I got Bulgaria yesterday on 20m SSB from my backyard yesterday on one of these with no amp and a delta loop.
Excellent QRP DX you got there!
It's great that 15M is now open Nights.... as well as 20m. I was trolling around the CW portion tonight on 15m in the Midwest USA, and 15M other than FT8 sounded absolutely DEAD., except for a KP4 Station Booming in... He was the only person on 15m at 0357Z. I actually worked him on SSB. I NEVER have my microphone plugged in...I just use mostly CW... as my antenna sucks, so CW works better for me. The Bands that people think are closed are starting to be wide open at midnight.
Love your vids. The best from LB1NH
From I've heard from other people...if you press the encoder in and then turn it you can change the volume on the fly without changing anything else.
This is correct.
Waiting on mine to be delivered. Looking forward to the project.
Thomas, I'm hoping you'll video all or part of your build of the kit you also have. I know it is not what you typically do, but it would be interesting.
I'm not 100% certain I'll record the build, but I might take a lot of photos. Much will depend if I can get to the build prior to my summer travels. At present, I don't even have an opening in my schedule wide enough for a multi-hour build. I'm really looking forward to it, though!
nice abbreviation left of the radio on the table ;) 73
Seems like a nifty little radio I hope you can get it to work better. I would try building ii myself but I would most certainly mess it up beyond all repair. 73
I'm confident I'll be able to get more performance out of this little machine.
Hey Thomas, you are officially out of the doghouse with my wife. I ordered the trusdx BEFORE I watched your video. DL2MAN is taking up residence now. Enjoy the Sunshine Buddy :))
HA HA HA!!! :) Nice to see what it looks like outside the dog house! :)
Also the VFO was off on mine by about 2KHz also.
I only go SSB on any acto with something that was designed for it. Even the X5105 is a bit lame in that regard, though I have used it. With the (tr)uSDX I think CW is the only way to go. But then I think CW is the only way to go most of the time, at home or in the park or higher up. No CW in the car underway, however. That's about the best way I can think of to end up in a Russian dash cam video series ;-)
. . . And yes, the display is a bit weak, especially if your display is not blaring white (thanks to my friends with steady hands for fixing that for me). But all in all, the (tr)uSDX is one helluva nice little radio & certainly worth the time & effort to pack it up a hill or across a park. With the DL1DN battery pack add-on, it's even cooler. 73 de W8IJN
Hey Thomas… I just bought an assembled radio (authorized) on eBay… the waiting game from China is killing me. Lots of things to like about this radio… audio is the only thing that’s not quite perfect. But its size and utility may just win me over… I motocamp off my Harley, and there is only so much room in the saddlebags. This will make a great kit to take along and activate afield, The radio, a battery (3x18650 LiFePo), a Palm Pico, EFHW, Log, and earbuds… Yahtze! (Hopefully). I could even use the bike battery and be ultra lite…
Oh yeah! It sounds like it could be a perfect pairing with motocamping! Let us know how it goes and, of course, I'd welcome a field report on QRPer.com if you use it!
The only thing that keeps me from purchasing this radio is the knob. It large and stands up so far I fear breaking it while it’s packed for portable operations. Everything else I like. I would hate to have this in a pack then need it only to find it broken.
Thanks Tom for the honest evaluation of the truSDX I appreciate it. I enjoy your activations, watching as well as working you on them. 73 Ed WD8JVV
Hey Thomas, from where you're doing this activation you're a short distance from Burkemont mtn where there's state park on both sides of the road up thru there. You could possibly do sota at the top. It's called walker top. Roughly 2500 elev. You could let 5 watts really sing. Just a thought. Tnx for the activations and videos. Really enjoy these. Gl KO4PDK.
Thanks for the tip, Dale!
3:52 no I don't believe you are wrong, I believe there were no Chinese sub 200$ transceivers at the time. I seriously considered buying the kit, I remember there were a few that had fully 3d printed designs and they were a little larger I think than this version. 73s I'm probably going to buy this as my first HF transceiver.
I have a Rowaves kit on order
Make sure you check your reference frequency (Menu 8.3).. mine was quite a ways off. 73
Will do! Thanks!
Great👋⭐💪🍀
Oh Boy ! There's that great throwing arm again. Hi Hi
It just amazes me how small you can get a multi band radio.
What computer are you using? Is it a table or a windows machine. Size matters to me and I kind of want the smallest windows laptop I can get when I set up portable.
Thanks again for the great video. Looks like you had yet another fun day in the park.
Barry, KU3X
Hi, Barry,
I'm using a Microsoft Surface Go tablet. It's a first generation Surface Go running Windows 10. It's a brilliant field computer. I've even used it for FT8/FT4.
Cheers,
Thomas
I think you can link a Bluetooth keyboard to your phone to make data entry easier.
The screen could be brighter but it's modified not to be, so that it makes less noise. It is not shielded at all. The squeel per dl2man is from self resonance of the speaker with 'nothing to be done about it'. 50's transistor radios were tinny here but sounded ok in Japan. If you speak beautiful smooth southern then the audio might be harsh but maybe it sounds ok if you speak German, I don't know. The frequency will be off but there is a setting in the menu that lets you correct for what the actual frequency of the reference crystal and then it will be good. Sdr on an 8 bit processor using 62 ma on receive capable of cw USB lsb fm (?am) on on 5 bands, one guy did all the software, keyer, cw decoder, variable audio filter, agc, noise reduction, couple of attenuator ranges, built in mic and speaker, not all perfect but it's still fun. Could it be better: yes, and is it better than it originally was? oh yes! Open source design, freely shared, (you freely down load the software from them, that might not be open source), you can make all by yourself or be part of a group buy or use or set up a commercial availability, no royalties, hams sharing knowledge. If interested google dl2man. Really nice review and demo, thanks. 73/72
I think it's an impressive project for sure! Hats off to the developers!
There is a modification on the DL2MAN forum to boost the display voltage back to 8 volts of clean DC. I’ve done it one the three of mine, and I highly recommend it.
I've definitely seen videos of this thing with far better sound. I suspect you need to play around with the AGC, noise reduction and attenuation settings; at the very least, turn the volume down so it doesn't clip. Have you tried again since?
I haven't tried from the field again, but a friend did recently and audio was identical. I think I'd like to implement an external DSP to help.
I think I am hearing the OLED display in your noise floor. You might try more bypass on the OLED.
That's what I'm thinking too.
Greta video. I want to get one of these. Any idea where he got that winder for the antenna?
I think it's a SOTAbeams winder.
Ok, So i was thinking of getting a kit for my kids to assemble, but there seems to be no kit with a case avalible? Is there a case separate that is avalible? I sure don't see one.
Curious if you found the issue with the hissing sound. Missed you on licw but was able to watch on their Dropbox. Efhw is a must have even for a backup.
I agree! The EFHW is a brilliant antenna design. I haven't had a chance to open the (tr)uSDX yet--just too busy at present. :)
Great video….quick question…what coax are you using for that activation? I just got my truSDX setup running but I need smaller diameter/lighter coax to fit in the kit.
I tend to use RG-316.
difficult to hear your audio over the static / noise floor...
Did you use the built-in filter? Looks like there are 6 bandwidth settings: Full, 3000, 2400, 1800, 500, 200, 100, & 50 Hz.
I did: I had it set to 500 Hz.
however your qso is commming through the noise!
I'm not being critical as my CW isn't that good; but are you sending 72 instead of 73? Or am I hearing things? I want to get better with CW, eventually. I first learned of you and qrper from the Ham Radio Workbench Podcast, I've been enjoying going thru your back catalogue here. I do believe I may have to order one of these interesting little radios. Thanks and 73 de KM3P
Great catch! Yes, I'm often sending "72" which is essentially a QRP version of 73. It let's the other op know you're running QRP without having to actually send that within the exchange.
@@ThomasK4SWL Aha! I just learned something new; that's definitely a much easier way to "announce" you're QRP instead of sending QRP after your call each time. Thanks for explaining!
If you only have 3 watts it was not tuned/built properly - 12v on mine gets me the full 5 Watts after tuning
Yes, I need to dig into the radio and fix this.
Hi Thomas, I have a question about connecting the battery. Do you know of a video showing people how to connect the radio to the black and red jacks of the battery?
So my radio came with a power cord that had pigtails on the end. I fitted mine with Anderson PowerPole connectors so I can use it with any of my batteries.
Do you know How can these be ordered? Looks like the rowaves page shows batches shipped but that’s it.
From AliExpress in China
And ebay
Where did you get your paddes? Do you have a link?
I always link to my gear in the field report on QRPer and that link is in the description of the video. These paddles are no longer produced, but that may change soon I hear. I'll post an update on QRPer if that happens.
Do I hear correct? It has side band? What's the quality? Thanks for doing the video.
What's the website for this radio? Thanks.
It does have SSB. Check out DL2MAN's website: dl2man.de/
It's chock-full of info! :)
Where did you source this from? I'd like to avoid a "clone" of it.
I buy from the suppliers DL2MAN lists on his site: dl2man.de/where-to-buy-trusdx/
Question… is that a balun on the table?
Yes, it's a PackTenna 1:1 current balun I keep on hand in case a transceiver is sensitive to RF from an end-fed antenna.
What model is that paddle?
It's one by N0SA. He no longer produces at the moment. I've heard they may be available int he near future, though.
Great video but why do you send 72 instead of 73 ???
GReat question. Here's my answer: qrper.com/2022/07/why-i-send-72-instead-of-73/
@@ThomasK4SWL I just learned something! I knew the Reverend Dobbs he was a fine person. My old callsign was G4FEB. I am still a member of the GQRP club but now live in sunny Florida. I will have to start confusing people with 72. All the very best, Dave. N2SN
@@TheCrunchbird Rev Dobbs was an amazing fellow, indeed! :) I look forward to logging you someday and using 72! :)
What do you mean by activating a radio?
So what I'm actually referring to is a POTA "activation." An activation is when a ham goes to a designated park (or summit, island, lighthouse, etc.) and "activates" it by putting it on the air for others to hunt/chase. It's a load of fun. :)
Is that tone always going to be high pitched? Is it because of the speaker used?
I think the tone is adjustable. The audio in the video was actually taken from the heaphone jack, so the internal speaker wasn't used.
Can't wait to get my new TruSDX out for an activation. The KX2 will be my primary but having a second kit will be nice. Opted for a TruSDX over a CW only rig for my second kit because I do like activating with digimodes from time to time.
73 de KJ5T
what key is that?
It's one that's no longer produced. An N0SA design. It has been replaced with this one: cwmorse.us/products/sp4-sota-pota-cw-morse-magnetic-paddle-by-n0sa?ref=pHGSYqNC (note that this is an affiliate link)
I highly recommend it!
@@ThomasK4SWL thanks. pretty little key.
Check the Radio Prepper youtube channel. He just built the kit and highly praised it.
Will do! I like Gil's channel.
Hmmmm. I don’t think I want one.
Thomas, tnxs Fer the vid. I have one coming from the Chinese supplier and looking fwd to building it. I downloaded the 3d printer files as I can print them myself. Looks like a QRPLABS Qcx on steroids..
Tnxs agn, Ron
It always takes that ONE person to ruin CW with a poorly adjusted bug
qrp SUPER
That thing should cost $25 fully assembled. It's just a toy. It works as a transceiver, but it's a transceiver toy.
Thomas tnx agn for a great review - really enjoy and appreciate your videos - 72 Dan VA3MA
The truSDX now even get's a spectrum scope with the new firmware. Unbelievable! (Infos on channel DL2MAN)
I enjoyed listening to the conversations in CW. The callsign K8RAT made me chuckle. I am making lots of contacts with my trusdx, loads of fun. 73 sir de kd8zm
K8RAT is a great guy, too! I can pick his callsign out of a big pileup due to his particular "swing" on his sideswiper key.