GPS is Looking Up

GPSDO unit in Flex 6500, cover removed

Flex 6500 GPSDO attachment area

This is a bad news, good news story.  Last year, I purchased the GPS Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO) option for my Flex 6500 transceiver. This is meant to be a user-installable device that receives the GPS signal (1.2 - 1.5 GHz), derives very accurate time (UTC) and frequency (10 MHz) for use by the transceiver.  And, of course, it reports your geographical position (latitude, longitude, and height above sea level) and speed.

As you can see from the photo, the GPSDO appears to be based on custom version of a Jackson Labs GPSOCXO (Oven Stabilized Crystal Oscillator) module.  It's the green board that attaches to a blue Flex-produced interface board. The GPSOCXO specifications are available as a PDF, while general information is here.

I am now on my third GPS unit.  The first was a "reconditioned" unit, because new units were then in short supply.  It never worked for me -- it would not detect satellites.  Flex then supplied another unit, which worked well.  It detected satellites, locked up, and appeared to deliver good frequency stability. But, over time, it grew hard of hearing.  It dropped out of lock more and more and finally would not lock at all, though it continued to supply 10 MHz in "holdover" mode.

GPS Status, SSDR software

Fortunately, my unit failed just before the warranty period expired, so I was able to get a replacement without (financial) trouble.  Now my third (and hopefully last) unit is perking along. The good news!

Currently, I use the Flex-supplied simple "patch" active antenna attached to a nearby west-facing window.  Typically, I track 7-8 satellites out of 10-11 "visible".  We might be able to squeeze out more performance by installing a larger outdoor antenna.


Why use GPS?

The standard Flex TCXO is fine for nearly any application in the HF/6 bands.  So why go for GPS?  Because it's there.  Because, as an erstwhile VLBI radio astronomer, I am interested in time and frequency standards.  (See time-nuts.)

There's a good case to use GPS stabilization for VHF/UHF/microwave work, where oscillators are typically locked to a high harmonic of a 10 MHz standard.  A portable GPS time standard is also useful for operating modes like JT65 or FT8 that require it.  (Although, with care, WWV's HF time signals are also good enough.) Unfortunately, Flex does not yet offer time synchronization services for the radio shack.  Maybe in the future.

Note added: So after 24 hours of operation, we lose lock.  Of course there's a light cold rain and heavy overcast.  Hoping it's the weather.  (But my cell phone GPS is working fine...)

More: It's looking like this was a connector problem.  (Electronics troubles often are.) If you look at the attachment area photo (here enlarged), you will notice the 10 golden spring terminals.  These touch gold-plated tabs on the GPSDO PC board.  They provide all the power and computer signalling. It's not apparent in this photo, but if you look edge-on with a magnifier, you might notice that the tiny springs are not all in perfect alignment vertically.  It seems that one or more of them were not making good contact.  (The PC board screws down on the alignment posts, and the contact pressure has to be "sufficient" -- whatever that may be.) After a little fiddling with a tiny screwdriver, along with an alcohol cleaning, the GPSDO seems to be back in operation.  For good measure, I also replaced the RF input cable.

We will see if things are now stable. It  has been OK for 12 hours! I have to say that the GPSDO-to-mainboard connection system is not the most robust.  It looks like we had a marginally OK connection at first, which degraded after some temperature cycling or minor vibration. A traditional connector (with pins and sockets) would have been much more reliable, though a bit more expensive and less elegant.

It's possible that all this last year's GPS travails came down to that connector, but I can't be sure.

Yet more: After the connector fix, the GPSDO seems to be much healthier, but we were still experiencing occasional drop-outs (loss of sync).  Moving the antenna outdoors seems to make a big improvement.   The view is much less obstructed.  I've made a stab at a weather-tight case for the little biscuit antenna using a large size prescription container and taped the whole thing to a nearby mast at about 5 ft elevation.  We seem to be getting good sync about 10 minutes after a warm start, which is a lot better than before. 

Sadly, the Flex module does not give any direct indication of GPS signal strength.  There is also no way to log loss of sync events.  Maybe this is a good time to start writing Python code to access GPS status from the radio via TCP/IP. I would like to log performance for a few days as a final system check.

A Little Audio

This is not "high" tech, but finding a solution took a little while.  The AA6E station, for today's purpose, consists of a Windows 10 PC (the Intel NUC), a FlexRadio Flex-6500, and two compact bookshelf loudspeakers.

The usual solution these days for audio setups is to use "powered speakers" for computer audio and possibly for transceiver audio.  But these have problems for me:

1. For HF Amateur Radio, powered speakers generally are too sensitive to the RF environment and require ferrite suppression.
2. Powered speakers generally only offer a few feet of cabling between speakers, which is fine for your desktop but not so good if you want to fill a room with audio.
3. It's awkward to support independent speaker systems for the radio and for the computer.  They take up space, and they make for lots of cabling.
4. Higher end powered speakers do a fair job with audio fidelity, but not as good as good conventional speaker components.

In my case, I'm starting with these nice inherited speakers (thanks to son Eric!) and I'm working backward.  You need a basic audio amplifier.  These aren't as common as they once were.  There are some interesting very cheap "Class D" switching amplifiers.  I tried one (the Lepy LP-2020A).  It did OK with the audio, but it lacked multiple inputs, and, worse, it produced very strong VHF emissions that wiped out 2 meters for me, even after adding chokes.

I sat on this project for a while, until I ran across a family of simple audio amplifiers by AudioSource.  They offer the AMP100VS, which gives 50 W per stereo channel.  That's more than I need, but you only live once.  Amazon has it for $110.

The system (diagrammed above) provides several unexpected features:

• Auto On-Off.  The amp can be set to power on whenever an audio input signal appears.  There's about a 3 second delay for turn-on.  Power shuts down after 5 minutes with no input. This feature saves us having to provide switched AC power. In the standby mode, the amp draws 8 W from the line, compared to about 17 W for power on idling. You can argue whether that's a worthwhile saving! (Power can alternatively be controlled by a 12 V DC signal.)
• Audio Interrupt.  This amp is apparently designed for the commercial public address market, where you might have background music that is occasionally interrupted by "Attention K-Mart Shoppers".  In my case, it is convenient to allow the radio's output to interrupt the computer's output, so I don't need an audio switch or mixer.

This is low tech, as promised, but it sounds fine and solves a knotty little problem.

A little NUC on my desk

When my 8 year old computer, home built with a Core i7-920 processor, began freezing up randomly, a new generation computer was in order.  The only application I normally use that takes significant computing power is FlexRadio's Smart SDR for Windows that needs to control the Flex 6500 SDR transceiver.

Recent SSDR versions are much less demanding than they used to be, so maybe I could make do with a "downgrade" to a Core i5 system.  Intel processors divide broadly between "i3" (dual core), "i5 (dual core, with hypterthreading yielding 4 threads), and "i7" (quad core, 8 threads).  Of course, the later chips ("generations") in each category will be a lot more powerful than the earlier ones.

After some debate, I selected a Intel NUC (next unit of computing) tiny computer configuration in "kit" form.  You need to supply your own SSD (solid state disk) or hard drive and your own DDR4 RAM.  The NUC is available in quite a few versions, but I ended up with the Intel BOXNUC7I5BNH kit, which is a "7th generation" i5 box with room to add a 2.5 in. SSD or HD.

I installed a Samsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe internal SSD, which uses the (relatively) new M.2 interface and leaves the 2.5 in. bay free for the future.  Two 4GB DDR4 RAM chips complete the kit.  Assembly is trivial, if you're at all familiar with computer innards. Installing Windows 10 Home from a USB memory stick was quick. Transferring data and software from the old system was simplified by staging files onto an external USB hard drive.

After all that, we have a very fast little computer.  The Passmark benchmark comes out at 3,644, which is roughly 60% of the score of the old i7-920 with GT640 graphics -- but with half the cores and only on-chip graphics.  The NUC is happy to drive my two HDMI displays, although the second display requires a Thunderbolt/USB-C to HDMI adapter cable.  SSD I/O performance is blazing!

But what about Flex SSDR?  That's the primary app for this computer -- when I'm not using the Flex Maestro controller.  Here are some results:

Panadaptors |	window size |	CPU utilization |	Network Mb/s
1	1/4	15%	2.4
1	full	20%	2.7
4	full	33%	6.0
4*	full	44%	9.4
4*	1/4	36%	7.2

(* maximize spectrum frames per second and waterfall rate)

The worst case CPU load (44% across the 4 i5 threads) seems to be a comfortable number.  The Flex 6700, on the other hand, with its maximum 8 panadapters might have trouble, if that's your operating style.

The NUC handles the required load with capacity to spare.  It uses much less power to run and has only about 1/60 the volume of the old system, fitting easily on the desk.

Don't believe everything you read (Kp=5)

(tnx N3KL, NASA)

The news is all about the "Major Solar (Geomagnetic) Storm" we are having.  Points:

• No aurora visible last night (lat 41 deg), but Moon was very bright.
• Kp (Planetary K index) is supposed to be 5 now (quite high), and it was up to 8 last night. But the 20 meter ham band is hopping.  I just bagged my first digital T77 (San Marino).
• If it weren't for the news, I'd say 20 meter (14 MHz) conditions are fairly normal, but 15 and 17 meters (21 and 18 MHz) are largely dead.

Sometimes it's better not to know too much.

End of the world, coming into view?

Solar cataclysm (for shortwave radio folks) is happening right now.

The red shows the absorption of radio waves around the globe, with the center in the current sub-solar point (where it is noon).

We have "R3" radio blackout conditions.  (All from http://www.swpc.noaa.gov)

In addition to this, we have a "CME" (coronal mass ejection) of high-speed charged particles generated by a previous flare event that is supposed to hit us today, causing a geomagnetic storm that should further screw up the HF airwaves.  You probably won't lose your electric power, however, but you might get to see the aurora borealis tonight -- if it's not raining cats and dogs.

And, there are big thunderstorms outside.

And, there are two big hurricanes out there somewhere -- not in New England (yet) fortunately for us.

And lots of trouble coming from DC and some other world capitals.

Flex Remote @ ARRL HQ

After a false start or two, we finally have Flex Radio's Version 2 SSDR software running.  It enables easy internet remote operation from wherever, using my Flex 6500 radio installation at home and the Maestro controller.

My first successful test was using an "outside" test internet connection via my Nexus 5X cell phone in "tethering" mode, while I was still at home.  It was convenient to have both local and remote sides of the connection on my operating desk.  (With my data plan, I estimate the hourly running cost for remote service is about $6/hour with standard settings and not minimizing bandwidth.)

Today, we are set up in the ARRL headquarters site in Newington CT, about 40 miles from home as the crow flies.  Everything seems to be working well.  "59" reports from Switzerland and Spain.

At home, I have the Flex 6500 controlling the tuning of my SteppIR 3-element beam (fixed on Europe), so I can remotely operate from 20 meters down to 6 meters.  Unfortunately, there is no remote pointing control -- yet.  Also, no integration with digital modes or my logging system.  One step at a time.

What we were doing in the 80's (VLBI)

Arthur Niell, Marshall Cohen, David Rogstad, and Martin Ewing, ca 1982

See full photo album.

PDP-11s were hot.  Helical scan video recording was just the thing for recording high-speed radio interferometer (VLBI) data.  In a Caltech-JPL collaboration, we built what was then the largest correlator to process data streams from up to 5 telescopes at once -- providing correlations (fringes) between all 10 pairs.   Getting any fringes at all required delicate synchronization of the telescopes (Loran C timing and Hydrogen maser frequency standards).  Geometric corrections were tricky, too. You had to know the baselines between telescopes accurately, giving the delay and doppler frequency offsets.   To manage all this, we had MSI-TTL logic, core memories, a PDP-11/40, and Forth software.  The hardest part -- keeping those tape machines running!  They were modified IVC and Ampex helical scan recorders, semi-professional.  A later version of the system used standard consumer VHS recorders, which were just becoming available.

One bit sampling was the choice for best signal-to-noise ratio on a broadband "continuum" radio source.

All this came to light again when I started digging into some old files.

When all else fails...

My Keuffel & Esser Decilon 10, model 68-1100 slide rule.  There are lots of K&E sites. For example, this one.