Being an amateur radio operator (or HAM-radio operator) I need to use electronic devices with as low radio emissions as possible in order to keep a low noise level on the shortwave bands (or HF-bands). I found out that my Cisco RV160 router was one of the major sources of radio noise (RFI or Radio Frequency Interference) in my home. It turned out it was easily fixed as the culprit was not the router in itself, but it’s power supply.
The router runs on 12 volts DC (original power supply rated up to 1,5A) which is often available in the ham schack already. So in that case, get rid of the original power supply and hook up the router to your 12 volts DC supply in the shack. In my case, the router was located in another part of the house so I just replaced the power supply with another, transformer based power supply. In my case, a Mascot 6823, rated for 12 volts DC, 1A (intermittently up to 1,3A). Even though not the same amp rating as the original, it seems to be sufficient.
For what it is, I think the HyEndFed 5 band antenna works very well. The location where I am using it is my wife’s house so there has been some careful negotiations taking place. 🙂 If it was up to me, a 24 meter tower with several beam antennas in the top would be a reasonable choice. But since it was not my decision I had to go for something more low key, stealthy approach.
The property is about 30×36 meters with one high fur tree along one of the sides. A reasonable way of installing a wire antenna is between the roof of the house and the tree. Distance between them is about 26 meters. I wanted to work the HF bands, including 80 meters, but for 26 meters a multiband dipole was out of the question since 2 x 19 meter is too large. I used Google Maps in satellite view to measure the distance between the tree and the house where the other end of the antenna was going to be.
Using Google Maps to measure the distance between the tree and the house for my End Fed Half Wave antenna.
So I started to look into End Fed Half Wave antennas. This would be very practical as one of the end points of the antenna is on the house. My choice fell on HyEndFed 5-band MK3 for 10/15/20/40/80 meters as this antenna has a length of 23 meters.
The order and delivery was super smooth and quick but I was surprised by the 4% card fee HyEnd company charged. According to my dutch wife, this is very common practise in the Netherlands where HyEnd company is located, but I think they should reconsider this when going on an international market.
The product looks high quality and I ordered the one with mounting plate and strain relief option. The antenna is rated for 200 watts SSB but note, that for CW and digital modes, the limit is only 35 watts! If you want to run these modes, you might want to consider another antenna. On their website, the specifications only mention the SSB limits (“Max. Power : 200 watt PEP, SSB.”). I think they should also be clear about the CW and digital modes limits and mention them in the online specifications!
When delivered, the antenna only needs to be adjusted for the 80 meter band. As delivered it will be resonant at about 3550 kHz. Shortening the 80 meter part of the wire by 1 cm will raise the resonance frequency about 4 kHz. This is mentioned in the supplied installation papers. You should cut the antenna to make it resonant on the frequency where you plan to use it the most on 80 meters. It is also recommended to use an antenna tuner on 80 meters in order to be able to use the entire band.
The antenna ready for installation. Note: the spring is not included. It was added by me.
After making a temporary mount of the antenna at approximately 4 meters (later on it will slope from about 10 to 6 meters height), I tuned in on 20 meters, heard a station from Slovenia calling CQ. I got immediate response and a 59 report. Checking the output power on my radio, it was set to only 20 watts. Looks promising.
The wire is discrete so it is a perfect antenna for “stealthy” installations. The fact that my wife didn’t notice the antenna until after 2 days in place seems to proove this. 🙂
When the feeding point is above 2 meters over the ground, no grounding of the antenna is needed but you should put a wave trap on the coax line with at least 4,2 meters of coax between the antenna box and the wave trap.
But even though I used a wave trap I got problems with HF going into my PC making sparkling noices while transmitting on 80 meters outside the resonant frequency (using a matchbox). This was easy resolved by purchasing a 1,5 meter copper ground rod that I drove into the ground and grounded my radios as well as the chassie of the PC.
Note: Do not connect the ground nut on the antenna box and the radios/pc to the same ground rod simultaneusly. This will overlap the wave trap and you will get HF into the shack, onto your radios and PC.
I’ll add more to this article when it is in final position and when I have worked more QSO:s on it. So far it is looking good though.
EDIT: After writing this article, I decided to replace it with a 8 band EFHW antenna.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2021-08-01 10:41:252022-07-06 12:36:07My experience with HyEndFed 10/15/20/40/80 meter 5 band antenna MK3 End Fed Half Wave antenna
By connecting your amateur radio rig using a CAT/CI-V interface to Cloudlog you save a lot of work by getting frequency, mode etc directly from the rig into Cloudlog. This is how you do it using a Windows computer. The computer must be located where the radio is as it will be physically connected via the CAT/CI-V interface to the readio. Cloudlog is normally run on a web server on the Internet, i.e. not necessarily on the computer by the radio (hence the name, Cloudlog ;).
This is a very nice setup if you are running your station remotely. When logging into Cloudlog from a computer on your remote location, you can still get realtime frequency, mode etc from the radio into Cloudlog.
In Cloudlog, click on your callsign (at right in the menu) and go to API keys. Create a new API key and copy it.
Go to CloudLogCAT, find the latest release, download it and install it
Run CloudLogCAT and go to Settings -> CloudLog. Enter your Cloudlog website URL and API key from step 1 above. Click Save.
Go to Settings -> OmniRig. OmniRig window will now open. Select your radio, com port and speed. Save by clicking OK.
If all worked well, frequency, mode etc will be syncing to Cloudlog.
In Cloudlog, you can click on your callsign (at right) and select Hardware Interfaces. After a couple of seconds your OmniRig connection should show up.
You can now select this radio under Station / Radio when logging QSO:s.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2021-07-30 11:50:372021-07-30 12:00:29Connect ham radio rig to Cloudlog (Windows)
I lost my password to my Cloudlog and there is no “forgotten password” built in. I did not succeed by setting $config[‘use_auth’] = false so this is how I did it.
In the root directory of your Cloudlog installation, create a file called pw.php with the following content (edit the $password variable to the password you want in clear text):
Devolo Magic 2 wifi is a series of products made to create a mesh wifi network in your home with multiple wifi accesspoints connected to the router over the powerline network. It can sometimes be difficult to obtain a reliable, stable connection of the powerline as noise in the powerline can interfere.
This is how I make it as stable as possible.
Do not connect the powerline adapter via an extension cord. It should be connected directly to the outlet.
Try to find outlets as close to the fuse box as possible. Especially for the unit connected to the router, because this unit will need to communicate well with all other units on the network.
If possible, connect the units to outlets that belongs to the same phase. Even though connection over different phases should be possible, it gives lower throughput and more unreliable connection.
If possible, use grounded outlets only. This will make it possible for the device to use MIMO technology instead of instead of SISO. MIMO gives higher throughput and is more reliable. Screenshots: SISO mode (left) compared to MIMO mode (right).
In the powerline configuration, deselecting Automatic compatibility mode (recommended) * and choosing VDSL 17a (default) seems to be most reliable for me. (In automatic mode the unit sometimes gets very poor connection and needs to be rebooted in my case.)
The kit came with one router unit and two client units. After a while I was moving things around and for a while I was only going to need coverage where one of the client units where located so I disconnected the other. Now, the wifi connection became very unstable for the clients, even though they were very close to the remaining unit. I just reconnected the disconnected Devolo unit and voila – the wifi connection became much more stable. Is it built into the design that there should be at least two Devolo units up and running?
Powerline ethernet and RFI
As an active radio amatuer (aka “ham”), I am very keen on using equipment that are not causing radio interference (RFI). The Devolo units seems to stay well out of amatuer radio shortwave bands, but on citizens band (CB, or 27 MHz), that is not the case. Heavy RFI can be heard on the 27 MHz band.
Powerline ethernet / home plug and amateur radio
The above statement concerns listingening on the shortwave. If you are a ham or radio amateur transmitting on the shortwave bands you probably should just forget powerline ethernet / home plug systems. My Devolo just died with a 100% packet loss when I was transmitting on 20, 40 or 80 meter bands. In my case, I had to get rid of the powerline ethernet system and installed a ethernet twisted pair network using shielded twisted pair cables (SFTP) grounding all ends of the cables. Well worth the trouble and the noise levels actually decreased overall when doing this.
A client was about to renew one of their SSL certificates and the provider requested them to add a CAA DNS-record for the provider. The client already had one CAA DNS-record for another provider in their domain, becuase they where using different providers of SSL certificates for different purposes in their organization.
The CAA DNS-record for the provider in question was added but the provider said they couldn’t issue the certificate as long as there was another CAA DNS-record present. The provider claimed there can only be one CAA DNS-record present in the domain.
The provider might be correct in the sense of that the provider’s system can’t handle multiple CAA records but multiple CAA records is not a violation of the RFC! It is just the provider who can’t handle it and makes it the customers problem.
This might be a simple way of obstructing the client in using the provider’s competitors but the provider is not correct in their statement. According to RFC8659 there are no limitations in the number of CAA DNS-records in one domain. The provider should just look for their CAA DNS-record in the client domain DNS-records and ignore competitors records.
This is beacuse mysql server 5.7 have changed the the date time default field 0000-00-00 00:00:00 options. You can only have one field with the value 0000-00-00 00:00:00. Where fore you have to change the default indata mask to.
datetime NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘1000-01-01 00:00:00’ or timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
exampel ALTER TABLE testdate CHANGE datestart datestart DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘1000-01-01 00:00:00’;
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Erik Svenssonhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngErik Svensson2021-05-18 18:25:052021-05-18 18:25:05ERROR 1067 (42000) at line xxx: Invalid default value for ‘field’
If the module selection list in the module assignment is broken, i.e. the tool for select / deselect of sub menu items is missing and the layout is generally garbled, the cause can be a menu item in the menu above that is listed as a child item but has no parent.
Go the the menu items for the last menu that is working. A menu item which has a missing parent has one or more leading vertical bars before the menu item name (instead of the leading dash which is the normal indication of a child item).
Just open the menu item and save it.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2021-05-15 11:14:502021-05-15 11:14:51Joomla! module assignment list is broken
The easiest way to get multiple time conditions in FreePBX is to daisy chain them. A common scenario is to have a standard time condition for normal opening hours and in addition to that, time conditions for holidays occuring on normal weekdays, like christmas and new year for example.
Create one time group for normal opening hours, for example monday to friday 08.00-17.00.
Create one time condition for the normal opening hours, using the above time group. If time matches, connect the destination to the open IVR or queue. If time doesn’t match, connect it to a closed IVR or a voice message saying you’re closed. This is going to be the last time condition in the chain.
Create time groups for each of the holidays. If time matches, connect the destination to a voice message saying you’re closed. If time condition doesn’t match connect it to the next time condition. Remember, the last time condition in the chain should be the one for normal opening hours.
Connect the inbound route to the first time condition in your chain.
Inbound route -> Time condition for holiday 1 -> Time condition for holiday 2 -> Time condition for normal opening hours
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2021-05-14 07:21:312021-05-15 07:54:15FreePBX multiple time conditions
login to mysql shell as root. locate the database where the tables are situated. SET @DATABASE_NAME = ‘name_of_your_db’; // name_of_your_db = the database you want to change table engine. SELECT CONCAT(‘ALTER TABLE ', table_name, ' ENGINE=InnoDB;’) AS sql_statements FROM information_schema.tables AS tb WHERE table_schema = @DATABASE_NAME AND ENGINE = ‘MyISAM’ AND TABLE_TYPE = ‘BASE TABLE’ ORDER BY table_name DESC; The result will end up in a list of the tables that needs to be changed. Copy the list and do the following. Shift to the database involved:
USE name_of_your_db START TRANSACTION; insert the copied list COMMIT; You have now changed the engine of the tables.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Erik Svenssonhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngErik Svensson2021-05-14 00:12:212021-05-14 10:58:16How to change mysql table engine MyISAM to InnoDB
