Radio W4KAZ

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Skimming CW at W4KAZ

Note….Post dated this material to original date written…superseded by new reality…..

“All is proceeding as I have foreseen it…………..”

Been just about four years since the CW skimmer stuff really hit the contest rotary impeller. A bit of review…..

So in hindsight – I’m glad contest sponsors read my blog.  😉

Since the rule-parsing panned out to my immense satisfaction, it is easier to concentrate on the toy itself.  Since then, skimmer stations sprouted, and the Reverse Beacon Network was born.  That is a really interesting project.  Its a great tool for checking propagation, comparing station signals, and getting impartial signal reports.  Outstanding resource.

Unfortunately there is not a local skimmer station that is feeding the RBN.  Spots from MD are not always useful in Central NC.

So it with the moon in phase and the planets approaching the grand alignment, it seemed like time to look into the subject of skimming.

Options

The Skimmer software comes with a component that is designed to work with the QS1R SDR.  That combination is likely the ideal solution.  So all I need is a fast Pentium i7 Quad core, and a thousand samolies……  Great idea, just not possible.

Much more possible….Combine a few Softrocks with some cast off circa 2008 computers.  Yup, that’s the ticket.  Rather than sit on my thumbs….Engineer the Possible.  O’course, the possible is not always completely practical.  Everything is relative.  What tradeoffs are reasonable?  Engineer the Possible.

It has been done before…AC0C has documented the challenges and his solutions.  Despite the validity of his conclusions, it is now possible to cobble together a scaled down version using scrounged computer hardware.  Using softrocks, it is now very practical to put together a skimmer package for 160/80/40/20 meter bands with obsolescent computer hardware.  The price/performance ratio of the softrock is a huge factor.  If they were a mass production commodity, they would probably cost under $10.

15m and 10m may be more of a challenge, so that has been shelved for the moment.  So the softrock solution is not perfect.  But there are solutions to that too.  Future project….

The current project direction

So the game plan is to skim on 160m thru 20m using softrocks.  40m and 80m softrocks are done.  Its not going to be as professional a finished product as AC0C’s, but it should function.  Reclaimed from the off-lease refuse stream are an Dell Optiplex 745sff and a Dell optiplex 360 SDT.  Both of these boxes require low-form-factor cards.  The on-board sound of the 745 leaves something to be desired, but the 360 has an on-board sound card capable of 192khz bandwidth.  So small form factor add-in cards are needed to run skimmer on multiple bands.  Four bands on two computers.

Other Naughty Tidbits….

The Asus Xonar DG is a small form factor sound card that turned out to be a fabulous bargain. It allows only 96khz bandwidth, but has excellent dynamic range for its cost.  Sounds great with music too.  Also had an Asus Xonar DX, which is higher fidelity than the Xonar Dg, and offers 192khz bandwidth with a softrock.  The sound card issue is the real sticking point in this design, but the Xonar cards are able to coexist with the onboard SoundMax devices in the Dell boxes.

Not so much luck with a Soundblaster Live 24.  Experiments installing and using the Soundblaster were problematic.  Compatibility issues with the other sound devices and SDR software crashes. The Asus cards are much higher quality, but attempts to pair either with the soundblaster caused problems.  Attempts to install both Xonar cards in the same system were also buggy.  So the Soundblaster is sidelined for later rainy day experimentation,  the ASUS cards are each on a different host system, and it is fortunate that the onboard sound cards are useable.

The final compromise chosen was to install the 192khz Xonar DX in the Optiplex 745 that has 48khz onboard SoundMax.  The Xonar DG is installed in the Optiplex 360 that has 192khz SoundMax onboard sound.  In testing the Xonar cards work very well with all of the SDR software tested.  The SoundMax cards are noticeably less capable, but not terrible.

Mix and Match

The skimmer sessions sound card pairings in daily usage are likely to be:

  • 160m…48khz on Optiplex 745 onboard sound
  • ……………..Center@????????,Covers ?
  • 80m…..96khz on Optiplex 360 Asus Xonar DG
  • …………….Center@3533950, covers ~3485 thru 3581
  • 40m…..192 or 96khz on Optiplex 745  Asus Xonar DX
  • …………….Center@7055015, covers ~6959 thru 7151@192Khz, 7007 thru 7103@96Khz
  • 20m…..192 or 96 Khz on Optiplex 360 onboard sound
  • ……………..Center@????????,Covers ?

Those pairings should spread the CPU load somewhat.  A live test on 40m and 80m during CQ WPX should give me a benchmark for CPU loading.  CW Skimmer allows the definition of the maximum number of active decoders, and I expect to get some insight on setting those values to help moderate the load.  Currently, allowing 500-600 decoders seems workable.

During 160m contests, the 160m skimmer will likely switch to a wider bandwidth card, at least 96Khz.  The fall contest season will allow more testing to determine if the 192khz skimmers will need to be narrowed during contests or throttled by limiting the max number of decoders – maybe both.  Also, the nature of any given contest may also make temporary changes to the line-up appropriate.  But that’s the basic setup.

Using the spots

The Reverse Beacon Network Blog has info on connecting to the RBN telnet server.  Highly recommend taking their advice on filtering!  The RBN server uses DXSpider documented on DXSpider Wiki.

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