Radio W4KAZ

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It Is Alive. W4KAZ Skimmer Back In Service

After a couple of months of dead air time, the W4KAZ skimmer returned to service on 2021/4/1.  The basement area housing the skimmer station required overhauling in order to replace the leaky old water heater.  After repairs, the project to return the skimmer system to service was delayed by other issues.  Foremost issue was lack of ambition to tackle the organization project spawned by tearing apart the shack.  Oiy.

Re-Organizing

Part of the re-org was to add in a new shelf rack, and put all of the shelving on casters.  The area is also used for general storage. Being able to wheel all of the shelving out into the garage will make access easier all-around.

The skimmer SDR was also found to have a dying cooling fan, so there was some delay acquiring the replacement.  Also some of the old input feedline system was replaced. 

This was also a good chance to downsize the computer system used to run the SDR.   A “new” micro form factor system was acquired, a refurbished Dell i5 in a teeny 8x10x2 box.  That’s a huge improvement over the desktop tower sized system previously in use, and the space savings  will be appreciated.  The new system has a slew of USB ports, but little else.  The desktop box will be stored and can be swapped in if needed as a backup.

Skimming System

The skimmer as currently being run still consists of the Red Pitaya used as an SDR, with the 160m inv-L over FCP antenna system.  The new Dell system is a Dell Optiplex 3020 micro form factor equipped with a 4th generation i5-4590T processor, 12gb ram, on a win8.1 pro OS platform.   This processor is 4-core/4-threads and runs somewhat faster than the previous platform.  On a lightly used band the skimmer is humming along using about 5% of capacity.  On a heavy contest this will probably max out at about 20% CPU.  Good enough for CW skimming, but probably not too hot for RTTY.  Other SDR software has not yet been migrated to the new CPU.

The main reason for the CPU  parallel “upgrade” was the micro form factor of the acquired system.  Having the computer be the size of a SMALL cigar box is a huge convenience for a cramped shack location.  It also sports a solid state drive, which has been the single most likely point of failure for previous CPU’s installed in a somewhat humid non-climate-controlled location.  But the size is most important.  (That’s what SHE said….)

Whazzup Wit All Dat?

So now that the system is up and running, more shack clean-up and resurrection is coming.  Organizing mediocrity out of the mayhem is the plan.  But can the plan survive contact with the mayhem?  heh – probably not.

Update-20210406

  • Unexpected crash of CW skimmer ~0800Z 20210406
  • Unexected crash of skimmrsrv `0800z 20210407 (???)

 

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