Ham Radio – A contact sport

A few days ago the demo CD from the folks at FlexRadio arrived. Unfortunately, the CD was corrupt and missing some key files. After some emails with their support folks and a lot of experimenting, I was able to accomplish my goal: demo the PowerSDR/FlexRadio system in a CW contest environment (without actually buying the radio).

Here’s what I did:

1. Download & Install PowerSDR. The latest rev I could find was v1.18.0.
2. Setup the PowerSDR software to use “demo” as the system and for the soundcard choose unsupported.
3. Download the very large (270 MB) I/Q audio wave file from WA5QPZ. This is a I/Q recording of the CW band during Field Day apparently recorded at 192 kHz.  It can be found here:
   http://www.wa5qpz.com/_mgxroot/page_10729.html
4. Launch PowerSDR. (You may have to wait for it to initialize on the first go).
5. Under the Setup menu, choose Audio. Make sure that the primary sound card setup driver is set to Windows DirectSound and the sound card support is set to Unsupported Card. Click the Expert button. I had to experiment with some settings to get it to work… Apparently, there were some recent problems induced by Microsoft with the sound driver that can cause headaches with the demo mode (simulating the FlexRadio). On this screen, here’s what I used:
   
6. Next, load the Wave file. Choose Wave from the main screen, and add the downloaded CW Field Day file. Click Play and Loop (to have it run continuously).
7. Finally, click the Start button to launch the system.

Make sure that your panadapter is set to the 20 meter CW band. You should be able to tune around hear the Field Day CW action. Cool!

This is were I was finally able to experiment with the FlexRadio/PowerSDR setup in a contest environment. I found a spot that had a very strong CW signal and a relatively weak signal nearby. I was able to knock out the strong signal and easily copy the weak one within seconds.

I also found that I could visually scan the panadapter to “see” the action and quickly get to new ones as they appeared on the screen.

Although this was all obviously simulated, I did get a feel for the operation of the software. Of course, without a real unit it would be hard to get a good feeling for how reliable and functional this would be in a contest environment. I still have some questions: What is SO2R like with a Flex-5000? Is SO2R on the FlexRadio idiot-proof? Can spots and CW Skimmer data be shown on the panadapter so I know what I’ve worked?

There was a bit of pain involved… namely the issue of the demo installation not playing well with Windows Vista 64-bit (which does not seem to be a problem when connected to a real radio as I understand it). I also found that the PowerSDR program would simply close/crash if I did not choose a good setup.

All that said, this is a blast. I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but I’m a convert. SDR is changing the face of ham radio contesting.