How to - HF Propagations and Solar predictions on Ubunu

Here is link to this good site and good "How to" guide for installation.
HF propagations and Solar predictions on your Ubuntu

Welcome to your new home

Yesterday new receiver has arrived in my home: Icom 706 MKII .
Got it from a friend of mine that wasn't using it for over a year.
In a good condition, maintaned and keep well.
Well, maybe this is start of something new. Z3FF, BOTA, SOTA, who knows :)
I wish to everyone to have such a pleasant surprise and good unit.
73

HBR4HF my radio

After a longer period finally I managed to start work with my HBR4HF radio station. Declared as 25-30W , Bitx based radio, 3.5-7-10-14 MHz SSB/CW together with HF-P1 antenna and MFJ 971 ATU I tried to make some QSO's in past period. Unfortunately, not so much experienced in field activities, with lot of difficulties I managed to make my first contacts.
I must admit I was little bit unprepared for such activity and I failed. Well, RA life is made of failures and sucesses, so no dissapointed at all.
I must say, I have great satisfaction about this radio and I warmly suggest this radio as a good startup equiment for every RA.

If somebody want to buy it, he/she can go to Hambuilder's site and make an order.

The only negative side is maybe lack of technical documentation but I suppose designer of this radio will manage this problem also.

Weekend is coming and I hope I will continue to make new contacts with my equiment, mostly in portable mode.

Stay well,
73
Z34PEC

How to work with HAM satellites

Browsing the web, I stopped to this interesting blog site, also HAM oriented. It's name is AMSAT-UK and they have so much interesting texts.
Here is link to one of their blogswritten for communication with satelites with given frequencies and shifts.
AMSAT-UK how to work with HAM satelites.
Enloy,
Z34PEC

Vellman CW (Morse) decoder

Couple of days ago a friend of mine post add, selling his almost new Vellman cw decoding kit. I miss a moment so my other friend bought it. Today he make a post on FB that show this thing actually work despite all bad copies made from China :)
I google a little and I found schematics for this great cw (morse) decoder so I decided do make a "footprint" of it on my blog.
I hope someone will find it and use it and find it interesting too.
Enjoy.
Z34PEC

Rooting ASUS Zenpad C7.0 (Z170C and Z170CG)

Hello,
Finally after more than a year of trying to make my ASUS Zenpad C7.0 Z170CG rooted I finally make it.
I succeed it under Ubuntu 16.04 as much more easier process than under Windows (no need for installing drivers for your Asus Zenpad).

I also have to say that this procedure is also working for Z170C version of Asus Zenpad C7.0.


Thanks to this guy

https://blog.stigok.com/post/unlock-bootloader-asus-zenpad-z170cg-p01y

and this manual on XDA Developers

https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/rooting-roms/asus-zenpad-c-7-0-p01y-root-method-t3567274

I rooted my device. Must say every credit goes to these guys not me. I just summarise the whole procedure at one place.

Update: DL Link to IMG File :

https://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3640170&d=1455053113



So, the procedure is following:

A. Install ADB and FASTBOOT

After installing you have to do 2 things on your device:

A-1. Enable USB Debugging
A-2. Revoke USB Debugging authorisations

The second one activate question should you allow access to your computer on your Zenpad. Answer positive and remember this with check box.
Now you have done right and no info in your terminal that it is Not Authorised (or something similar) while working

B. Connect your Asus device on USB, and allow everything asked on the screen.

C. The main procedure:

- Connect your device in Terminal:
    sudo adb devices
    List of devices attached
    HELLOWORLDSECRETSERIAL    device

- Reboot into fastboot

sudo adb reboot fastboot

- Unlock bootloader

sudo fastboot oem asus-go

THis will result in following response:
...
(bootloader)  Unlocking the bootloader means the following:
(bootloader)  All user data will be deleted
(bootloader)  Any securely stored data will be inaccessible
(bootloader)  Warranty will be void
(bootloader)  After unlocking you have to execute
(bootloader)  > fastboot format userdata
(bootloader)  > fastboot format cache
(bootloader)  or carry out a factory reset from recovery
(bootloader)  To confirm the unlock, please execute the command
(bootloader)  > fastboot oem unlock confirm
OKAY [  0.057s]
finished. total time: 0.057s

- Confirm unlocking

sudo fastboot oem asus-go confirm

And as a result you will get
...
(bootloader)  Unlocking and rebooting into unlocked state
OKAY [  0.070s]
finished. total time: 0.070s

- Get a var dump for later (copy this to some TXT file)

sudo fastboot getvar all

Result is something like this:

(bootloader)  version-baseband: 24832
(bootloader)  version-bootloader: 1638.500_M1S1
(bootloader)  product: SF_3GR
(bootloader)  secure: YES
(bootloader)  unlocked: YES
(bootloader)  off-mode-charge: 1
(bootloader)  ========== parition type ==========
(bootloader)  system parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  userdata parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  cache parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  hypervisor parition type: raw
(bootloader)  boot parition type: raw
(bootloader)  recovery parition type: raw
(bootloader)  splash parition type: raw
(bootloader)  mvconfig parition type: raw
(bootloader)  secvm parition type: raw
(bootloader)  vrl parition type: raw
(bootloader)  psi parition type: raw
(bootloader)  slb parition type: raw
(bootloader)  ucode_patch parition type: raw
(bootloader)  APD parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  ADF parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  factory parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  nvm_static_calib parition type: raw
(bootloader)  nvm_static_fix parition type: raw
(bootloader)  nvm_dynamic parition type: raw
(bootloader)  linux_nvm_fs parition type: ext4
(bootloader)  ===================================
(bootloader)  ========== parition size ==========
(bootloader)  system parition size: 0x0000000090000000
(bootloader)  userdata parition size: 0x00000002f0380000
(bootloader)  cache parition size: 0x0000000017200000
(bootloader)  hypervisor parition size: 0x0000000000100000
(bootloader)  boot parition size: 0x0000000001100000
(bootloader)  recovery parition size: 0x0000000001100000
(bootloader)  splash parition size: 0x0000000002080000
(bootloader)  mvconfig parition size: 0x0000000000080000
(bootloader)  secvm parition size: 0x0000000000c00000
(bootloader)  vrl parition size: 0x0000000000040000
(bootloader)  psi parition size: 0x0000000000020000
(bootloader)  slb parition size: 0x0000000000100000
(bootloader)  ucode_patch parition size: 0x0000000000003000
(bootloader)  APD parition size: 0x0000000009600000
(bootloader)  ADF parition size: 0x0000000000100000
(bootloader)  factory parition size: 0x0000000000900000
(bootloader)  nvm_static_calib parition size: 0x0000000000800000
(bootloader)  nvm_static_fix parition size: 0x0000000000100000
(bootloader)  nvm_dynamic parition size: 0x0000000000100000
(bootloader)  linux_nvm_fs parition size: 0x0000000000500000
(bootloader)  ===================================
(bootloader)  max-download-size: 0x3cc00000
all:
finished. total time: 0.261s

- Continue booting the device normally

sudo fastboot reboot

D. Upload IMG file to your device and enjoy :) . Your device is unlocked in less than a 5 minutes.
Note: You must reconnect the device again as in step B

sudo adb devices
sudo adb reboot fastboot
sudo fastboot boot "<path to your IMG file>/root-z170c_cg.img"

- Now device will reboot and you can install roo tcheck and Superuser applications.


Link to IMG file is given in XDA Developers site at the beginning of this text.

See ya.

Regards,
Z34PEC

P.S. If you can't download IMG file, please post here with your email and I will send it to you.
It is planned to attach it as a public file. PLease be patient.

How to install SDR Sharp on Ubuntu 16.04 and 17.10

Hi everyone.
I decided to start my blog just to help world wide HAM comunity with solutions for some problems I faced myslef during installation of various software un my Ubuntu 16.04 PC.
This first post is about how to install SDR SHARP and to work with RTL USB dongle under Ubuntu 16.04.
I must say that this is not my own solution for this problem. I found it on Internet and it is posted by Mr. Michael Hirsch, Ph.D. Boston, MA (his own site).
I just wanted to make a trace for this solution and make it easy for every one when searching the web  for this problem and solution for it.
So here is original link: SDR Sharp on Ubuntu 16.04 

And here is also whole procedure also, in short steps:

1. Install SDR# prereqs

apt install mono-complete libportaudio2 librtlsdr0 librtlsdr-dev

2. Build SDR#

git clone https://github.com/cgommel/sdrsharp
cd sdrsharp
xbuild /p:TargetFrameworkVersion="v4.5" /p:Configuration=Release

3. Softlinks help your Mono executable find the audio libraries

cd Release

ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libportaudio.so.2 libportaudio.so

ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librtlsdr.so.0 librtlsdr.dll

And finally the last step:

5. Run SDR

mono SDRSharp.exe

 Well, it is not over :) When you run like this you will probably get notice that access to specific path where SDR Sharp is installed is denied.
No problem. Just run in SUDO mode and voila, it is alive :)

sudo mono SDRSharp.exe


Note: Ignore warning messages during startup.

 Mr. Michael suggest to set audio buffer to 200ms, sample rate to 2.048Mbps . I tried and I must say that it run much better and precise at 2.4 Mbps. When I first run at sugested settings I noticed frequency offset so high (for example I receive 89,1 MHz FM and my SDRSharp show 94 MHz (or similar) ) so I just change to 2.4Mbps and everything goes well.

Quick note:

Find library paths
In general you can find the path(s) to a Linux library by:

dpkg -L libportaudio2

Thank you Mr. Michael for this solution .


73
Z34PEC