Some Vertical Antenna Experiments

On my second QTH  I have a vertical antenna (Hustler 4BTV) placed directly on the ground. It works amazing but has only 7, 14, 21 and 28 MHz.

Because I dont want to spend the money for add-on's, I wondered if I could put some tuned elements in paralell.

The first experiment was to add 6m. The resonator was made from two Al pipes and worked excellent for more than a year.

Therefore, I stepped to "Phase Two" of the project, adding 17m band and 80m band.

The resonators was from a discontinued antenna.

From left to right: Main antenna>6m resonator>17m resonator

The 80m resonator clipped on the main resonator.

80m resonator - detail

First impressions:

-The SWR is excellent in 17m band, covering the whole band with less than 1,7:1. Some USA stations heard this evening (15:00 UTC, 8 April 2018)

-The SWR in 80m is 1,5:1 between 3700 kHz - 3730 kHz. A lot or Russian stations and weak YO stations. No good NVIS despite the resonator being horizontal!

NODEMCU v1.0 ESP-12 default pins

I2C

I2C can be used to connect up to 127 nodes via a bus that only requires two data wires, known as SDA and SCL.

• SDA=4 => D2.
• SCL=5 => D1

SPI

SPI is much simpler than I2C. Master and slave are linked by three data wires, usually called MISO, (Master in, Slave out), MOSI (Master out, Slave in) and M-CLK.

• M-CLK => D5
• MISO => D6
• MOSI => D7

(SPI Bus SS (CS)is D8.)

I found it here: https://steve.fi/Hardware/nodemcu-pins/

Flashing ESP8266 firmware problem-solved!

I was playing with a Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 breakout board and somehow I screw it, leaving it into an undefined "load programm" state.

Tried to reflash it with NodeMCU formware programmer under Windows 7 environment but no success... The flashing stops somwhere around 4000 B upload and sent a failure message then stops.

The programmer was a FTDI USB to TTL programmer set on 3V logic.

After two days of wondering what is wrong and trying various combinations of hardware, I found a lot of comments somewhere about the same problem.

The solution is simple and involve a tweak on the COM port settings.

1. Go to DEVICE MANAGER and find the USB Serial Port under the PORTS.
2. Click right and select PROPERTIES.
3. Go to PORT SETTINGS tab then ADVANCED.
4. Set RECEIVE (BYTES) from 4096 to 512.
5. Click OK whenever is asked to get out from that settings.
6. Connect FTDI USB to TTL adapter set on 3V to the Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 breakout board 
7. Start NodeMCU formware programmer, go to ADVANCED, check for baudrate to be 115200, 4MByte, 80 MHz, DIo.
8. Go to CONFIG and load the proper bin.
9. On the ESP board, push GPI0 button, keep it pushed then push  RESET.  Release RESET then GPI0. The ESP8266 get into flashing mode.
9 Go to OPERATION and click FLASH.  The window should populate with the MAC addresses of the ESP-12 board and the programm should start and the progress bar should advance. Slow but steady!

APRS via LoRa - Links

Cateva instrumente utile pentru LoRa.
-O librarie simplificata pentru Semtech SX127x: https://goo.gl/IeEiC1 Spre deosebire de librariile RadioHead, asta este mai versatila
-O librarie pentru conversia in BAse64: https://github.com/boseji/rBASE64

CSR8635 Bluetooth Audio Module

I put here the informations about the pinouts of the CSR8635 BT audio module because it's hard to get it and I need it at different moments.

The CSR8635 QFN  is a single-chip Bluetooth 4.0  audio ROM device which targets mid-range stereo speakers and headsets.

It was launched by Cambridge Science Park but later on the company was aquired by Qualcomm.