QtRadio - Operation

Tuning the radio

Fixed frequency radio

For crystal locked radios such as the softrock lite II or YU1LM sdr's It is necessary to use subRx. The procedure is to set vfoA to your centre frequency, usually the crystal frequency / 4 and leave it alone as changing it will affect your centre frequency. Using the button on the vfo panel or the 'Receiver' Menu / subRx choice switch on the subRx. You can now tune within the limits of the sample rate of your sound card (48, 96 or 192 KHz).

Note that you need to start dspserver with LO offset of zero:

$ dspserver --lo 0

si570 tunable radio

In the Softrock series of hardware using sound cards, there is frequently a noise band near DC (offset 0). As such most users will set an offset of 9000 Hz (or 12000Hz etc.) using programs such as PSDR-IQ. You do the same when starting dspserver:

$ dspserver --lo 9000

Direct Down Conversion (DDC) radio

Such radios (eg. Perseus, HPSDR, usrp) do not need the offset. So start dspserver with:

$ dspserver --lo 0

Setting the noise floor

The height of the spectrum from the baseline is adjusted by rolling the mouse wheel with the pointer over the level calibration markings on the extreme left hand side of the spectrum window. This will at the same time change the base colour of the waterfall.

The procedure is: After setting the sound-card gain you should remove the antenna and roll the mouse-wheel to give a spectrum display line just above the bottom of the window. When you apply the antenna the spectrum will rise in the window and the waterfall base colour should be dark blue unless the band is particularly noisy.

Calibrating the S meter

To calibrate the S Meter, a signal equal to S9 (-73 dBm) is injected into the sdr and the soundcard gain is adjusted until the S meter reads S9. It will then probably be necessary to adjust the spectrum noise floor level.

A subjective calibration may be performed by tuning into a signal considered S9 and performing the above procedure.

Using subRx

To be constructed

The Menu choices

Receiver

Connect/Disconnect

You can connect to a server either by selecting the server in the Configure > Server list and then click Connect, or by selecting the server in the Quick Server List and click connect.

After you Disconnect from a server, you must wait at least 10 seconds for the disconnection to take full effect before connecting to another server. This is to allow the internet connection to really disconnect (remember there is network latency and the server will continue to send data till its buffers are emptied). Failure to do so will often result in error in QtRadio and may even hang QtRadio.

Quick Server List

If you see that a public server's status is "Busy", please do not connect to it. Doing so will disrupt the user already connected. If you see a server's status is "Idle" or "0 client(s)", you can connect to it. If you see "1 client(s)" or "2 client(s)" etc., you are sharing a connection to the same server. The first client is the master who has control over the vfo and Tx etc., and you will be connecting as a slave. You will only be able to listen to the audio and see the spectrum passively as an observer. When the clients before you disconnect, you will automatically become the master. This is a queuing mechanism.

Configure > Audio

If you are connecting to a public server on the Internet (ie not your own server on your LAN), please set Audio to 8000, aLaw, and 1 channel. If you use other settings, your QtRadio and/or the dspserver/server will hang.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Arrow Left/Right Tune Down/Up the active VFO
• Arrow Up/Down Increase /Decrease Step Size above
• lowercase a = VFOA
• lowercase b = VFOB
• lowercase c = Connect
• lowercase d = Disconnect
• lowercase k= Bring up Keypad entry window
• lowercase l = Bring up Quick Connect Window
• lowercase s = toggle SubRX

Using the Griffin Powermate USB Dial as VFO Knob

The Griffin Powermate USB DIal

The Griffin Powermate has a single wheel and a pushbutton, which is able to do the following actions:

1. Rotate Clockwise
2. Rotate Counterclockwise
3. Push Down and Rotate Clockwise
4. Push Down and Rotate Counterclockwise
5. Push Down
6. Long Push Down
7. Responisve Blue LED's

So we have 6 possibilities to map to keystrokes, soundcard levels and so on.

In Windows you may refer to the following Document published by FlexRadio. Install the Powermate Software for Windows and map your wanted keys.

http://support.flexradio.com/Downloads.aspx?id=47

Download Gizmod

IN Linux there is Gizmo Daemon - THE Linux Linux Input Device Utility.

Unfortunately Gizmo is no longer supported by Ubuntu and most other Linux Distributions. The last update on the Gizmo page was in 2009.

So the following Setup is experimental until we may have support for the Powermate in QtRadio or Hamlib directly.