The dark side of duplex

Happy Dayz said:
I'd not thought of that angle tbh

My dad waa a door to door insurance agent for Royal London, had to do a claim where a model plane flew seems out of radio range. Carried on unil fuel ran out. It landed crashing through an open 1st floor flats window, skidded across table parting people were eating, and ended up in a glass display cabinet.

Fortunately nobody hurt, but fairly shocked. Model had the owners details on it.

Can't say if it was down to pilot error, radio failure or interference from private wireless operations, the current popularity of drones will likely increase such events - perhaps they will take selfies?

Alan
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I was an ardent reader of "Practical Electronics" for much of my teenage years, and model radio control was a fairly regular feature. The letters pages often carried diatribes from radio control people about the misuse of the 27MHz band!
 
I actually held a "licence" for illegal CB on 27Mhz. At NATS we were investigating interference to the ILS system (1984?) at Heathrow and were issued through the Home Office with a pair of American "President" CBs, some DF kit and a set of paperwork to show the police why we were hanging around the glidepath. This came after pilots were reporting voices being heard on the ILS. (108Mhz is the 4th Harmonic of 27Mhz). We didn't find any significant interference if I recall.
 
elton said:
Sorry, I can't remember where I read it, but I find it works if I:


  1. Plug the cable into the PC.
  2. Plug the other end into the radio.
  3. Wait for the PC to acknowledge a new USB device (it will recognise the plug).
  4. Turn on the radio.
  5. Start Chirp.
  6. Download channel data from the radio, into Chirp.
  7. Either load a new file into Chirp, or modify the data it loaded from the radio.
  8. Upload to the radio.
  9. Turn off the radio.
  10. Unplug the radio from the cable.
  11. Unplug the other end from the pc.

Step 6 is essential, and often overlooked. It tells Chirp that the radio is compatible,
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I couldn't get the USB cable to work no matter what I tried, so I found a circuit on the Internet for a serial cable, I cut the USB plug off and made up the serial plug, found an old laptop with a serial port and job done.
 
DannyB said:
I couldn't get the USB cable to work no matter what I tried, so I found a circuit on the Internet for a serial cable, I cut the USB plug off and made up the serial plug, found an old laptop with a serial port and job done.
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Well done!

I knew the interface is serial, but I'd never have expected it to conform to RS232 in any way. I thought it was just some proprietary hack, to save money on sockets!
 
DannyB said:
I couldn't get the USB cable to work no matter what I tried, so I found a circuit on the Internet for a serial cable, I cut the USB plug off and made up the serial plug, found an old laptop with a serial port and job done.
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I did read somewhere that to get the USB to work you would need one of the old Prolific USB to Serial drivers.
 
Giblets said:
I did read somewhere that to get the USB to work you would need one of the old Prolific USB to Serial drivers.
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I must admit, I couldn't get it to recognise the USB lead under Ubuntu. Instead I installed it on my Windows Vista virtual machine, under Ubuntu. Bit of a kludge but it does the job.
 
Giblets said:
I did read somewhere that to get the USB to work you would need one of the old Prolific USB to Serial drivers.
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I'm nipping over to Cherbourg shortly for the SB Weekend Bash but will have a hunt on my return to find the article that I read about the Profile driver and post up a link.

Elton, have you got a link for the site you bought the USB-to-radio cable that you mentioned earlier please.
 
elton said:
Ok, try this. Copy and paste it into a .csv file, then upload it to the radio. Good luck.

0,COASTGU,156.000000,,0.000000,,88.5,88.5,023,NN,FM,5.00,S,,,,,
1,TELEPHO,156.050000,+,4.600000,,88.5,88.5,023,NN,FM,5.00,,,,,,
2,TELEPHO,156.100000,+,4.600000,,88.5,88.5,023,NN,FM,5.00,,,,,,
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Got one of these radios to play around with. Have got to the point of uploading to Chirp to alter upload image but not sure which headers I need to use for your csv file. Channel, name and frequency obviously but what is the "+" etc?
 
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dgadee said:
Got one of these radios to play around with. Have got to the point of uploading to Chirp to alter upload image but not sure which headers I need to use for your csv file. Channel, name and frequency obviously but what is the "+" etc?
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I understand the header has to be exactly the same as what would be downloaded from the radio. ie when you download from the radio, you end up with an image of how it's programmed, and that's where the header comes from. As I recall, the + could be a + or -, followed by an offset, and that's how to tell the radio what the offset frequency is for a duplex channel.
 
elton said:
I couldn't be sure how to give a direct link to the item without including details of my account, but I bought it from "zhuz's shop" on Amazon,
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Copy the 10-digit ISBN (books only) or ASIN from theAmazon Product Details. Either paste that here, or if you want to make a link (and you are feeling generous), paste it into the Amazon Link Maker box at http://www.bavariayacht.info/support.htm then copy the resulting URL from the new window. Totally anonymous.
 
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