The station was rounded off with a Watson Walkabout antenna mounted on a 5′ aluminium pole and a 1/4 wave wire counterpoise for 40m. However this, combined with the abysmal location in urban Coventry and low power, probably conspired to limit the number of contacts to just one – IZ3JJD in Padova on 20m.

Powering the station is a 24Ah lead acid battery which should be enough to provide power for at least 8-10 hours of continuous use if my calculations are correct. Whilst the weight of the battery would cause problems carrying the station to the top of a summit, it would not pose a problem for future camping trips. We have on hand a solar charger to trickle charge the battery during daylight hours.

Despite the single contact the exercise did highlight a number of things:

• A small low cost netbook can comfortably run a PSK-31 station without any performance issues on the part of the netbook.
• Using a smaller and lighter 7Ah battery, we could probably operate PSK-31 from a summit for around two hours.
• Walkabout antennas do work, but better in open spaces that urban environments.

Our next experiment will involve using the Snowdonia Radio Company’s HF vertical antenna as we will be able to use this on our summer holidays at the camp site we frequent (though every year the antenna has got bigger and bigger – this is probably our limit).

I’ve resurected my FT-817 since it hasn’t seen the light of day much since I stopped walking up summits a couple of years ago. It’s now being pressed in to service as a portable PSK31 transceiver alongside my new Acer Aspire One netbook.

I was a bit sceptical as to whether the small netbook, with its whimpy Intel Atom processor, would be up to the task of running PSK through its own soundcard. As a result I had intended to purchase a Tigertronics Signalink since it has a built-in sound and this would take away some of the processing from the underpowered notebook.

However, having chatted with Chris at Martin Lynch and Sons he told me he used his Asus netbook without any problems using the CG Antenna SB-2000 USB radio interface they sell.

I was further sceptical that Ham Radio Deluxe might swamp the netbook’s little processor, but Chris assured me it would be fine and that the interface is called the ‘SB’ 2000 because the interface was designed specifically to work with Simon Brown’s Ham Radio Deluxe.

So, I went ahead and purchased the SB-2000 interface.

Upon unpacking it I was a little disappointed to see that there was no mention of setting the interface up to work with Ham Radio Deluxe, especially given the ‘SB’ in the interface’s model name. However, I needn’t have bothered. Everything was hooked up, the SB-2000 was successfully powered by the netbook and Ham Radio Deluxe loaded fine and allowed me to control the FT-817 from the netbook without problem.

The digital modes software, DM780, also loaded and successfully received a PSK31 signal straight away. However, I couldn’t get the SB-2000 to kick the FT-817 into transmit mode to be able to send transmit PSK31 signals. I tried using the pseudo serial port that the SB-2000 driver creates but couldn’t because HRD was using it to control the radio. Switching DM780 to trigger the radio’s transmit mode via the soundcard similarly failed spectacularly. Then I remembered that you can run an IP server in HRD that enables other software to access the functions of the radio via HRD. DM780, despite being part of Ham Radio Deluxe is such a seperate program and, having found the help article on Simon’s web site and following it I was up and running, transmitting in no time at all.

So far, impressions are good, though the proof of the pudding will be when we start operating at the weekend.

COMPAQ EVO – 1.6GHz Pentium 4, 640Mb of RAM, fast 18Gb SCSI hard disk, dedicated graphics, sound card, 2 x serial (useful for radio control and data modes), 1 parallel, 2 x USB, network, CD-ROM, spare 5.25″ expansion bay, SCSI card with external device connector. Can be used as desktop or mini tower, genuine Windows XP licence with fresh SP3 (latest version) install. Good condition. £20.

COMPAQ EVO – 1.6GHz Pentium 4, 640Mb of RAM, 30Gb hard disk, dedicated graphics, sound card (ports on front and back), serial (useful for radio control and data modes), 1 parallel, 4 x USB (2 x on back, 2 x on front), network, DVD-ROM. Small form factor desktop, though I used it on it’s side with no problems. Genuine Windows XP licence with fresh SP3 (latest version) install. Good condition. £20.

Please note that all these items are base unit only – no extras.

ACER TRAVELMATE 2300 LAPTOP – 1.5GHz Celeron (later low power version equivalent to 2.8GHz standard chip), 2Gb of RAM, 40Gb hard disk, Intel graphics, sound card, 3 x USB, PCMCIA slot, network, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo, modem, decent battery, charger/power supply, case. Genuine Windows XP licence with fresh SP3 (latest version) install. A few scratches on the case but good runner. £120.

TOSHIBA SATELLITE A60 LAPTOP – 2.8GHz Celeron, 1.2Gb of RAM, 40Gb hard disk, sound card, ATi Radeon graphics, 3 x USB, Firewire, InfraRed, Parallel, PCMCIA slot, network, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo, modem, decent battery, charger/power supply, case. Genuine Windows XP licence with fresh SP3 (latest version) install. Near mint condition. £100.

Sorry, can’t post, collection only.

Apricot PC

Apricot produced stylish computers that worked, most of the time. Take the Apricot PC, it featured a lovely little base unit that incorporated a folding lid over the floppy disk drives to keep those ugly slots and eject buttons from the public. The screen was small, unlike the huge monsters that sat atop of the IBM PC, the keyboard incroporated an LCD display and could be used as a desktop calculator and it was one of the first desktop computers to feature a trackerball, let alone a mouse. This resulted in a machine that looked great on the Managing Directors desk, and probably did nothing more than sit on the MD’s desk since few MDs in those days were interested in computers and thought of them more as a status symbol on their desk.

Apricot Picobook

Anyway, I digress. Apricot was bought by Mitsubishi in the 1990s and the brand was slowly laid to rest – leaving the market for attractive and desirable computers to Apple. However, the brand was recently bought by one Shahid Sultan and it’s first new PC, the Apricot Picobook, has been released. No, it’s not stunningly good looking, in fact it looks like twenty other ultra portable Windows/Linux PCs. It doesn’t use any advanced technology, it shuns Intels latest range of Atom processors for an elderly Via C7 chip, but it does boast a long battery life of around 4 hours. Time will tell, but it does compete with well established models from the likes of Acer and Asus – is there room in the market for a product trading on a name that most of the modern industry doesn’t remember?

Useful links: Apricot Computers, Old Computers.com,  ACT/Apricot