The Long-Awaited Reciprocal Permit Feels Like an Anticlimax

When we last left your hero (me!) in No Wonder Ham Radio in Costa Rica Is a Deadster, he (I) had been wading and waiting through a process for a reciprocal operating permit from the telecommunications powers-that-be for about seven months, which ended in them telling me there were in fact several other steps yet to be taken and I should expect another four months of waiting.

The waiting is the hardest part ...

Well, four months plus I waited and then decided to ping the people who I hoped were still involved to get a status update. A few days later after my request for status via email was made, I received a plain, non-congratulatory response (not mentioning a result in the message) with an eight-page PDF attachment. Quickly scanning that document, I saw that they spelled my name correctly and in accordance with a barrel-full of cited laws and regulations I had been granted reciprocal permission to operate on the HF bands and it was signed by the President of the Republic! By the way, I did not request specifically to operate on the HF bands, but that's what they gave me. Good thing I don't own an HT ...

No Wonder Ham Radio in Costa Rica is a Deadster

As I think I mentioned here somewhere, I finally applied for reciprocity to the powers that be (there are actually two government agencies that must get involved) back in late Februrary. All done by email, so at least I didn't have to make an all-day trip to San José (yet).

There seemed to be much confusion on their end about how the whole process was going to work, even though I know for a fact that at least a couple of visiting hams were able to do this before and no rules have changed in the interim.

Finally, around the middle of March I was told that everything I'd submitted was OK and that the opaque-to-me process was rolling but that it would take five months to complete. I thought at the time "Blimey! Five months?" but being much more inured to Costa Rican bureaucracy than I was when I first came here that actually did not seem unreasonable.

The Gringo Ham Awakens from His Slumber

I'm a little embarrassed to reveal to my ham readers that it has been well over three years since I set ham radio aside ... temporarily. I'm also a little amazed at how fast that time went by. Whooosh! No, there was no sudden, severe illness or anything that interfered with my hobby. I simply got busy with other things and as the time went by, the inertia to get back in the game grew steadily.

Well, that changed about 10 days ago, when as a side-effect of a long overdue spring cleaning in my workshop, I decided to revive the station down there, which, despite being a bit dusty, was still in good working order save for the power pot on the K2. The station still looks like this: http://cloud-warmer.blogspot.com/2012/07/going-qro-setup.html 

The only real change there is a different computer and a new, 1/4-wave, window-line fed vertical on the roof. I also took down the 400' loop, which was simply than repairing it, but not an easy task in itself by any means. Even using my truck to pull the wire from the trees, I still managed to strand a 30-foot section of wire.

After many, many hours of cleaning, repairing the 200' doublet and re-installing programs and re-educating myself, that station became operable. I ran out the bugs by working a dozen or so digi-mode stations.

Homebrew Ladder Line for my 200 Foot All-band Doublet

Drilling the Zareba insulators for 14 AWG wire

After my last post, there was still another day and a half of trimming trees to get a clear path for the doublet. I cut or trimmed at least twice what I thought I was going to when I started, which came to least three pick-up loads of trimmings. It was difficult work to say the least, running up and down rough terrain and tending to the hoists at each end of the antenna, which is about 100 meters long including the support ropes. Finally, Saturday, the rope and wire had a clear shot and I was able to pull it all the way up in the clear. 

In the middle of that, I took a break to start making the homebrew ladder-line with which I would feed the doublet. 

Back of Zareba Package

As I'd mentioned in the previous posting, I ordered some Zareba (which I always remember as Zebra) fin insulators, a tip I'd picked up on an eHam page. These are small, lightweight, made from UV-stabilized polyethylene and just 10 cm long. Perfect. They come in packages of 50 for $4. I set up a quick jig on my drill press and made holes on each end 2 mm wider than the insulated 14 AWG solid conductor copper house wire I would use for the feed-line. Center to center the holes are 86 mm apart.

Argo V PSK working now, WSPR not so much

Update 2016: As my original post below notes, I was unable to get CAT to work with my Ten-Tec 516 using the default settings in the WSPR program a few years back. I just came back to that problem, did a Google search and the top 4 results were this post and my 3 queries on various reflectors on this topic, which were unanswered.

So, I took another crack at it and voilá it is now working. The default settings in WSPR are just plain wrong and here is a screen shot of the correct values to put in the user parameters:

Naturally, your choice of CAT port depends on your own PC, but all the fields below that are the ones you should choose if you have an Argonaut V longing to transmit WSPR. Judging by the lack of response to my previous queries, probably no one cares about this, hi hi, but it is now here for reference at least.

========================= Original Post ======================
Instead of guessing at the right values for a voltage divider attenuator, I wired in a 100K audio pot to the audio out line from the Ten Tec Argonaut V. Setting it right about in the middle gives me a lot more wiggle room on the Windows mic level control now. I may just use it this way or measure the values and use fixed resistors all shrink-wrapped up.

Clearly, the waterfall is now cleaned up as it should be.

Little joy on the TT516 for WSPR use, however. There the CAT control seems entirely broken. Can't change frequency, can't PTT. Just gives protocol and command rejected errors. I did manage to receive by changing frequency manually and was able to transmit using the PTT control in Flrig, but that's hardly a solution.

I've seen indirectly that a few folks have gotten it working with their Argonaut V, though. I have an e-mail out to VK4CRO to see how he did it. I hope I don't have to make up a special mic cable and trigger off DTR or RTS on the serial port directly. I wonder why the TT516 control commands don't work in WSPR 2.11 anyway. Perhaps they were never tested?

Costa Rica Call Sign Prefixes and Foreign Operating Requirements

Costa Rica's Call Sign Prefixes

Every once in a while, a radio amateur contacts me about the rules for foreign operators, which leads to the question of which call sign prefix they should use for their final destination. I don't have them memorized, they are hard to find on the Internets and I can never find a file showing them on whatever computer I'm using. So long as I can remember that I put it here, I can access it quickly and send the link to others.

The seven Costa Rica mainland call sign prefixes. TI9 is Cocos Island. Prefixes may start also with TE.

The new SUTEL radio regulations that I wrote about previously are continuing to be fleshed out. They are silent about the use of TI0 or TI1, but I assume those are reserved for clubs or special events. The latest link to Costa Rica's Amateur and CB radio regulations is here.

As of late 2014, SUTEL now has a more organized web page for Costa Rica and foreign hams.

Cocos Island - Rare DX and Great Scuba Diving

TI9 is Cocos Island, which is uninhabited except for park rangers. By the way, why such a small country needs all these different prefixes is beyond me.

 It's a dream of mine to operate from Cocos Island someday. My pile-up skills may never be adequate for manning a station at that rare DX however. I can imagine the grumbling by DX spotters already, hihi.

Additionally, it's a logistical difficulty to operate from there because visitors are not allowed to stay overnight and it's a 340 mile boat trip from Costa Rica's Pacific shore. Perhaps one could operate from a boat anchored off the island. Even if I could not manage to operate from there, the diving is supposed to be superb. Cocos Island makes worldwide top ten lists regularly for the best scuba diving destinations.

Selling a Slice of Paradise Pie in Costa Rica

Though our son's college days are still at least a couple of years away, my XYL and I decided it's a good time to add to the lad's college fund and free up some more time for other projects, so we are dividing our farm and selling pieces or the whole shebang if someone comes up with our price. We wouldn't be leaving Costa Rica in any case, however.

There's no need for me to go into the gory details here as it's all laid out on my other blog, in this post about our sale and on this fixed page that gives more details about each lot.

Special deal for hams who want to buy the house: I'll throw in my rigs and antennas at no extra charge! That would be a couple of full K2s, Ten Tec Argo V, 500W amp, lots of tuners, etc. and five antennas already up.

Can You Help Us Ship PCs to Poor Costa Rican Families?

Update: Ulis, K3LU, put us over the top on this fundraiser! Thank so much Ulis!! The campaign still has 7 days to run, so if you want to add to the pot, it would be very much appreciated. 73!

No, this is not a strictly ham radio related post, but it is kinda electronically geeky, so close enough I hope.

When we moved down to Costa Rica in late 2008, I carted down a lot of older PCs and spare parts. That was partly because some of those already worked and we'd need them and partly because I like tinkering with the old machines (well, PIIs to P4s, not 8086 boxes) and saving what most people would discard.

That side hobby morphed into a very modest program of finding or receiving donations of old PCs here, getting them to work, loading them with Lubuntu and donating them to some of the poorest, local neighbors who otherwise would not have a computer in the home. There are plenty of folks here that get by week to week and have no way to access the Internet and need the help of a PC to keep up with the other kids in school.

We need $300, minimum contribution is $1

Very recently, I decided to ask for help from my Facebook community to raise funds to defray my out-of-pocket expenses for the many spare parts I need to complete some systems, such as memory, drives, power supplies, etc. That was a roaring success. I raised the $250 I hope for in less than a week.

During that campaign, a fellow who lives in Florida told me he had 20 Core2Duo Dell desktops in working order that he had wanted to ship to Guatemala. He found the red tape too much to overcome, however, so he offered them to me if I'd pay for the shipping to Costa Rica.

I immediately contacted a shipper I know well and he agreed to waive his agency fee and give me the highest volume (lowest rate) price for this modest load. All together it comes to just $15 per PC or $300 total.

Thus, without giving folks a breather from the last campaign, I am again asking (on Kapipal) for donations to offset the shipping costs. I'll be giving the machines a thorough checkout, loading them with Lubuntu and plenty of apps and finding them homes. I qualify the recipients through trusted Tico friends, so I know they are going to families who will use them and I'll be inquiring about the need for these at local schools and libraries as well.

Long story short, can you help? Even a $1 donation helps, believe me.

Here is the link to the Kapipal campaign: http://www.kapipal.com/5d29e5ebabec4c8db18db0ffa7c1c449

I would very much appreciate it if you could share this news with your own networks.

Tnx es Vy 73!  - Casey

P.S. For a $15 or higher contribution, I'll stamp your call sign into the case of one of the new machines, hihi! :)