Please remember that the W4MQ software has been tested on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit. It does not run on any other operating system.
Okay, you have gotten the remote base software installed and configured. You have installed Skype and everything should be ready to go. We have supplied you with a password, and you have already entered and saved it in the W4MQ software, so that you don't have to remember your password every time you login to use the Handiham remote base. Now it is time to get started and make some contacts on the air. We will go over a few of the basics so that you will know what to expect when you use the remote base.
Some people have Skype set up to start running every time the computer is booted up. Others like to start Skype manually. Whichever it is for you, be sure that Skype is already running before you use the W4MQ software to initiate a connection with the remote base. That way, the W4MQ software can tell Skype to automatically make the connection to the Skype application running on the remote base station at Courage North.
Well, that is the way it is supposed to work. Sometimes what happens is that you will hear Skype making that connection, then dropping the connection almost immediately. It is not supposed to happen that way, but this is one of the known issues several of us have run into. It does not mean that you have done anything wrong; it just is a glitch in the system. If it happens, simply go back to the W4MQ software and connect to W0EQO again. Once again, you should hear Skype connecting to the remote base and hopefully this time you will hear audio from the TS-480 transceiver.
Once you hear the audio, then you know that you have successfully accessed the remote base radio and you are ready to do some listening and make some contacts. At this point, Skype was the last application doing something on your computer, so it has the computer's focus. You will quickly find this out if you try to change frequency on the radio by using the up or down arrow keys. You may just hear some tones from the Skype application. If that happens, what you need to do is regain focus on the W4MQ software, because that is what you are using to actually control the radio. Using your computer keyboard, it is easy to alt-tab through the running applications and find the W4MQ software. Once you have done that, using the up or down arrows on your keyboard will activate the VFO of the radio and you will hear the radio tell you what frequency it is on.
One question we hear is about the band sounding really dead. This can happen if the radio was last used on 75 m, but you have changed the frequency to the 20 m band so that you can listen for some DX. You might not hear any stations at all, but that does not mean that the band is dead. What you have to do is make sure that the antenna tuner is tuned for 20 m. The easiest way to do this is to change the radio's mode to AM, then to press the space bar (or use the graphical transmit button) to transmit a carrier momentarily in order for the automatic antenna tuner to tune to the correct frequency. The radio will not transmit outside the frequencies allowed for your license class, so if you hold the General Class license, the radio will not transmit in the Extra Class portion of the band. This is something to keep in mind when tuning the antenna. You should also identify your transmission.
Now you have the radio on the frequency band that you want and you have activated the automatic antenna tuner. Remember, there is no need to use the graphical antenna tuner button on the radio interface. The LDG antenna tuner that is in place at the station does all of the tuning automatically as soon as it senses transmit RF. Now that the antenna is tuned, you should be able to hear stations quite easily across the band. You can tune the radio either with the keyboard, by using the up and down arrows to go up and down in frequency, or you can use the mouse cursor to turn the graphical knob on the software interface. You can also use the keyboard to directly enter a frequency. This is sometimes the quickest way to change frequency if you know the frequency you are going to use in advance, such as a net frequency.
Using the arrow keys is also easy if you want to tune around a given frequency, moving up and down a bit. The up arrow takes you up a unit, and the down arrow takes you down a unit. You can change which unit you work with by using the left and right arrow keys. The left key moves you to larger units and the right arrow key takes you to smaller units on the radio's display. Thus, if you wanted to do really fine tuning, you would right arrow to the least significant digit in the display, then use the up and down arrows to get exactly where you want. To tune fast, you would left arrow to a more significant digit in the display, then use the up and down arrow keys as desired.
As we mentioned before, you can use the graphical transmit button or the computer keyboard spacebar to toggle between transmit and receive. You do not need to hold the spacebar down during transmit. All you do is push it once and the rig is in transmit mode until you push it again.
If you are having a QSO and you notice that there seem to be dropouts in the audio, it may be because of your Skype settings. Delays and dropouts can happen because of bandwidth issues, but in some cases the apparent dropouts are caused by the fact that Skype does not provide a full duplex audio stream. Skype appears to use a form of VOX switching between transmit and receive, which can cause the receive audio to drop whenever the microphone picks up a noise. Fortunately that's not a problem on transmit, because the audio output of the TS-480 is muted. It is possible to reduce the VOX-induced receive audio dropouts by using earphones for listening (or by reducing the speaker volume), and by going into Skype Tools, Options, Audio Settings and unchecking the box that says "Let Skype adjust my audio settings". If that box is checked, Skype will crank up the mike gain when you're not talking, which aggravates the receive audio cutouts and can also make the transmit audio sound like it's going through a compressor.
Another thing you might run into is that you want to try a QSO on 160 m or 6 m. You will quickly find out that the radio will not tune or transmit on either of those bands. The reason is that the G5RV antenna that we are using is not capable of tuning to a low enough standing wave ratio on either of those bands. We have disabled transmit on 160 and 6 m so that the radio will not be used on those bands except for receive.
There is an inactivity timeout. If you connect to the remote base and are called away from your computer for some reason, the system will sense that there is no live person at the keyboard and it will disconnect after 20 minutes.
The list of keyboard commands is very useful. Find the keyboard commands here.