Hello
Thanks for your new Software. I’m suing my IC-9700 for the SAT QO-100. Do you will support soon the SAT Mode, where I can see the 70cm (UP-Link) and 2m (Down-Link) at the same time in two waterfalls?
Best 73 de HB9RYZ
Wolfgang
Hi Wolfgang,
That feature is in the works. It’s a bit complicated as we have to re-work how we do a lot of things.
–E
two waterfalls is not supported I think in the current f/w of the rig, right, Elliot?
I haven’t tried it honestly, on the 9700. But yeah if the rig doesn’t do it then we won’t either.
I think for satellite mode, it’s really only the downlink where you’d want to see a waterfall anyway.
What I want to do is get the waterfall into “fixed” mode so that it isn’t shifting around as you tune. I want the boundaries of the WF fixed at the satellite’s passband, plus the telemetry signal, plus a little margin. The idea is to fill out that little dialog box, which is arranged pretty similar to the Gpredict box, and have wfview get your radio all set for that satellite. It’s not going to handle doppler or predictions or whatever – those are yours to deal with, either via software or manually – but it will get your spectrum display zoomed in just right and set the uplink band accordingly.
One thing that isn’t clear to me… with an FM sat, such as the ISS, my instinct is to put the radio into Inverting mode, so that tuning the downlink causes an appropriate shift on the uplink. I think on FM that would make sense. I know, FM circuits will lock and capture a few kc to either side, but just the same I’d rather folks be as tuned in as possible. So I think the “FM” button will activate the radio’s inverting tuning mode and put it into FM mode. If I’ve got it backwards, let me know, satellite users!
Thanks,
–E
de W6EL
Hello Elliott
Thanks for your answer.
For QO-100 and IC-9700, I’m using 70cm 431 MHz for the Up-Link and 2m for the Down-Link.
So it would be great to see the 2m as a waterfall and the Up-Link only as Up-Link freq. in an other Window.
But I know, it was not easy to creat a INI file for the Omnirig for the IC-9700. The behavior is really strange.
Best 73 de HB9RYZ
Wolfgang
I think the wf is singel only and the audio scope – I don’t know if that’s attached to the wf side or if it’s connected to the tx side…
Interesting to find out 
Hi Wolfgang,
I think part of the complexity is a result of older radios, which had more complicated commands for satellite mode(s), which created more complicated code. You can clearly see the loops of checks and A/B mode flipping in Hamlib, for example. It was necessary at one time. Now though, radios have evolved, and software backends need to take that step too and make it easier to use the radio’s built-in utilities for split and sat modes.
For satellite mode, we will definitely focus on the IC-9700’s commands and build around that. It’s clearly a radio that appeals to satellite users, probably more so than any other radio on the market right now. It’ll be interesting to see if we can add in support for satellite on other radios once we get it going on the 9700.
–E
de W6EL
Hi Ellioot
I agree on your approach.
The IC-9700 is the state of the art transceiver for SAT operatios in these days.
Hi Wolfgang,
I happened to see your homepage. What a station!
Have you any advice on IC-9700 satellite operation? I was using it the other night and I actually find the OEM controls at the radio somewhat cumbersome to configure. I’m admittedly new at working satellites, but it seems like the radio keeps fighting the user. At least that was my impression.
Any advice on how you would like satellite mode to appear to the user in wfview?
–E
de W6EL
Hi Elliot!
I`m also qrv with the 9700 via QO-100 satellite. It works very nice with this trx.
I transmitting on 70cm into a up-transverter for 13 cm, receiving on 2m via down-converter. So the waterfall on 2m would be great to see in xfview. by clicking on a signal in 2m wf the 70cm band in sat-mode should follow in NOR not REV. This would be great to work remotely via the bird.
73 Guntram oe9dgv
Hi Guntram,
I found that one can basically select which VFO is generating the waterfall by toggling between main and sub on the 9700. What’s annoying, is adjusting something on the transmit VFO (such as PL for the FM birds) causes the waterfall to toggle over to the transmit side! I wish Icom would let us just stick the waterfall on only one VFO and have it stay that way in SAT mode. For now, while I am kind of learning about sats in general and also how the 9700 does things, you pretty much have to use wfview with the rig within reach. Again, largely just due to my inexperience with sat operation.
I’d really be happy if wfview could do this:
- set the main and sub VFO frequencies
- set any required PL
- NORM/REV toggle
- set the waterfall to have reasonable limits – including the telemetry or CW output if it’s there, plus the entire passband, plus a tad bit more, all set to the FIXED waterfall mode
- keep the waterfall on the receive (downlink)
And I want to make the sat setup dialog box just like the telemetry dialog box in gpredict, so that information can be easily entered without a lot of thought process.
I could definitely use some mentoring here, so please folks, chime in with ideas!
–E
de W6EL
That sounds good! If the waterfall remains on the receive band and the tx frequency is following the tuning on the receive frequency the remote op. via Sat can start. At time we can listen and clicking on the waterfall signals, thats nice too!
73 Guntram oe9dgv
I had been using the version1 of wfview with my IC-705 via WLAN and was surprised how well the programm worked and liked the “magic” that it foun,fd my IC-705 although I had not told this to the programme, hi. Now with the new programme version the good has become even better.
Since 4 or 5 weeks I am now also using an IC-9700 as exciter on 70cm for the 13cm uplink to satellite QO-100 (using a Kuhne MKU UP 2424B upconverter/20W PA). I am receiving the geostationary satellite (therefore no need for any Doppler correction) on 3cm (10489 MHz) via a DXPatrol downconverter on 432.5 MHz. The IC-9700 was my choice because it is offering the “satellite” mode that offers full duplex and a synchronisation of RX and TX frequencies. I was delighted that wfview also works with the 9700 and it does so very well. I am not going for true remote control (at least not at this time being) but was looking for a way to watch especially the waterfall display on a bigger monitor than the relatively small color display of the 9700 (I am spoiled by the bigger display of my IC-7610, hi).
I fully agree with your statement, Elliott:
I’d really be happy if wfview could do this:
set the main and sub VFO frequencies set any required PL NORM/REV toggle set the waterfall to have reasonable limits – including the telemetry or CW output if it’s there, plus the entire passband, plus a tad bit more, all set to the FIXED waterfall mode keep the waterfall on the receive (downlink)
One waterfall display for the receiving band is enough (the xcvr itself does not offer more). However it is important to be able to initially select what the receiving band should be and what the transmitting band. In addition to that, setting the transmitting/receiving frequencies independantly (correcting the synchonisation between the bands) is required from time to time in order to keep transmissions and reception on one frequency. I would not need PL tones and nor/rev toggle as I will be only using QO-100, but of course generally this is also desirable if it is makable and causes not too much trouble.
Now I only have to find out how to route autio from the xcvr to my PC and microphone input at the PC to the xcvr, unfortunatly it looks to me as audio is not carried on the USB/CI-V lines. Again this was different with the 7610 on short waves. The9700 is new and I am stll looking for sources where I can find this type of information, one cannot read everything in just a few days.
Thanks for thei nice piece of very useful software.
73, Klaus, DL2QB (WN2Z)
I
it is not different. slightly puzzled you mention usb btw. don’t you use ethernet?
Scot Witt
Veteran Business Analyst
Agilist
Documentation
Hi Klaus,
Good points all around. Yes, when using a USB port, wfview doesn’t need the audio, so you can simply use the USB audio as you normally would on a computer. If you want to loop your PC mic audio to the radio, you’ll have to setup some kind of audio loopback outside of and independent of wfview.
On the other hand, as @roeland eludes to, if you connect over ethernet, then wfview will handle audio and allow you to use the PC audio system with your radio (speaker and mic generally, although loopback to digital modes is also possible). You’ll also get much faster waterfall display with ethernet.
I am still very new to satellite operation. How do you handle Doppler for the sideband stations? I have tried using gpredict’s automatic doppler correction, but it seems to use very ancient methods of switching VFOs A/B rapidly (due to using hamlib) and it is quite annoying to use the radio when you don’t know which VFO may be active at a given moment. It also seems to override the radio’s built-in RX-TX tracking by constantly pulling the VFO back, making manual tuning impossible. But maybe I am missing something?
Here are two embarrassingly awkward videos where I am using wfview and the 9700 with satellites. I’m sitting in front of the radio and the computer, using an ethernet connection. I was manually tuning, and one operator even emailed me to say that I should learn how to tune!
I’m curious about any thoughts you have on satellite operation.
Thanks,
–E
de W6EL
Hi Elliott
Thanks for the fast answer.
when using a USB port, wfview doesn’t need the audio, so you can simply use the USB audio as you normally would on a computer. If you want to loop your PC mic audio to the radio, you’ll have to setup some kind of audio loopback outside of and independent of wfview.
On the other hand, as @roeland eludes to, if you connect over ethernet, then wfview will handle audio and allow you to use the PC audio system with your radio (speaker and mic generally, although loopback to digital modes is also possible). You’ll also get much faster waterfall display with ethernet.
I understand the advantages of USB access and LAN access. First of all I picked USB access, because it is easier to understand for me and promised quicker success, which was indeed the case. Yes, it is slower, the waterfall is a bit slow and there are the problemes with the audio back and forth, but the control of the IC-7900 worked well with it.
LAN access is much more complicated (ar least for me), there are a lot of names to remember that sound similar (“Network Radio Name” , “Network Name”) but are very different things in reality. This is true for both the radio side (there are 4 pages of adjustments and antries that the IC-9700 offers in the MENUE->SET->NETWORK section. I have to name a network user (took dl2qb, set a pathword, and made myself an Administrator), the I called the Network Radio Name IC-9700, primary DNS server is 192.168.178.1 (which is the address of my router in the home LAN). My router shows the IC-9700 on LAN 1 (out of 1-4), on the display I can find Control, Serial and Audio Port as 50001, 50002 and 50003 etc. etc.
Your program even shows an IC-9700 in the lower right corner and tells me that it has found a radio at address xa2 wt the name IC-9700 and model ID 162, but whatever I enter for for Hostname, Username and Password does not change anything: No display, no control, no frequency disp and no control of anything. My head is buzzing from all the names and I do need a break, Elliott, sorry. It was much easier with USB.
But I will now try to answer your question.
I am still very new to satellite operation. How do you handle Doppler for the sideband stations? I have tried using gpredict’s automatic doppler correction, but it seems to use very ancient methods of switching VFOs A/B rapidly (due to using hamlib) and it is quite annoying to use the radio when you don’t know which VFO may be active at a given moment. It also seems to override the radio’s built-in RX-TX tracking by constantly pulling the VFO back, making manual tuning impossible. But maybe I am missing something?
I do not have to handle any Doppler shift with CW or sideband stations, because QO-100 is a geostationary satellite which does not (or at least only minimally and then very slowly) change its relative postion to the station on ground, I can used a fixed offset dish like for a TV satellite. I have to point it to azimuth 156° East and 29° elevation. The satellite (Es`Hail2 ) is positioned at 26° E over the equator over the state of Rwanda (9X). As long as there were only satellites available which moved relative to the earth surface, I could not take part in the game, because I did not have a chance for setting up e.g. a yagi that could move in azimuth and elevation. QO-100 is very popular in Europa, Asia, Western Asia, Eastern South Ameria, Western South East Asia and Arctic and Antarctic areas. Unfortunately the footprint does not cover North America, not most of the rest of South American and Japan. You could listen to it on the Internet on
QO-100 / Es'hail-2 Narrowband WebSDR
though. Therefor I cannot answer your question how to deal with the Doppler effect on the low orbiting birds. From what I heard, some operators try to change their uplink frequenncy so the the downlink stays more or less constant (which is not easy). On the IC-9700 in satellite mode you would have to push “SUB” button on the touch display. That decouples the uplink VFO from the downlink VFO so that you can manually compensate for any Doppler induced drift. That only works when you hear your uplink signal repeated in the dowlink. However it would be also thinakable that you keep your uplink constant, push the “MAIN” button on the 7900 touch display and follow the received signal. Really don’t know which procedure is more common in the real world. Look for chapter 7 pages 7-1 to 7-3 in the Basic manual of IC-9700.
Here are two embarrassingly awkward videos where I am using wfview and the 9700 with satellites. I’m sitting in front of the radio and the computer, using an ethernet connection. I was manually tuning, and one operator even emailed me to say that I should learn how to tune!
I would never ever say such an advice to somebody whom I were in a QSO with. We all did not start operating at 100% level, but instead of telling you to learn tuning, that guy should have better given some practicals tips to achieve that! I will watch the videos later.
You can see my setup at QRZ.COM on my page there.
Elliott, thanks very much for your help and efforts that you put into improving wfview. The difference from version1 to 5 is huge, I was surprised, version 5 ist superb already.
Greetings from Cologne
73, Klaus
DL2QB (WN2Z)