Documentation Amateur Radio Beat

What's new for amateur radio operators

Fedora 11 includes a number of applications and libraries that are of interest to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists. Many of these applications are included in the Fedora Electronic Lab spin. For a complete list of amateur radio applications available within Fedora see Applications for amateur radio on the wiki.

Sound card applications

fldigi

Fedora 11 includes version 3.10 of fldigi. Changes from Fedora 10 include many enhancements to the waterfall and logging, along with dozens of minor changes to the user interface and bug fixes. For a complete list of changes see the upstream project's site at http://www.w1hkj.com/fldigi-distro/.

xfhell

Version 1.9 of xfhell includes some improvements in handling the PTT line and additional flexibility in adjusting window sizes, as well as some bug fixes. The project's site is at http://5b4az.chronos.org.uk/pages/digital.html.

soundmodem

soundmodem is now back in Fedora. soundmodem 0.10 provides a way to use your sound card as a modem for digital applications such as AX.25. The upstream's project page is http://www.baycom.org/~tom/ham/soundmodem/.

HamFax

HamFax 0.54 is new to Fedora. HamFax is an application for sending and receiving facsimiles in amateur radio and for receiving public facsimile broadcasts like weather maps. Supported interfaces are sound cards and the SCS-PTCII from Special Communication Systems.

wxapt

wxapt is a console application for decoding and saving weather images transmitted in the APT format of NOAA and METEOR satellites. wxapt is a new addition to Fedora.

Software Defined Radio

gnuradio

gnuradio has been updated to version 3.1.3. This is largely a bugfix update.

Circuit Design and Simulation

The gEDA suite has been updated to 20081231. This includes the packages geda-docs, geda-examples, geda-gattrib, geda-gnetlist, geda-gschem, geda-gsymcheck, geda-symbols and geda-utils. These are all bugfix releases. In addition, gerbv, pcb, and ngspice are a part of the gEDA suite, but released separately.

gerbv

gerbv 2.1.0 includes improvements to object selection, improved exporting, and more flexibility in dealing with drill files. The complete release notes for this package can be found at http://gerbv.sourceforge.net/ANNOUNCEMENT-2.1.0.

pcb

pcb has been updated to 20081128. Included among the improvements is a new 'Ben mode' that exports a 'photograph' of the board as a .png file. There are also some minor improvements in drill handling and a number of bug fixes. The complete release notes for this version are available at http://pcb.sourceforge.net/news.html#20081128.

ngspice

ngspice has been updated to version 18. Changes include:

• Tclspice simulator library has been merged with ngspice. Now you can compile ngapice or tclspice by asserting a configure switch. See README.tcl
• New options have been introduced: brief, listing, autostop and scale
• Support for .lib file has been introduced. This allows the use of third party model libraries in ngspice.
• .measure statements: avg, integ, rms, max, min, delay, param
• .global statements t support for global nodes whose name is not expanded when flattening the netlist.
• .func macros for inlining functions into netlists.
• Improved the numparam library to support fully parametrized netlists.
• BSIM model binning.
• new multi-input gate VCVS using XSPICE extensions.

iverilog

iverliog has been updated to 0.9.20081118. This is largely a bugfix update.

Logging and related applications

LinLog

LinLog has been updated to version 0.4.

Before updating to 0.4 you should export your database to ADIF. Then install 0.4, create a new database, and import the ADIF. Step-by-step instructions are available at http://linlogbook.sourceforge.net/doc/LinLocDoc.html.

qle

qle 0.0.10 is new to Fedora 11. qle is a graphic QSO log viewer, log editor and QSO logger. It logs (or modifies) QSOs directly in a fast and light-weight SQLite database.

ibp

A tool to show which IBP beacons are transmitting

The International Beacon Project is a set of 18 amateur (ham) radio transmitters around the world, each of which transmit every 3 minutes on a set of 5 short-wave frequencies. This allows short-wave radio users to quickly assess the current worldwide propagation conditions. Much more information can be found on http://www.ncdxf.org/beacons.html

Antenna Modeling

xnec2c

Fedora includes nec2c, the powerful antenna modeling program, and xnec2c which provides a graphical user interface to nec2c. Both of these packages have been updated to version 1.2 in Fedora 11. The changes are minor bugfixes.

Project site: http://5b4az.chronos.org.uk/pages/nec2.html

xwota

xwota is intended for amateur radio operators who want to make use of the WOTA database. It can be used to find out who is on the air, the band and frequency they are operating on, and their location by country, state, county, grid, and latitude/longitude. xwota is new to Fedora 11.

If you don't known what is the WOTA database, please read some infos at http://www.wotadb.org.

Internet Applications

thebridge

thebridge is an ILink/EchoLink compatible conference bridge. This is a new feature in Fedora 11.

cwirc

X-Chat plugin for sending and receiving raw morse code over IRC. New to Fedora 11.

Other applications

hamlib

Fedora 11 includes version 1.28 of hamlib. There are a large number of new models supported and fixes to support for existing models. There are a number of new commands. See the project's website at http://hamlib.sourceforge.net for complete details.

xdx

The DX cluster client xdx has been updated to 2.4.1. This is a bugfix update

xdemorse

xdemorse has been updated to 1.3. This is a bugfix update.

ssbd

ssbd (Single-Side Band daemon) is voice keyer for hamradio use. It's written as part of Tucnak, contest log for VHF contests, but is possible to use ssbd with any other program. ssbd is new to Fedora with this release.

gpsman

gpsman has been updated to 6.4. See the details at http://www.ncc.up.pt/gpsman/wGPSMan_4.html

splat

splat-utils has been removed from Fedora and the contents included in the splat package. It is no longer necessary to install splat-utils to use splat.