Locally I've heard 1 VK station "VK2EHQ" a handful of times through the day and evening on different bands with good S/N reports. I've just heard "YD0OXH8" there on 12m but due to a small misconfig on ALE^Stat it did not upload the report to HFLink.
So at this stage I'm probably not going to run it much longer but will keep eye on forums and the HFLink Portal. For now though I thought I'd share with you how I setup PC-ALE to work with my Yaesu FT-991A.
Firstly head over to HFLink.net to sign up and where you can get access to download the following files
1. Download the latest PCALE Full Install
- Currently a file called "PCALEv108B1000TB3_2_FI.zip" is latest
2. Download the latest PCALE Update
- Currently a file called "PCALEv108B1000TB3_3_UD.zip" is latest and is required as this adds in the radio-type MMI-RADIO interface which allows you control the Yaeus FT991A as its not one of the radios currently supported.
- Currently a files called "MMI-RADIO_FT-991_Library.zip" is latest. I'll described the couple of changes I made to the macros further down.
Follow the instructions for installing the full install and the update which are fairly straight forward and well documented.
At this time the FT991A is not available as under the standard / common available radio interfaces under PC-ALE. However as part of the patch they have introduced MMI-RADIO which allows you to define a set of macros to control your radio. Thankfully the was a FT-991A MMI-RADIO library already implemented that I just had to change the channel macros.
So to install the FT-991A MMI-RADIO library, extract the "MMI-RADIO_FT-991_Library.zip" files in under "C:\PC_ALE\MMI_RADIO"
Under the menu option "Configuration->MIL-STD 188-141 Options" set the following at minimum:
- Sounding to TWS Sound (if you wish to TX "Soundings")
- Set Radio-Type to "MMI-RADIO" this will tell PC-ALE to use the macros under "C:\PC_ALE\MMI_RADIO" how to control the radio.
- Under "Radio Port" - Set the Baud and setting as needed to match what you have set on the FT-991A. For me I was 38400, 2, 8, N and make sure you select "Split VFO" (more on this later)
- Audio level -
- TX - Manual says so that ALC is barely trigger. I currently have sit so ALC ~ 50%
- RX - So the RX meter signal level was about half which for me was ~%50
- CAT - Set to the "Enhanced Serial Port"
- PTT - Set to the "Standard Serial Port"
- BTW - to be resolved, I had to uncheck "LBT - Look Before Talk" as for some reason it was detecting activity and not allowing "Sounding".
Antenna Tuning - I was fortunate that my 1/4 WL 40m vertical antenna could be tuned by the Yaesu FT-991A built in ATU. Obviously you may have a broadband Antenna that does not require any tuning but either way all I'm going to say is for me I went through each of the channels and "tuned" them. So as PC-ALE was scanning and then TX on any of the frequency the Freq was in memory so I did not need to have PC-ALE run any ATU steps. But if you do then you may need to read up on the MMI-RADIO macros and add commands to the QSS_nn_CHANNEL macros etc etc
To operate the FT-991A in quiet mode while scanning, I put the radio into split-mode "manually" and as you say from the "Radio-Port" settings above we have told PC-ALE to operate via SPLIT VFO. What this means is that while scanning the VFO A will be updated as the channel changes and upon needing to TX the VFO B will be set to match VFO via the MMI Radio Macros and then TX will take place.
MMI-Radio Changes for Me -
- The "MMI_RADIO__CHANNEL_nn" and "MMI_RADIO_QSS_CHANNEL_nn" were not the frequencies for my region. So I had to alter / create as necessary "MMI_RADIO_CHANNEL_nn" for each channel from the QRG file I was using. Each frequency needs to have a corresponding macro file starting at 01. Failure to have these sync'ed will mean you scanning and TX will on frequencies not matching the PC-ALE display.
- Obviously make sure there is a corresponding QSS channel macro
- In each of my QSS macros files I set the "preamp" to the desired level.
73
de VK4TMZ
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