[FARC] Going Digital

[Kirk Talbott]

There has been a lot of E-mail floating around about the digital modes and I know some of you are going to want to try it, I know I would.  So have at it you'll love it.  I thought I would relate how I did it with the Kenwood TS-2000 radio and the West Mountain RigBlaster Plus interface.   Two thoughts about doing it.  It's not that difficult otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it and it will take some time, figure an afternoon depending on your computer skills.   

First, right out of the box, the RigBlaster interface comes with the case open.   This is because you will have to install microphone jumper wires for the particular radio and microphone that you plan to use.  The RigBlaster instructions include jumper wire diagrams for various manufacturers of radios and types of microphone.  Will they have a jumper diagram for a 1976 Kenwood?  Probably not.  My RigBlaster Plus came with the 8-Pin screw-on type of microphone jack, perfect for the Kenwood TS-2000.  For me the microphone jumper wire installation was a tedious and time-consuming operation because of my fat fingers and bad eyes.   I had to be very careful here, doing it wrong could damage the RigBlaster or possibly the radio.  Your experience and results may vary.  

Next I installed the driver for the USB/Serial converter cable that came with the RigBlaster Plus.  The driver software comes on the included RigBlaster Plus software CD.  My computer has only one serial port but I was using that for something else so I had to use a USB port.   The RigBlaster Plus comes with instructions for installing the driver software and it was straightforward and easy on my 6 yr-old Dell Windows XP Home computer.   The one thing to remember in this step is to write down the COM port number of where the driver for the UBS/Serial converter is installed.

Next the RigBlaster Plus instruction manual will guide one through the instructions for connecting the RigBlaster Plus interface, the radio, computer, and configuring the software in a "connect and test" method.   By connect and test I mean in one step of the instructions I would make a connection, then test it, and if it worked I proceeded to the next step.   What I was essentially doing here is listed below:

1)  Connecting a cable from the radio's external speaker jack to the LINE-IN jack on the computer.  

2)  Connecting the USB/Serial cable from the RigBlaster to a computer USB port.

3)  Configuring software to use the correct COM port for the USB/Serial cable on the computer. 

4)  Connecting a cable from the LINE-OUT jack of the computer to the interface's AUDIO-INPUT jack.  

5)  Further configuring software and testing soundcard input and output levels.  

The software that West Mountain suggests you use at first is WinPSK.  This is the easiest to install, configure, and use of all the PSK31 software packages out there.   Use WinPSK first, get used to running PSK31 with it, and then move up to Ham Radio Deluxe or some other multimode software package.  

A word about Windows Vista.  The software included on my software CD that came with the RigBlaster Plus will not run correctly on Windows Vista.  I got my RigBlaster Plus in April 2008.   West Mountain may have updated software by now that will run on Windows Vista, but I haven't checked it out.  Be aware of this.