FT-991A Setup for Digital Modes (for Windows 10 and a USB cable) – by VK3BT

Amateur Radio No Comments

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I have a Yaesu Musen FT-991A transceiver for my amateur radio hobby. I returned to this hobby after about 24 years, so my interest is in the new developments that came during my absence. Digital modes are new to me, so I have started with FT8. It’s a weak-signal mode that sends a warbling tone that can only be decoded by a computer. Although you might think the band is “dead” because you cannot hear any voice QSOs, the spot frequencies allocated to digital modes are probably “alive”.

More information about digital modes can be found online, such as this article about WSJT – one of a few programs that you can use to use such modes.

There are a few articles and videos online that might help, but I found that they gave conflicting information, or the menu numbering was different. Some were written for the FT-991 (no suffix) (predecessor of my rig) and/or for Windows 7. After a while, my rig’s settings were all over the place and I found it best to do a factory reset so as to have a reliable starting point. This is my setup.

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FT-991A Setup

USB Type B cable

Your PC needs a spare USB port and you need a good USB Type B cable. The rig has its USB port at the rear. Such cables are used for printers, among other uses. Some articles swear by Tripp-Lite (affiliate link), but as I’m in Australia, I could wait for weeks for delivery. So I used one that has a couple of ferrite rings on it. It has no markings and I cannot recall where I sourced it. I also tried one with a shielded cable but no ferrite rings and it worked. So you might want to try an existing cable in your collection to get it going, then order a Tripp-Lite.

USB driver

Install the Silicon Labs USB driver from the Yaesu website (and from nowhere else). This is a safe choice, even though a more recent version might work. It will show in Control Panel > Device Manager > Ports only when it is connected to a switched-on radio.

The Properties of these ports need to match those in the radio’s menu settings, but I noticed that I have one stop bit and not two. It works like that, so I have left it as-is.

FT-991A Menu settings

I settled on the following, based on a YouTube video by a fellow Aussie VK7HH –

There are just four primary settings, as per the video:

31 = 9600 bps (this can be anything, but some other program I tried only works at 9600, so I settled on this speed)
32 = 100 msec (default is 10)
108 = RTS (default is DAKY)
109 = USB (default is Data)

Next, the following settings were added after reading dozens of tips:

33 = Enable (factory default)
62 = PSK (default is Others)
70 = Rear (factory default)
72 = USB (factory default)

There are two “mystery” settings suggested by some. I am not sure about them, but I have left them at these values:

60 = Off (factory default)
71 = DTR (default is RTS) This one is said to be for Win 7 but I have Win 10. I didn’t think that would matter, but I have made a note. I found that DAKY works equally well, hence this is a mystery setting.

Of course, the software settings also need to match. This is why some people have a different mix of settings and they also work.

JTDX settings

I use JTDX, which is based on WSJT-X, so both have identical settings.

Gotchas

There is a gremlin that changed my settings recently – about four of them (!), so I keep a sheet with these settings near the rig. This is most likely the regular Windows update, which somehow reset some rig settings to their defaults. That might not make sense, but I certainly don’t change my rig settings.

Another recent gremlin is that the FT-991A appears to transmit when no digital software has been started. If the rig is switched on and I shut down my laptop, the act of closing the lid causes the rig’s transmit light to come on and about 2 Amperes are drawn, but the PO reading is nil. I have yet to find the cause.

Keeping perfect time

Your computer’s time needs to be perfect, i.e. synchronised to internet time, else you might not be able to decode the signals. There are many such programs, but I use NetTime. Start it up and your PC will not need to worry about time drift.

Your off-Facebook activity

19 January 2021

Reading Time: 3 minutes

From time to time, people discover that Facebook has become aware of their visits to other websites and freak out. Is that a concern, or is it part of the web experience? To understand this, check your own Facebook account:

Settings & Privacy > Settings > Your Facebook Information > Off Facebook Activity. Then click the icons you can see. This will open up to a list of websites you visited recently.

At this point, it’s best to use Facebook’s own words:

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What is off-Facebook activity?

Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organisations share with us about your interactions with them. Interactions are things such as visiting their website or logging in to their app with Facebook. Off-Facebook activity does not include customer lists that businesses use to show a unique group of customers relevant ads.

How did Facebook receive your activity?

When you visit a website or use an app, these businesses or organisations can share information about your activity with us by using our business tools. We use this activity to personalise your experience, such as showing you relevant ads. We also require that businesses and organisations provide notice to people before using our business tools.

How activity is shared with Facebook

Jane buys a pair of shoes from an online clothing and shoe shop.
The shop shares Jane’s activity with us using our business tools.
We receive Jane’s off-Facebook activity and we save it with her Facebook account. The activity is saved as “visited the clothes and shoes website” and “made a purchase”.
Jane sees an ad on Facebook for a voucher for 10% off her next shoe or clothing purchase from the online shop.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity

So what should you do?

I can’t tell you what to do, but I have two choices – do nothing and see relevant ads, or clear this history and choose not to let Facebook get this information from third parties. See the images above for a link to do the latter. Choosing the second option does not mean you will not see ads; you will see less relevant ads.

So what did I do?

I decided to investigate. Yes, I did visit those websites – at least the first few of the 500+ listed. Then I noticed my own business site CRM911 Digital. That got my attention, for I have no Facebook presence for that business and have certainly not installed any tracking tags on it.

So I checked the WordPress plugins there:

Akismet Anti-Spam
Child Theme Configurator
Cloudflare
Elementor
Far Future Expiration Plugin
Imagify
jQuery Updater
PWA for WP
Simple Basic Contact Form
Site Kit by Google
The SEO Framework
Wordfence Security
WPSSO Core
WPSSO Inherit Parent Metadata
WPSSO Organization Markup
WPSSO Place and Local SEO Markup
WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup (Premium)
WPSSO Update Manager

The SEO Framework has a setting for selecting a default image should your site be mentioned on Facebook. Yes, I had chosen one, but the page source code showed no link to Facebook. I have no tracking pixels.

So why does my own site show up in my Off-Facebook Activity?

I might have found the answer, in the form of a Chrome extension called Keyword Surfer, made by SurferSEO. Its Privacy Policy says:

Your personal data may be transferred to entities cooperating with SURFER sp.z o.o. , in particular entities providing IT services and support, and entities providing to Surfer sp.z o.o. services in the field of PR, to accounting and IT companies serving us, as well as to all institutions defined by applicable law, in particular to Tax Offices and, if necessary, to entities providing archiving services.
Source: https://surferseo.com/privacy-policy/

Or it could be one of many other extensions I use. I will disable them one by one to find a likely source.

Meanwhile, I have disconnected the data connection.

Drive Across the Contiguous 48 United States

Ash No Comments

Reading Time: 6 minutesThe United States of America is one of my favourite travel destinations. The people there speak a version of English that I understand and they seem to understand me. The natives are friendly and we fight in all wars side by side. A post-retirement trip on my drawing board is the drive across the 48 states that make up the contiguous United States (CONUS); therefore it omits Hawaii and Alaska. This is a drive, not a leisurely sight-seeing journey. Continue reading →

Windows 10 upgrade from Windows 8.1 Pro

Windows 10 No Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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The back story

The day arrives

Win 10 here — Finally Win 10 is available

Once you click “OK, let’s continue”, you will briefly see the following screen, which then disappears.

Continue reading →

Update your Google Analytics tags for site speed

Reading Time: < 1 minuteGoogle Analytics (GA) now has a new feature – Site Speed data. That help page mentions that your GA tag needs one more line (in red) as follows:

<script type="text/javascript">

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

(function() {

var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

})();

</script>

I use the Thesis framework, so I didn’t have to edit the theme php files. There is a handy input window in the Thesis Site Options. It’s as simple as that, but how do you see the data? Continue reading →

Wrong words

English Usage No Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minuteMany people use words that are not in any English dictionary (although when a new word comes into common use, it can be added to an official dictionary). Here are some examples.

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Prepone

This is supposed to be the opposite of Postpone, but there is no such word. You bring forward a meeting, not prepone it.

Updation

IT outsourcing companies love this word. The verb “to update” cannot be turned into a noun. Use two or more words to describe what

Softwares

Software is a collective noun, like the weather. It is never plural.

Upto

This word is very popular in India but it is not correct. It should be two words, up to.
Do you know of other examples?

Double Your Internet Speed?

5 September 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Have you seen the ads that tempt you to “double” your internet speed? I don’t know what they sell, but there are free options to try first. I remembered Steve Gibson from the early days for his SpinWrite program, so I didn’t hesitate to try out his free program DNS Benchmark – click the name for the download link.

Some articles on this subject recommend changing the DNS nameservers in your router/modem from the default ones (your ISP in most cases) to others, such as Cloudflare, which uses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, or Google, which uses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

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What are DNS Nameservers?

Websites have human-friendly names, such as https://crm911.com; however, the internet is linked by numeric addresses, such as 104.27.163.39 (which happens to correspond with crm911.com). The number is tied to the web hosting company’s allocation of such numbers. If the website moves to another hosting provider, it would be allocated some other number. End users don’t need to know this, as they only use the human-friendly name.

Users can think of the Domain Name System (DNS) as an analogy with a telephone book, which shows names and corresponding phone numbers. When you type a website address, your internet device (router) goes to the first DNS Name Server stored in it and the request is relayed to the destination along numeric pathways. Your router has its own number, so the requested web page data is sent back to it. Your individual PC or device has yet another number known only to your router, so you get the requested page/movie/etc.

These DNS name servers might be on slow or busy machines, so it pays to find a faster “telephone book”. Enter the DNS Benchmark program. You can run it immediately if you wish, but it’s better to get the two IP addresses of your name servers from your router. Each brand has a different interface – mine looks like this:

DNS name servers in the Netgear V6510-1FXAUS

You’ll need to refer to your router manual to figure out how to reach it – it has an IP address such as 192.168.0.1 and needs a login/password that is printed under the router case. Login and stay at that screen.

Running DNS Benchmark

The program is an EXE file and runs upon double-clicking its name – no installation is needed.

First, click “Add/Remove” and add the two name server addresses found in your router. Then click “Run Benchmark”. The program takes a few minutes to run. The fastest name servers are sorted to the top of the display window. I was pleased that my default ones are the fastest by a country mile (the first two seen in the image below) as I am on a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connection to our national provider, NBN through one of many resellers, Foxtel Broadband .

As it’s a 10-year-old program now, some of the stored addresses are defunct and can be removed. You might be able to find others to add to the list.

Screenshot of DNS Benchmark program — Free tool by Steve Gibson

Another Speed Trick

First, you need to find out the channels used by neighbours nearby. I used the free Windows program WiFiInfoView by Nirsoft. It shows a lot of details about each router within range. If yours is using the same channel as used by a neighbour, even if your setting is Automatic (selection of best channel), change your channel. This will avoid interference to both of you and your speed should improve.

Good luck!

Automated Facebook "Community Standards" decisions are getting ridiculous.

18 March 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I shared an article from the Sydney Morning Herald that I saw on Facebook, with my comment ” Interesting analysis of the UK approach” – that is all I said. I think there were some interactions on that post. Today I received a notification (screenshots follow). I had no option to discuss it, debate it, which is no big deal, as it wasn’t a notable comment or article from some dodgy source.

If anyone from Fairfax is reading this – The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, etc, your content has been deemed to be “Spam”. If you are from their digital agency and manage their social media amplification, take note and bring it up when Facebook’s account manager takes you out for a coffee.

Facebook is a free service, since we are the product that is sold to advertisers. So no real recourse for ordinary users and, going by many other reports about their Community Standards enforcement, I don’t think anyone there wastes any time thinking about it. Enjoy the images below.

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“Coronavirus” seems to be the magic word

Added:

I received many more “spam” Community Standards notifications. Most were about shared articles on Coronavirus. Although my comments are not questionable, I suspect that this is all to do with Facebook forcing large Pages to pay for exposure and not rely on readers sharing their content for free. My friends mentioned that Medium.com content is also being taken down as spam.

Two more were shared articles about Virgin Australia’s decision to suspend flights.

It’s getting worse

This time, I did not share any link. All I wrote is this: “Death total to date is five.”

Here I shared a Facebook post by The Age, not an external link.

It’s apparently a bug!

The Verge has reported that Facebook says it’s a bug and is working on reversing such posts.

DMR-EZ48V recording from an external device

23 February 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you, like me, have a Panasonic DMR-EZ48V VHS and DVD writer combo device, you will have had experience in copying from VHS tapes to DVDs, or vice versa. It’s a great way to dispose of old, grainy home videos that were saved on VHS tape. Such devices were hard to find some years ago, so if you find one on eBay or elsewhere, then get one.

What do you do if you have an external video playing device with content that you wish to burn onto a DVD? In my case, this was a Foxtel IQ2 set-top box.

Let me save you some frustration, if you have tried and failed.

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Likely Problems

You might want to guess your way to copying to DVD, assuming you have a suitable cable for the purpose. I did and failed. I won’t confuse you with the methods that failed, but they all involved filling up the DVD before the content had finished playing, or the recording stopped after a couple of minutes for reasons I will never know.

If you cannot find the original manual, you’ll search for one online – big mistake! Panasonic uses the same model number for different countries and can offer different features. For example, the manual I found online showed front panel slots for a USB drive and an SD card. My unit has no such slots. Not surprisingly, the instructions for copying from an external device did not work for me.

Longer recording time on a fixed recording surface comes at the expense of quality, i.e. sharpness, so you want to set the upper time limit to something just longer than your source video. So let’s come to the solution, assuming your device is identical to mine (bought in Australia).

Steps to copy:

Step 1: Connect the AV cable to both devices.

Connect the external device to the front panel AV input – I used the Red-Yellow-White cable method, which is not as sharp as an S-Video cable’s capability. I used the front panel to avoid rummaging at the back of the recorder.

Step 2: Choose the Function Menu

Step 3: Select “To Others”.

On the Function menu, choose the last option, “To Others”. Next, select “Flexible Rec”.

Step 4: Choose Flexible Rec

The Flexible Recording menu enables you to set the maximum recording time. In this example four hours was slightly longer than the 3+ hour source video.

Step 5: Start copying.

Click “Start” and simultaneously start playing the external video source. That’s it. When the copying is done, use the “To Others” menu to reach “DVD Management” and then finalise the DVD so that it can play on other DVD players such as your computer or a DVD player.

Amateur Hour – EU DisInfo Lab finds fake Indian news sites

21 December 2019

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Many news outlets are reporting an interview with a Brussels NGO called EU DisInfo Lab, (click the link to read the story) which found 265 websites in “65 countries” that posted the same content in an apparent attempt to influence Members of the European Parliament. The material was pro-India.

Three of the sites covering the same article.

I am not too interested in the underlying political story, but my assessment of the tactics of the alleged publisher can be summed up as “amateur hour”. Why? Let me count the ways.

The domains could well be purporting to be in 65 countries, but they were mostly hosted in the United States at three main hosts, probably VPS accounts, or less likely, dedicated servers. This made it easy for EU DisInfo Lab (and me) to find most of the 265 websites. I searched for one of the articles as pictured above and found that Google had indexed about twenty of them. So that’s another rookie error.

So if you (the website manager) are stupid enough to think that 265 copies of an article (allegedly copied from some Russian propaganda site) will be found in Google or another search engine, then you deserve to be fired by the ultimate client. No, if you are lucky enough to get Google to crawl all the sites, a search result will not list all 265 domains. In fact, you’d be lucky if even one of those sites shows up on the first page of results.

About 248 out of the 265 sites were at three hosts, with many on the same IP address, e.g. 162.241.171.75, which was one of them. There are free tools such as View DNS to get a list of all domains using the same IP address, or the same octet (fourth number from 0 to 255). If you have a VPS or a dedicated server, then all the domains can be presumed to be controlled by you, but if you went to some generic shared hosting provider, your sites would be among tens of thousands of others and much harder to identify, unless you were silly enough to use names resembling news outlets.

Here are the 248 sites that I could find from three hosting providers, Unified Layer, Data Foundry, Four Media Group. I did not waste time looking up these providers or the remaining sites any further:

24hourscalgary.com
24hoursedmonton.com
24hoursottawa.com
24hoursvancouver.com
3newsagency.com
4newsagency.com
aberystwythtimes.com
acadianrecorder.com
accionobrera.com
akhbarulusbua.com
albanydailydemocrat.com
al-insaniyyah.com
al-jamahir.com
al-mabda.com
almalayin.com
al-malayin.com
al-mukafih.com
almustaqilla.com
alqaidah.com
al-qaidah.com
al-watandaily.com
badischesvolksecho.com
baltimoreeveningherald.com
baltimoreeveningsun.com
baltimoremorningherald.com
barladul.com
brightonherald.com
brownsvilletimes.com
bucharestbusinessweek.com
buffaloenquirer.com
calcutta-gazette.com
cambridgeintelligencer.com
canadianillustratednews.com
cbs-cable.com
ceylondailymirror.com
comcast-network.com
congregationalherald.com
courrierdethiopie.com
dailystatesentinel.com
derdeutschecorrespondent.com
derkampf.com
dernordstern.com
dernordwesten.com
dernord-westen.com
derostasiatischelloyd.com
detroitsundayjournal.com
deutscheshanghaizeitung.com
diariodemanila.com
dieeinigkeit.com
die-einigkeit.com
easternmorningnews.com
echodelasambre.com
eestiaeg.com
elbiendelobrero.com
essexgazette.com
falceemartello.com
finnmarkfremtid.com
fournewsagency.com
foxfootychannel.com
frontulplugarilor.com
garydailytribune.com
gazetteandsentinel.com
goldcoastmail.com
golostruda.com
greateastlandtelevision.com
hamevasser.com
hardangerarbeiderblad.com
hartfordcitycourier.com
hartfordcitydemocrat.com
hayatechchaab.com
heiminshimbun.com
houstoneveningjournal.com
houstonmorningchronicle.com
huashangdaily.com
indianapolisdailyherald.com
israelshtime.com
kansascityjournalpost.com
karjalanmaa.com
kentuckyirishamerican.com
khalsa-akhbar-lahore.com
labanderaroja.com
ladomenicadelcorriere.com
lailustracionfilipina.com
lajeunebelgique.com
lanouvelleinternationale.com
lecanadien.ca
lechodukatanga.com
lecommuniste.com
leedstimes.co.uk
legrutleen.com
leninshilzhas.com
lepaysdefrance.com
lereveildutadla.com
lereveiljuif.com
liverpoolcourier.com
ludhiana-times.com
lyonsherald.com
manchesterexaminer.com
manchestertimes.co.uk
memphismorningnews.com
metroeastjournal.com
miamivalleychannel.com
minneapoliseveningjournal.com
mirat-ul-akhbar.com
montrealdailynews.com
moskovskykorrespondent.com
msnbc.uk
nasisten.com
neweveningpost.com
newyorkcourierandenquirer.com
newyorkeveningjournal.com
newyorkjournalamerican.com
newyorkmorningtelegraph.com
newyorknationaldemocrat.com
newyorkpressagency.com
newyorksundaynews.com
niagaranewstv.com
northchinadailynews.com
northotagotimes.com
northwestradio.ca
oransocialiste.com
pekinggazette.com
philippinesdailyexpress.com
plymouthtribune.com
portlandeveningjournal.com
protitisaigialeias.com
qatar-chronicle.com
quebecherald.com
rochesterdailyamerican.com
rockportjournal.com
rockvilletimes.com
russkoyeznamya.com
russkyinvalid.com
saltlaketelegram.com
schweizamsonntag.com
shanghaieveningpostandmercury.com
shanghaijewishchronicle.com
sindhgazette.com
singainesan.com
socialistweekly.com
sovietweekly.com
spoknippet.com
srilankadeepa.com
swatantranepali.com
sydney-gazette.com
theadaircountynews.com
theamericanweekly.com
theaustraliancommunist.com
thebangkokrecorder.com
thebaptisttimes.com
thebombaychronicle.com
thecanadianspectator.com
theceylonherald.com
thecharlottesvilletribune.com
theclevelandgazette.com
thecolombojournal.com
thedearbornindependent.com
thedublingazette.com
thehazletonnews.com
thehoovergazette.com
thejewishtribune.com
thekamloopsdailynews.com
thekungsheungdailynews.com
theliverpoolherald.com
theliverpoolnews.com
thelouisvilleheraldpost.com
thelouisvilletimes.com
themadrastimes.com
themirrorofaustralia.com
thenevadajournal.com
thenewzealandtablet.com
thenorfolkweeklynews.com
theoregonjournal.com
thequebectelegraph.com
thesandbornherald.com
theseattlestar.com
thesenator.eu
thestatesman.eu
thetimesofceylon.com
thetorontomail.com
thetulsatribune.com
thewellingtonindependent.com
thewhitesvilleindependentpress.com
threemediagroup.com
threenewsagency.com
timesofalaska.com
timesofambala.com
timesofamsterdam.com
timesofargentina.com
timesofaustria.com
timesofazadkashmir.com
timesofbali.com
timesofbelgium.com
timesofbern.com
timesofbhutan.com
timesofbonn.com
timesofbulgaria.com
timesofcanberra.com
timesofcebu.com
timesofchiangmai.com
timesofchile.com
timesofcostarica.com
timesofcroatia.com
timesofcyprus.com
timesofdefence.com
timesofeqypt.com
timesofestonia.com
timesofhonduras.com
timesofhungary.com
timesofjakarta.com
timesofjeddah.com
timesofkazakhstan.com
timesoflatvia.com
timesoflibya.com
timesoflosangeles.com
timesofluxembourg.com
timesofmacau.com
timesofmadinah.com
timesofmadrid.com
timesofmanitoba.com
timesofmecca.com
timesofmedina.com
timesofmorocco.com
timesofmoscow.com
timesofnaples.com
timesofnetherlands.com
timesofnewbrunswick.com
timesofnorthkorea.com
timesofpalau.com
timesofperu.com
timesofportugal.com
timesofpyongyang.com
timesofriyadh.com
timesofromania.com
timesofsaotome.com
timesofseattle.com
timesofseoul.com
timesofsouthchinasea.com
timesofsouthkorea.com
timesofspain.com
timesoftokyo.com
timesofvatican.com
timesofvenezuela.com
tokyonichinichishimbun.com
topekastatejournal.com
torontotelegram.com
weeklylouisianian.com
worldeconomicherald.com

Just cast your eye across some of those names above. Some were chosen wisely, such as legitimate news outlets that once existed but are long defunct. Others are too fanciful to be credible. Visit some of those sites and ask yourself why would someone put up a site with the stories you see there?

There are numerous other SEO omissions that are best left unstated, as there is no value in enlightening the amateurs behind these sites. Many of them are being taken down as we speak, replaced with parked pages.

Some of the coverage of the incident by the news media:

Added: 11 December 2020 – There is a further update:

Indian Chronicles: deep dive into a 15-year operation targeting the EU and UN to serve Indian interests

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18 July 2019