Just for save-keeping, probably irrelevant nowadays but who knows what kind of travelers search engines might send here. Tread lightly!

Remove the huge margins from PDF papers

Remove the huge margins from PDF papers eg. prior to printing with pdfcrop from the pdftk suite. For example:

pdfcrop --margins -80 input.pdf output.pdf

edit, much better:

$ pdfimages -j file.pdf file
$ mogrify -crop 800x1300+220+220 +repage file-0*.jpg
$ convert file-0*.jpg cropped.pdf

+repage makes IM not write the offset to the files but actually crop “properly”. Maybe pdfcrop has such parameter too?

Installing a printer in Cups via a USB->Serial adapter

Make sure to “modprobe usbserial“. dmesg should show a printer being connected if you plug it in now. Then Cups should see it too.

RTTY with SDR# and fldigi (for the german DWD stations)

In SDR#: Use USB, filter bandwidth 1000. center the RTTY in your window.

In fldigi: Op Mode -> RTTY -> Custom. Set the carrier shift to custom and then enter 450 in the custom shift field below. Baud rate: 50, 5 bits per character, no parity, 1.5 stop bits. Save and Close. Make sure the Rv button is green!

CW decoding with SDR# and fldigi

In SDR#: Use the CW-L or CW-U preset. Tune so the morse code is right in the middle of your “reception window”.

In fldigi: Op Mode -> CW. Turn off squelch by making the SQL button not green but grey.

It works very well for non-human morse for me. Radio amateur morse is harder and so far full of “spelling errors”. :)

PDF to image with imagemagick/graphicsmagick

If you want to create images from PDF files, use for example mogrify -verbose -geometry 1600 -density 300 -format png *.pdf Without a decent “-density” parameter, you will probably get a blurry image as result.