Pending the delivery of my Elecraft K1, I was browsing the Elecraft website when I found this link.
It turns out Rose is a lovely lady who makes (all by hand) beautiful Elecraft cases! Because it’s made by hand, she can sew your own call on the case. I’m a sucker for this kind of handcraft! So I ordered a case for my Elecraft K1 right away!
If you want such a beautiful case for your Elecraft, just send Rose an email!
The annual balloon fox hunt will take place on Sunday, September 11th. A probe built by radio amateurs will be launched underneath a weather balloon at KNMI in De Bilt (Dutch weather institute). After the launch a always spectacular hunt Continue reading
Is this the beginning of web3.0?
Interesting to see the struggle from blogs to Twitter to social networks to perfect information overload to…. something new?
A while ago I wrote about weird load signals I heard in the HF-spectrum. Mischa, PA1OKZ pointed me out that they probably are Digital Radio Mondiale signals. And indeed, when Mischa and I were checking the most loud signals I had encountered, it were DRM-broadcastings. So another mystery is solved. Thanks Mischa, for pointing this one out!
Interesting article over at G4ILO’s about Automatic Voice Relay System. A pretty old design what can connect analog tot digital via A-star to D-star. Here you can read an article of the initiator himself, WB4APR
Last weekend I participated in the CQ WW SSB 2010 contest at our clubstation. First timer for a 48 hour contest. While preparing I decided not to work the full 48 hours. Earlier this year I participated in the PACC-contest for 24 hours and I found that exhausting enough. So I did want to start on saterday morning around 5:00 UTC until 22:00 UTC and return on sunday around 6:00 UTC untill 16:00 UTC. That left sunday evening for breaking up the gear. Everything worked as planned, kind of… We were active from the clubstation with two hams. We had build up 2 seats and there where 4 antenna’s operationable. A 10-15-20 beam, a 80m dipole, a 40m dipole (which hung too low) and a 20m dipole (which hung waaay to low). We swapped seats every once in a while to use the beam for 15m and 20m. 15m and 20m where the bands this weekend. I was able to work a few really far calls and added 19 new DXCC-entities to my log. In total I worked 295 QSO’s. Not too much, but I blame it to the bad antenna conditions (at least for multiple operators).
We really need to get up more monoband dipoles and get them up high! Problem is there are enough high trees around our clubstation but almost none possibilities to climb them. I think we need to figure out how to get the antennas up. For the PACC next year we want to try a multi-multi-station for the first time. So that is gonna need some serious preparations!
We’re in need of a good and stable database server at the club station PI4RCG to facilitate central logging. In two weeks we’ve a balloonfoxhunting thing coming up and there must be 3 operators able to log their QSO’s (80m, 2m and 70cm). Last weekend I ran into a Sun Cobalt RaQ550 server. A nifty little 19-inch server with a Pentium III, 1.26GHz, 2x80GB harddisks in RAID1, 512MB memory onboard. No video/sound so you need to switch on a serial line to be able to see the terminal. You can connect to the terminal with for instance puTTY with speed 115200 and 8N1. The original OS was not reachable because the owner forgot the passwords. Not a big problem because I want to run Debian Linux on it anyway. Since Google is your friend I went surfing around to find how to install Debian Lenny on a Sun Cobalt Raq550. There are some articles but most of it is out dated.
If you’re interested, please read on how I made it work.
Continue reading
When I was tuning around at the band the other day, I mistakenly went out of band and ran into a pretty strong signal. A weird signal. When I spin around some more I’ve noticed this signal repeats itself all over HF. First I thought its something in the neighborhood but when I asked Fred, PA3YH and Anne, PB1A to listen for the signal, they confirmed it.
I’ve made a list of all the HF frequencies were I hear this signal. Does anyone know where this signal is coming from and what it is? Are there more HAM’s who hear this?
Listen to the mp3 here: Unidentified signal JO22NF
The list of frequencies is over here: Frequencies Unidentified Signal
Reminder to self: is this interesting to build?
Lately I’m not doing well on the antenna area. I did pull down the multiband dipole because it was really a horrible sight from the back garden. Then I put down the Antron 99A because it wasn’t giving the performance I hoped for (I couldn’t use it for 20m anyway). And the Cobwebb is still under construction which give a little delay because of the DYI-stuff I have to do around the house at the moment. So the only antenna I now use is a single wire which I draped over the roof. More of less in a square, 20 meters long.
I’ve noticed a pretty nice receiving signal in SSB but (of course) transmitting is awful. Not been able to make a single contact in SSB.
But the other day I got an idea: why not trying BPSK31?! So when I fired up the Signalink USB I started making QSO’s! A lot of European Russia (UA3PI, UA3GX, RA3FO, RN3DY, RX3DD, RU3EJ) but after trying a little harder I also contacted Croatia (9A6DJM), Ukraine (UX1MW, UX1LN) and Romania (YO3JX). This turns out to be fun! Fine tuning my macro’s a little here and there.
Seems that my wire on the roof has a liking for the east, don’t know why since it lays out in a square. But hey, it’s nice working till I’ve get my Cobwebb up and running!