AmateurRadio.com

From Jeff, N2LXM:

On Friday June 20th, 2014 at 18:45 Zulu radio communications was established on 7.150 Mhz Upper sideband between the Marconi Wireless, Wellfleet station site in Cape Cod Massachusetts and the Marconi Wireless, Belmar Receiving Station, Wall Township New Jersey. Amateur Radio Station KM1CC had as a guest operator Princess Elettra Marconi, who was touring the Wellfleet site. This Forty Meter contact had been scheduled in advance to allow two former Marconi Wireless sites to make contact with Princess Marconi. Princess Marconi is in the United States touring sites which were owned and operated by her father, Guglielmo Marconi, and his wireless company.

Using the call sign WA2GM of the Marconi Chapter 128, of the Quarter Century Wireless Association the Ocean – Monmouth Amateur Radio Club made the contact. OMARC President Jeff Harshman, N2LXM was the control operator, with Steve Rosen KB2PGA, Quarter Century Wireless Association representative in attendance also in attendance were OMARC Members Bob KA8SAF and Alan KB2RR as witnesses.

A reminder that the historic alternator TX on 17.2kHz VLF will be sending a message this Sunday twice. They usually QSL via the amateur QSL bureaus. See http://alexander.n.se/in-english/saq-transmission/ for more details of this and other transmissions.

Some years ago I copied the transmission, QSLed and am the proud owner of one of their QSL cards. It is not hard to copy in Europe unless you have local noise problems. A small tuned loop is all the antenna needed. There are even a software receiver available free on the net capable of receiving the transmissions with a suitable antenna connected to the PC. The SM6LKM software receiver is excellent and covers 0-22kHz. It makes a very useful VLF receiver. I describe it on my YouTube Channel G3XBM.  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDxRhQYg7lQ.

This review has been a long time coming, I wish I had posted it before now, but better late than never, I guess. When I first started this review, there was only 1 version of the Wouxun KG-UV8D radio out, but now there are two. All radios with firmware 1.02 (1.01 was the old number) include the 2.5KHz step when tuning/scanning. As far as I know, that is the only difference between the 2 firmwares. There is no way to upgrade the 1.01 to 1.02, as far as I know. This is how they come from the factory.

Of course I bought one of these radios for myself and have been tinkering with it for the last couple of month. This is a really neat little radio. It has several features that other Chinese radios have yet to implement, but to me the best one is the 999 memory channels. This is unheard-of for an HT, especially a Chinese HT, most of which only support 128 memory channels. But this ultra-huge memory capacity enables me to enter all of my Ham Radio repeaters and simplex frequencies, along with all the FRS/GMRS frequencies, plus some locally used Red Cross frequencies. Even with all of those programmed in, I still have plenty of memory channels left to use. My plan is to create a bank of frequencies for the Galveston, TX area, to which we travel 1-2 times per year. Perhaps I will add some other repeaters also, in other areas.

Yes, this radio also does cross-band repeat. Honestly, I’ve not used it – I don’t really have a situation in which I would need a cross-band repeating HT. I have cross-band repeat setup on my Kenwood TM-741a in my shack at home, so that I can hit the Hurst repeater from an HT inside of my house (I key up a 440 simplex frequency, which keys my TM-741a, and it cross-band repeats to the Hurst repeater). This way I can talk on the repeater from inside my house without always having to walk out to the shack. I suppose cross-band repeating would be useful if you would out in the field somewhere. Maybe assisting on a bike/foot race, or perhaps on a camping trip. Setup the KG-UV8D with an external antenna and use it as a portable repeater. I have not had the need to do this yet, so I haven’t played with that feature.

The backlit LCD screen is certainly a plus. The screen goes off while you are monitoring, but comes back on again when a signal is received. This is to save the battery, I suspect, because the larger screens on today’s smartphones are usually the largest battery draw.

This radio, just like the Anytone AT-3318UV HT, will allow you to move each band independently between VFO and Memory modes. If the top band in is VFO, you can move the bottom band to a memory channel, without changing the top band, and vice-versa. There is a VFO/MR key on the front of this radio, so switching between the 2 options is very easy, unlike some other Chinese HTs. In reality, the VFO/MR button has 4 settings: VFO frequency, Memory channel number, Memory channel name, and Memory Channel Frequency. So when you are programming your repeater settings, it allows you to set a name for each repeater, then page through with the VFO/MR button so the repeater name can be displayed on the LCD instead of the frequency. This is useful if you are looking for a repeater in a certain area or city. And with 999 memory channels, you will probably want to know which repeater is where!

The radio comes with a great extended range antenna, just like the Anytone AT-3318UV.

There is also an extended battery available for this radio. The standard battery that comes with the radio is 1700mAh, and the extended battery is 2600mAh. The extended battery is a bit thicker than the stock battery, so expect the radio to be a bit heavier and bulkier than the stock configuration. However, rest assured that the stock belt clip and stock desktop battery charger are both build in such a way that they will accommodate either battery. No separate charger or belt clip is needed for the 2600mAh battery.

From the factory, the radio only does 400-470 TX range, but with the Frequency Expansion software you can extend the range up to 519MHz. I have not loaded this software yet myself, but I plan to do so next week. This software came from Wouxun, and isn’t a “hack”, it just extends the range of the radio to its maximum capacity.

I love this little HT and have carried it almost exclusively since it arrived. It is a fantastic addition to anyone’s radio collection.

Today’s sunspot count is 65 with “normal” 20-30MHz conditions. It looks to me as if the solar activity is now on the slide downwards. This does not mean an end to good conditions. This autumn 15, 12 and 10m should still be in very good shape and it will be a few years before we really see the changes.

There are all sorts of predictions about the next few cycles. The consensus is the next few cycles will be ones with low solar activity. It is still too soon to say if we are really entering another Maunder minimum. Don’t worry: this is a chance to explore HF in different times. There is unlikely to be good (any) E-W F-layer propagation on 12,10 and 6m but N-S propagation will be possible some of the time and openings on Es can be surprisingly distant in all directions at the optimum times of the year.

And there are always VHF, UHF, microwaves and nanowaves to explore!

See the coming months and years as a challenge. We may never see really good conditions again in our lifetimes but there will still be interesting propagation and DX to be worked and heard.

I cannot remember the supposed link between Es and thunderstorms (something to do with sprites going upwards from thunder clouds?) but with plenty of thunderstorms in the Alps, I wonder how Es will be tomorrow? Maybe conditions to southern Europe will be good on 6m Es?

Although I probably could safely reconnect antennas this evening now the storms have passed, I think it will be better to wait until the morning.

Knowing my luck, the 6m band will open transatlantic tonight and I shall miss it all! That would not be the end of the world.

Realistic HTX-100 10-meter transceiver

It’s so sad to me to see this once great retailer continue its downward trend. I have so many fond childhood memories stopping by the local Radio Shack (there were actually three in my town) to pick up batteries and other parts.

This morning its stock price is down to $0.82 a share from a high this year of over $4.00. Both of these numbers are a far cry from Radio Shack’s high of nearly $80 a share in December of 1999.

It seems like Radio Shack really had a chance to position itself as the leader in the new “maker” movement, but instead chose to be a second-rate retailer of cell phones and (overpriced) consumer crap.

Source: Slate via Adafruit

It turns out my recent message purporting to have been sent for the International Space Station (ISS) was not from there at all, but from a tent in Wales! Not quite sure why people get a kick from this? It all seems a bit silly to me. Previously this person’s account was sending out dodgy links and I informed him of this.  Be warned – all may not be what it seems.