AmateurRadio.com

Series Three Episode Twenty-Two of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:

• Dundalk ARS morse and 4m nets 
• £10m SSTL Space Lab in Guildford 
• New Nevada radio station includes ham radio 
• K3LR to receive Barry Goldwater Amateur Radio Award 
• Comms support for Chilean mine rescue
• Radio listener arrested 
• Ham sentenced for jamming police
• AMSAT-UK FUNcube SDR USB Dongle
• Experimental Web Radio from New Zealand and Europe 
• New slow Morse transmission near Dartford 
• BT to replace Comtrend PLT units 
• Happy Birthday Ippy 
• Amateur bands to be used for London 2012 Games

Your feedback and Martin (M1MRB) reports on the RSGB Convention and JOTA.

Series Three Episode Twenty-Two of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:

• Dundalk ARS morse and 4m nets 
• £10m SSTL Space Lab in Guildford 
• New Nevada radio station includes ham radio 
• K3LR to receive Barry Goldwater Amateur Radio Award 
• Comms support for Chilean mine rescue
• Radio listener arrested 
• Ham sentenced for jamming police
• AMSAT-UK FUNcube SDR USB Dongle
• Experimental Web Radio from New Zealand and Europe 
• New slow Morse transmission near Dartford 
• BT to replace Comtrend PLT units 
• Happy Birthday Ippy 
• Amateur bands to be used for London 2012 Games

Your feedback and Martin (M1MRB) reports on the RSGB Convention and JOTA.

Here are two more recent reception reports of my QRSS signal.

N8YE capture of QRSS signal from VA3STL

Steve, N8YE, sent one from South Eastern Ohio (above) from 20th Oct 2010 and my signal looks nice and strong. Also, I saw the  my signal this evening in KL7UK/5 Bartlesville OK grabber (see below).

From KL7UK grabber 23rd Oct. at 0215

Cross Country Wireless has just announced an updated version 2 of its low cost SDR Receiver. The new version has an RF preamplifier using a power MOSFET after the RF bandpass filter which is claimed to improve sensitivity – which was a criticism of the earlier version – and reduce local oscillator output at the antenna port.

The designer Chris, G4HYG, claims that the receiver will now display a CW carrier at a level of -135 dBm on the waterfall of SDR-Radio using a 48 kHz sound card. The level of the local oscillator at the antenna port is now specified as -65 dBm, though a more typical measurement is -70 dBm. This should make it an ideal choice as a panadapter for radios such as the Elecraft K3. In fact, Chris recently stated that most orders for the receiver have been for use as panadapters, in conjunction with a sound card and suitable software such as PowerSDR-IF.

The cost of the standard SDR is £49.95. For panadapter use you will need a custom crystal for your radio’s IF which increases the price to £59.95. The SDR has two (switched) local oscillators so the other one could be specified to cover 40m or 30m for use as a conventional receiver. It’s also available as a built and tested board for assembly into your own case (at a significant saving.) If you built a USB sound device into the same box then it would be rather neat.

As I was roaming around the Intertubes, I came across an article at AmateurRadio.com written by Jeff, KE9V. I had been an avid listener of Jeff’s “Cornbread Road” podcast while he was publishing it as a podcast. The format was different enough to keep me interested. When it went away, I was highly disappointed.

As it turns out, his recent article disappointed me quite a bit as well. I don’t want to give much away, but suffice it to say the outlook Jeff paints is fairly bleak. At the same time, some of the points are valid and overall the essay was fairly thought provoking. Because of that, Richard, Bill (KA9WKA) and myself decided to discuss Jeff’s recent article. We also have our usual assortment of announcements, banter, gripes and response to feedback. So settle in for an interesting episode. We all had a good time. We hope you do, too.

73 de The LHS Guys (and Bill)

This is a short meta-post. That is, it’s a post about my posts. Actually, it’s a post about some responses that I’ve been getting to my posts. In my recent post about how the pileups for some of the PJ stations were huge, Bill, W9VA, who was the operator at PJ2T at the time that I posted the image of my bandscope, comments about what it was like on the other end of the pileup.

On my soapbox post about how people don’t seem to listen, I got a bunch of comments. Most of them were agreements with my thoughts (including a rather astonishing anecdote from Ed, N4EMG). There was also a comment from Jeremy, KB7QOA, who mentions that he hasn’t jumped into the piles because he hasn’t learned how to operate split on his radio. David, K2DSL, responded with detailed instructions, which really demonstrates the ham spirit.

As an aside, the reason why I’m mentioning these comments is because Blogger, the platform that I use for blogging, doesn’t support an easy way for folks to see comments that have been posted after they’ve read an entry, and I wanted to make sure that my readers had the opportunity to see them. If you’ve commented recently, or even not so recently, and I didn’t mention it, please don’t take it personally. I do read and usually reply to most comments here and they are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for everyone for contributing.

This is a short meta-post. That is, it’s a post about my posts. Actually, it’s a post about some responses that I’ve been getting to my posts. In my recent post about how the pileups for some of the PJ stations were huge, Bill, W9VA, who was the operator at PJ2T at the time that I posted the image of my bandscope, comments about what it was like on the other end of the pileup.

On my soapbox post about how people don’t seem to listen, I got a bunch of comments. Most of them were agreements with my thoughts (including a rather astonishing anecdote from Ed, N4EMG). There was also a comment from Jeremy, KB7QOA, who mentions that he hasn’t jumped into the piles because he hasn’t learned how to operate split on his radio. David, K2DSL, responded with detailed instructions, which really demonstrates the ham spirit.

As an aside, the reason why I’m mentioning these comments is because Blogger, the platform that I use for blogging, doesn’t support an easy way for folks to see comments that have been posted after they’ve read an entry, and I wanted to make sure that my readers had the opportunity to see them. If you’ve commented recently, or even not so recently, and I didn’t mention it, please don’t take it personally. I do read and usually reply to most comments here and they are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for everyone for contributing.