New Turnstile Antenna / WWV - 25MHz

Last week's ARRL announcement regarding WWV's new circular polarized Turnstile antenna tests on their 25MHz transmitter quickly garnered my interest.




Their 25MHz signal used to be heard world-wide on F2 until it was dropped in 1977, but somewhat surprisingly, was resurrected in 2014.

I recall hearing its 2nd harmonic on sporadic-E very routinely on 50.000MHz when I first became active on 6m back in the late 60's. Back then it was also not uncommon to hear the 3rd and 4th harmonics of ship CW stations operating on 12 and 16MHz, at the very low end of 6m and just below the band edge on 49MHz.

6m Prop Indicator From The 70's!

They were often heard calling or working maritime land stations in Hawaii or Japan and the reception of these signals meant that the band was open out to the Pacific somewhere ... but of course there was no way of knowing just how far out they were and there were never any amateur signals to be heard.

Having not listened for WWV's 25MHz signal for several decades, I set up yesterday to see if it could be heard here in mid-summer. Using my Perseus SDR and my LF/MF inverted-L, self-resonant in the middle of the broadcast-band (gosh knows what the pattern looks like up on 25MHz!), I started monitoring just after lunch. I could detect their carrier which was very weak but steady, probably arriving on ionospheric scatter via the e-layer.

A few hours later I re-checked after hearing a few Colorado signals on 6m Es and sure enough, there they were with a fairly robust signal. It too, was no doubt arriving via sporadic-E as it was again today during another widespread Es opening from the PNW to as far south as Puerto Rico.

Here is a recording of the 25MHz signal made this morning with my Perseus SDR along with a comparison recording of their 20MHz signal, made about 30 seconds later.


There is not a lot of difference between the two and both run similar powers ... 2.5kW on 20MHz and 2kW on 25MHz. The 20MHz system uses a half-wave vertical on a 7.5m tower while the 25MHz outlet uses the crossed-dipole circular polarized Turnstile shown at the top of the blog.

Reception reports of their 25MHz signal are being sought and can be e-mailed to WWV at this address.
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

Digi signals.

 I was out for breakfast this morning looking over the blogs I follow on my Ipad when I came to Paul PC4T's blog it was an very interesting read about the new mode FT8. Once I finished reading his piece and went back to his main page I had a WOW moment!! I saw my blog listed under his favorites and notice it has been over a month since I last posted on my blog!! I knew the summers were very busy for me but I never thought I was that busy. I have the day off today and wanted to set some time aside for the radio, it has been long overdue for a ham radio sit down session. I started out on 20m CW this morning around 10:00 local time and I was surprised at the CW traffic. As the morning wore on the band died down around noon local time. I was not able to make any CW Elecraft P3 monitor that the digi end of 20m was very busy. I made my way up to 14.076.00 and tried some JT-65  and my CQ was answered by K8GNZ, KE0ABA and WA6GXQ but when I responded my reply was not heard. I at least new my signal was getting out anyway. As I began to write this post and having JT-65 running in the background my luck changed. I had a complete QSO's  with K0LOV and KB9EWG not many contacts but it was fun none the less.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Digi signals.

 I was out for breakfast this morning looking over the blogs I follow on my Ipad when I came to Paul PC4T's blog it was an very interesting read about the new mode FT8. Once I finished reading his piece and went back to his main page I had a WOW moment!! I saw my blog listed under his favorites and notice it has been over a month since I last posted on my blog!! I knew the summers were very busy for me but I never thought I was that busy. I have the day off today and wanted to set some time aside for the radio, it has been long overdue for a ham radio sit down session. I started out on 20m CW this morning around 10:00 local time and I was surprised at the CW traffic. As the morning wore on the band died down around noon local time. I was not able to make any CW Elecraft P3 monitor that the digi end of 20m was very busy. I made my way up to 14.076.00 and tried some JT-65  and my CQ was answered by K8GNZ, KE0ABA and WA6GXQ but when I responded my reply was not heard. I at least new my signal was getting out anyway. As I began to write this post and having JT-65 running in the background my luck changed. I had a complete QSO's  with K0LOV and KB9EWG not many contacts but it was fun none the less.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Around this time of year the kids finish school for the summer holidays and Mrs g7kse takes them for a week away with her before I get some time off myself. It’s a short break but the house is across the road from the beach and the kids love it. As does Angus (the dog). I then have a week at home / work where the place is a bit quiet. So time to catch up on a few loose ends and perhaps an evening mountain biking before I join them at the weekend.

This time I’m planning on building up the iCW keyer that I have. Well I say have, it’s a blank PCB that Chuck W5UXH was kind enough to give me earlier in the year. I can’t currently use iCW very effectively and my CW is suffering so this is somewhat needed. Now.

The keyer board is the full monty. It has all the bells and whistles and uses a new, to me, fubarino microcontroller. Slightly larger than an Arduino micro and with the provision for an SD card it offers the ability to store ebooks that will form the ability to play dit’s and dah’s as a stand-alone unit. The PCB is slightly larger than I’m used to but is well produced and uses professional parts all available from Mouser. It should take a few hours to build and test, perhaps an uninterrupted evenings work but we’ll see how well that goes and review the time at the end.

In summary….I need to turn this stuff into something useful. Wish me luck!

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].

If any of yall listen to the Hamradio 360: Workbench podcast then you will know the names George and Jeremy. They are the host of that podcast and some good friends of mine. Several episodes ago they talked about some miniature data radios and some uses for them. I had some questions about it so I thought what better than to do that to come on and talk about them on an episode so that yall can hear them too.

I got all my questions answered, Thanks George!

We went on to talk about their podcast and things that they had been doing and even an upcoming show topic and then wrapped it up with their thoughts on how Hamvention was this year and what they thought about the new venue.

I think we had a great conversation and I hope yall do to.

Check out the show notes for information about the episode, links to all the items that we talked about and other information. You can also listen to the episode directly on the website or on your favorite podcast listening app.

http://www.everythinghamradio.com/podcast/77

Curtis Mohr, K5CLM, is the author/owner of Everything Ham Radio Blog and Youtube channel. Contact him at [email protected].

Come spend some time with me in this ride-along video blog episode, the first in a series that I am doing to help you begin your journey into the amateur radio hobby. This video is an experiment in that I am trying out this format as a type of “chat” in which I share my thoughts and experiences regarding the ham radio hobby, and how you might start out exploring the hobby.

Regarding the experiment: I have tried to edit the sound to reduce the road noise. Please comment on the noise level, and how well you can hear me talking about the topic. Should I ditch the ride-along format? Comments directly on the YouTube channel are better if you leave a comment on the actual video as displayed on my YouTube channel.

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73 de NW7US

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