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• IARU Region 1 VHF newsletter charts the future of those very high bands
• ARRL asks members to comment on it's HF band planning proposal
• Get ready for next summers International Lighthouse & Lightship weekend
• Planning continues for the VK0EK Heard Island DXpeedition

THIS WEEK'S NEWSCAST

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Audio

 

Candle light

This sure has been a long week on Tuesday of this week we had a snow storm that due to warm  temp's then turned into an ice storm. The power went off here at 4pm on Tuesday and did not come back on until Thursday evening! We were in the dark and boy you sure don't realize how much you depend on electricity until it's GONE!! I live in a condo and we do have a generator for the stairway lights and underground parking lights and door, as well as the security scanners to allow you in and out of the building. The Elevators are hooked into the generator as well but for some reason they stopped working and it was the stairs!!! I was going to get some radio time in as I do have batteries for the KX3 and MFJ 1788 control box. I decided not too as the household was a bit stressed regarding no lights, a warming refrigerator, no heat and dropping temps outside to - 15 at night. The indoor temp was in around 50F, nothing an extra sweater could not take car off. I was able to get lots of reading in using a flashlight but there are so many things you just take for granted and forget about until they are gone………the cold showers sure was an eye opener! Have  you ever had an outage? what did you miss and how was it an eye opener for you?
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

The FREE multimode digital software package that many have used for years with Windows and Linux, has now been ported to Android. Again available without any restrictions!

Download the APK file, manual, and other details from here.

The software seems to cover many of the same functions, and modes, as its big brother Windows version.


I have only had a short time to play around with this tonight, but soon after I downloaded the APK on to my phone, a quick easy configure it was up and running within 5 minutes.






This now opens the door to cheap home and portable operation, using FLDIGI's modes likes PSK31 etc. Using simple Android tablets and Android PCs available from the likes of ebay for less than £50!

My 7" Android PC below, which should be suitable for use with FLDIGI.





 
Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at [email protected].

A recent posting on the Yahoo ndblist Group page, by veteran LF/MW DXer and front-end guru, Steve Ratzlaff (AA7U) in Oregon, described his thoughts on LF/MW antennas and his experience with phasers:


Some years back at the other place, I experimented with phasers, trying
all the various ones I could find or build. I had a long term loan of
the DXE NCC phaser as well. I compared them mostly at MW where a phaser is generally most useful; but also at LF and HF. In all cases and all
frequencies, without exception, the Dallas Lankford "MW Phaser #2" was
significantly better. I have placed that article in the ndblist Files,
under "Aerials and Technical Files" section should you have an interest
in looking at that article.


For LF use I never found any reason to use a phaser for trying to
optimize the level of a signal. Usually LF signals are short-lived and
often you only have a short time to catch an ident before it fades away.
You can easily waste 30 seconds or more just trying to optimize the
phaser; by that time the signal is usually gone. For those with a local
noise problem from a single general direction a phaser could be useful
in nulling out that noise, though of course you would lose the signals
from that direction too.

I also had room for antenna experiments, being able to compare them with
my longwire antennas. For those with the room, I believe it's hard to
beat an elevated longwire of approx. 400 feet or longer. I was very
fortunate to be able to string two E/W 1600 foot longwires, on either
side of the property about 400 feet apart and roughly parallel; and a
much shorter 400 foot N/S longwire. But even the N/S short one enabled
me to log a number of Greenland beacons (of course this was back when LF
conditions were still excellent, not like now).

Some folks have good results with the K9AY type antenna--Doug in TX has
good results using that antenna. But it's a ground-dependent antenna and
many areas don't have ground characteristics that support such antennas.
My area was one of those--the K9AY never worked very well for me. But an
elevated vertical loop worked very well, using the Wellbrook ALA100
preamp. 

I had several rectangular loops up at one time, 120-150 foot
circumference using the ALA100, about 10 vertical feet distance between
the top and bottom wires to give a good capture area. These were very
sensitive at LF and a couple of times I was able to (barely) hear
distant South Pacific beacons that I was also hearing on the 1600 E/W
longwire. And of course the loop antenna is ground-independent so can be
used anywhere. It's bidirectional so can help in nulling noise too. And
such a loop doesn't take up much room as long as you can get it away
from local AC noise (which is true for all LF antennas, especially for
active whips).

Mark Connelly is a prominent east coast MW DXer and has a lot of info on
antennas and phasing on his webpage here.  All his applications are primarily for MW DXing but the principles apply equally
well to LF.

The Dallas Lankford phaser article described by Steve, can also be downloaded from here.

LNV phaser, John Bellini in Colorado, also chimed-in with some additional thoughts based upon his own experience:


Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

A refurbishment of the shack is long overdue, and some advanced birthday money prompted me to take up one of ML&S recent deals. I had been looking at various Linear power supplies to feed the new layout, and the MP-304mkII would fit the requirement of servicing the array of rigs I have to feed.



Ordering was quick which I did over over the phone,  as normal with Martin Lynch & Sons, the faultless delivery was on time! Infact so quick! I had forgotten to tell the XYL, so she was surprised by the delivery.

The MP304 is sold as a 30A supply, that does 15A continuous, and 20A for 15minutes @13.8V. Supplied with a mains voltage of 230V 50Hz.

There are various output connections on the front, including a handy Cigar lighter socket that can supply 10A.

The supply is variable by an adjustable pot on the front panel, which is biased in the middle of its range to set the supply at the nominal 13.8V. The output is adjustable between 1.5V & 15V DC. With a sliding scale of V/I) (Don't expect 15A Max at 5V as this works out at about 7A)

The large easy to read analogue Meter is switchable either to Volts or Amps.  

Supply regulation is better than 1% and a noise figure <10mV is quoted.

We will see how this performs when I will load it up and do a few measurements in the next day or so.

A short form manual is supplied, a circuit diagram would of been useful for servicing in the future. (I have not seen one on the web?)

First looks are good, and not bad for the money of £99!



Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at [email protected].

Well, I was delighted, honoured and surprised, to get a nice letter from the RSGB today. In it, it said I’d been awarded the Wortley-Talbot trophy for my experimental work on over the horizon work at 481THz and the article on this published in RadCom last year.

Sadly my continued ill health means I’ll be unable to pick up the award at the RSGB’s AGM in London in April.  I just wish my health was better so I could do some field work again soon! Both VLF and optical field work are on hold until I feel better. This year I really really hope I’ll manage it.

To be honest this award came as a complete surprise, but I’d happily trade these lovely awards to be back to my old healthy self.

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

Without much (if any) advertising the Google+ ‘Chinese Ham Radio Equipment‘ community reached a 1000 members today. I intentionally made the community public, so there’s no need for a Google account in order to read there.

The downside of a community becoming larger is spam. Some of it is captured by Google itself and kept in a moderation queue, but some of it slips through and has to be deleted by the moderators. Because the moderators live in different time zones, spam never lives long.

What I still miss a bit there is the interactive part. If the community would be just another URL with the same content, it’s basically pointless. Questions about Chinese ham radio? Ask there, there’s a lot of knowledge and experience there.

Also nice: a carton box.

The carton box didn’t waste much time to cover the distance between the USA and Europe, but took almost the same amount of time to travel from Amsterdam Schiphol airport to my QTH — a one hour drive under the most challenging traffic conditions. Customs took their time…

Hans, PD0AC, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Almere, The Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].