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General Radio Discussion / Re: Are you under 30 and how did you get interested?
« on: June 12, 2019, 0219 UTC »
hi,
i'm 24 and probably come here from a different path than most of you. i'm not into amateur radio and have no interest in transmitting. i got interested in radio as part of my greater interest in the electromagnetic spectrum. i'm an astronomy major and though i have always been fascinated by the sky as a girl scout we got a visit of a grad student from the local university's astronomy program. the way she enthusiastically talked about electromagnetic waves as distant info messengers sounded like magic! from that moment on i knew what i wanted to do. she sort of became my mentor and we exchanged a lot of emails! she's now a radio astronomer and has been to some pretty exotic places like the atacama large millimeter array in chile!
anyway when i was in high school i became interested in the detection of the reflection of distant radio stations off of meteor trails as another way to collect data in basic meteor astronomy. it was going to be a science project and my dad who i seldom saw (divorce) even offered to help (he's an engineer) but i ended up doing something else.
more recently in april i was looking for something totally unrelated on youtube and came across this guy using an SDR to listen for spy numbers stations. i was like "wait, what? those are real?" i had vaguely heard of them because of that movie "The Numbers Station" but had no idea they were real. i learned more about hf radio and how it is affected by geomagnetic activity as well as how electrical activity in Jupiter's magnetosphere itself can sometimes be heard here.
i bought an rtl-sdr and nooelec 1:9 balun on the basis of that video and put up a 50 foot longwire antenna inside the little off campus house we rent and watched the signals come in on the waterfall plot looking like something out of The Matrix! i was hooked! i started googling a lot to find out more about the signals i was detecting and came across this forum among others.
i experimented for awhile and learned the rtl dongle while good for vhf and above was not the best for HF so i bought an sdrplay rsp1a from ham radio outlet about a month ago. it was a definite upgrade and so now i'm looking to upgrade my antenna. i don't have a lot of space and learned there are some compact antennas like the mini whip and magnetic loops (maybe too expensive for me on a student budget). most of all i want to take down the wire in the house lol so any advice on how to replace it would be great. there is space to mount a compact antenna outside so that is my next step.
on a personal note i was reluctant to post here as most of the people here are old enough to be my dad or in many cases grand dad and i hadn't come across another female but i at least found a thread with some people closer to my age.
btw: we dont just listen to lady gaga and justin bieber, most of us listen to everything and have tons of spotify and/or pandora playlists. don't hate me cause i like ariana grande and charlie puth
i'm 24 and probably come here from a different path than most of you. i'm not into amateur radio and have no interest in transmitting. i got interested in radio as part of my greater interest in the electromagnetic spectrum. i'm an astronomy major and though i have always been fascinated by the sky as a girl scout we got a visit of a grad student from the local university's astronomy program. the way she enthusiastically talked about electromagnetic waves as distant info messengers sounded like magic! from that moment on i knew what i wanted to do. she sort of became my mentor and we exchanged a lot of emails! she's now a radio astronomer and has been to some pretty exotic places like the atacama large millimeter array in chile!
anyway when i was in high school i became interested in the detection of the reflection of distant radio stations off of meteor trails as another way to collect data in basic meteor astronomy. it was going to be a science project and my dad who i seldom saw (divorce) even offered to help (he's an engineer) but i ended up doing something else.
more recently in april i was looking for something totally unrelated on youtube and came across this guy using an SDR to listen for spy numbers stations. i was like "wait, what? those are real?" i had vaguely heard of them because of that movie "The Numbers Station" but had no idea they were real. i learned more about hf radio and how it is affected by geomagnetic activity as well as how electrical activity in Jupiter's magnetosphere itself can sometimes be heard here.
i bought an rtl-sdr and nooelec 1:9 balun on the basis of that video and put up a 50 foot longwire antenna inside the little off campus house we rent and watched the signals come in on the waterfall plot looking like something out of The Matrix! i was hooked! i started googling a lot to find out more about the signals i was detecting and came across this forum among others.
i experimented for awhile and learned the rtl dongle while good for vhf and above was not the best for HF so i bought an sdrplay rsp1a from ham radio outlet about a month ago. it was a definite upgrade and so now i'm looking to upgrade my antenna. i don't have a lot of space and learned there are some compact antennas like the mini whip and magnetic loops (maybe too expensive for me on a student budget). most of all i want to take down the wire in the house lol so any advice on how to replace it would be great. there is space to mount a compact antenna outside so that is my next step.
on a personal note i was reluctant to post here as most of the people here are old enough to be my dad or in many cases grand dad and i hadn't come across another female but i at least found a thread with some people closer to my age.
btw: we dont just listen to lady gaga and justin bieber, most of us listen to everything and have tons of spotify and/or pandora playlists. don't hate me cause i like ariana grande and charlie puth