Messages

1261

Software / Re: ZARA Radio on windows 7 or WINE

« on: August 18, 2014, 0453 UTC »

I could have been running an older version, but the last time I tried it on 7 it would crash.  I confirmed this problem with others and concluded it's no longer stable under 7.  We'll try the linux route and see what happens.

+-RH

1262

General Radio Discussion / X-FM's history now has a wiki page

« on: August 08, 2014, 2304 UTC »

For those that are curious about our origins, check out the wiki page http://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/X-FM  I've been meaning to do this for some time, and just recently got around to typing it up.

+-RH

1263

Equipment / Re: Today's newbie post...grounding a H-800 at entrance to house (?)

« on: August 04, 2014, 0053 UTC »

Bond the shield of the coax at your bulkhead and you should be fine.

+-RH

1264

General Radio Discussion / Re: Amateur Radio Superstation K3LR

« on: August 01, 2014, 1936 UTC »

He spent some serious money on that.  God help the FCC if all pirates had that kinda coin to play with

+-RH

1265

General Radio Discussion / Re: Is Shortwave Radio Dead? Read this excellent 'pro' article

« on: August 01, 2014, 0522 UTC »

Well said.

+-RH

1266

Huh? / Re: did you ever have one of those days...?

« on: July 31, 2014, 2155 UTC »

Those are precisely the days when I throw my hands up, declare that it's five o'clock somewhere, and survey the fridge...

Just sayin'

+-RH

1267

General Radio Discussion / Re: Is Shortwave Radio Dead? Read this excellent 'pro' article

« on: July 31, 2014, 0033 UTC »

I think He's dead on.  Another short sighted calamity of all this is that the people who need shortwave the most are the ones destined to lose.  Those people in developing nations without another voice, internet, satellite, et al.  Sure, it takes a lot to run a shortwave station.  Lots of capital, people, land, ect, but it also required the least from the listener.  In many cases, you don't need power.  I've yet to see a crank-powered satellite TV.

+-RH

1268

Other / Re: Link-11(?) ~6945 USB 0145 UTC 28 July 2014

« on: July 29, 2014, 1332 UTC »

I've seen that signal "setup shop" there for weeks on end.  For awhile, 6947-ish had a lot of untility stuff running, particularly if there were ops going on overseas, or "state of emergency" stuff going on stateside.

+-RH

1269

General Radio Discussion / Re: My new favorite real time lightning map site

« on: July 29, 2014, 0411 UTC »

Cool find

+-RH

1270

General Radio Discussion / Re: Defection starts with reform radio

« on: July 26, 2014, 1748 UTC »

It looks to me like a main board from a commercially produced radio that has been cut to size to fit the box. The insides of my first stereo kinda looked like that.

+-RH

1271

General Radio Discussion / Re: My "Kinda" legal station

« on: July 26, 2014, 0907 UTC »

If you knew someone at the power company, and if your power distribution is above ground, you could probably couple the RF directly into the overhead HV line through a 1000pF or so 40 KV capacitor.  That would in essence give you an antenna system that is as large as your town.

In regards to carrier current, I was once told that in tall buildings at least, you wanted to choose a frequency that was close to the wavelength of your wiring network.  Tall building were better for low frequencies, short buildings, higher frequencies.  With a 16 block "antenna system"  you would probably do quite well on 540 KHz.

+-RH

1272

The RF Workbench / Re: Linear power amplifier with 10 W output for frequencies between 100 kHz and 2000

« on: July 24, 2014, 1944 UTC »

Also keep in mind when considering amplifier ratings for amplitude modulation, a ten watt amplifier means ten watts peak, not carrier level.  For 100% modulation, the peak power is four times the carrier level, ie 2.5 watts carrier is 10 watts peak at 100% modulation.  Above ten or so watts carrier, it becomes much more advantageous to do high level modulation verses linear amplification.   A 30 watt linear am transmitter produces an awful lot of heat, while its high level cousin produces almost none.  This is ever more important for battery operation.

+-RH

1273

Software / Re: ZARA Radio on windows 7 or WINE

« on: July 24, 2014, 0522 UTC »

I got bored today and got WINE installed on the desktop configured for XP emulation.  After installing ZARA, I tried to run it, and it does work, with a few caveats.  The program complains that it can't find the windows mixer application, but seems to run fine without it.  Log generation seems to work ok, but don't expect to be able to play music from mounted network storage, at least mine won't.  Local playback from USB drives or local HDD's seems ok.  The program also doesn't seem to like dual monitor enviroments, as when you drag the window to the other monitor it becomes transparent.  The program also doesn't close cleanly.

The long answer, yes it works, but its bitchy.  My desktop has a host of other problems that could also be affecting my success.  Your mileage may vary.

+-RH

1274

The RF Workbench / Re: Linear power amplifier with 10 W output for frequencies between 100 kHz and 2000

« on: July 23, 2014, 1324 UTC »

There really shouldn't be much to this.  Most drive-in transmitters and the like used an LM1496 modulator followed by a push pull linear amplifier.  As FF said, use a pair of push-pull irf510's or similar running from either a 12 or 24 volt supply.  Use material 77 on the toroids so they will work in MW.  Probably T140-77 for the output wound tri-filiar, with two of the windings joined to form a center tapped winding for the primary.  Circuits like this should be easy to find on the web.

Something like this http://www.sm0vpo.com/tx/15w-pa.htm

+-RH

1275

Software / ZARA Radio on windows 7 or WINE

« on: July 21, 2014, 0933 UTC »

My old air computer is still running XP for one reason only; ZARA will not run on windoze 7.  Has anyone tried it under WINE, or know of a version out there that does run on 7/8/et al?  I would like to move away from the technicolor mafia all together and go linux.

I like the idea of rivendell, but for a request based program this is totally inappropriate, as each cut has to be imported one at a time into it's SQL based library.  That's kindof hard to do on the fly, and a large chunk of the library is scattered across multiple HDD's.

Thanks for the help,

+-RH