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Topics - Tom S

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1
North American Shortwave Pirate / Unid 6903 USB 0130 UTC 8 Sept 2019
« on: September 08, 2019, 0136 UTC »
Unid pirate playing music off & on for a few minutes, sounded like techno music.

2
General Radio Discussion / Problem with Ryver?
« on: October 15, 2017, 0005 UTC »
I've been trying to log into Ryver all evening but I just get the screen with the "waiting" circles circling around.  Anyone else have this problem or do I need to check something on my end?  This is the first time I've had issues with it.

3
North American Shortwave Pirate / Unid 6940 USB 04/22/17 2352Z
« on: April 22, 2017, 2352 UTC »
Unid stn playing numerous reggae tunes, no ID as of yet.

4
North American Shortwave Pirate / CYOT 6940 AM 0019 UTC 26 Feb 2017
« on: February 26, 2017, 0022 UTC »
AM carrier w/ CYOT repeated in CW.

5
SDR - Software Defined Radio / My SDR
« on: June 17, 2014, 0323 UTC »
Here's a little article on our local radio club website about my SDR system using an R820T DVB-T dongle and homemade HF converter for signals <25 MHZ.

http://www.sekarc.net/2014/02/sdr-at-builders-meeting_24.html

The HF converter was built into an old Nokia bag phone case.

6
General Radio Discussion / TV as LCD monitor in shack
« on: June 13, 2014, 1739 UTC »
Anyone else here using a TV as a computer monitor in the shack?  My 17" LCD monitor died a while back so I went back to using an old 15" or so CRT I dug out of the garage, and it's hard on my crappy eyesight.  Last night my wife bought me an early Father's Day present, a 19" TV with VGA input.  

My main concern, of course, is RFI.  The TV we got is a cheaper one, so I don't know how well it's shielded.  Of course, I'm going to add some large ferrite beads to the cables to cut down on any spurious signals, but hopefully it won't put out noise like some TV's do.

I haven't hooked it up to my computer yet because I need to get a male-male VGA cable, but I did hook it up to my discone antenna and managed to see 10 local DTV stations.  Which leads me to my second question, what are the frequencies for the new TV channels?  I would like to build an antenna just for TV.

7
Spy Numbers / Interesting number station msg
« on: December 02, 2013, 0351 UTC »
Was going back through old traffic recently when I came across a numbers transmission I remembered copying because the message groups don't appear to be random.  The message was from a CW station heard on 9458.5 back on 17 April 1996 at 0520 UTC:

>041796
>0520Z
>9458.5KHZ
>CW
62460 62455 62050 62940 62130 62520 44018 73573 73072 72972
72877 62578 62374 62565 62755 62348 62240 62529 62820 44020
63568 73375 63280 73177 72978 62775 62573 62960 62953 62749
62445 62142 62730 62919 63133 63530 44022 63555 63152 62845
62654 62542 62736 63036 63538 44024 63086 62875 62870 63067
73267 63270 63175 63076 19191 BT AR SK
>EOT

As you can see all groups start with 62, 63, 72, 73, or 44, with a 19191 stutter group at the end.  What it seems like is that it was a message which was sent out without first encoding it with a one time pad.  There's no way these groups are random.  If there were ever a number station message decoded by hobbyists, it would be this one.

I don't even know for sure which station (ENIGMA designator) which sent this message, and I've never copied anything like it since.

8
Stn in CW sending anti-Obama messages.  Didn't catch an ID but saw Rebel Radio listed in other logs.  

Here's the text I copied, copied as sent:
FCC CAN NOT CATCH US BT QTC TU OBAMA IS A LEFT WING LIBERAL BT OBAMA IS A TAX AND SPEND LIBERAL BT IMPEACS IMPEACH OBAMA BT HE IS AGAINST THE SEMEEEEEEE SECOND AMENDMENT BT HE WANTS TO TAKE OUR GUNS BT EV GET YOUR GUNS WHILE YOU CAN BT BT IMPEACS IMPEACH OBAMA BT IM0 SK EE

9
Equipment / New (old) antenna up at my QTH
« on: October 22, 2012, 1500 UTC »
My main HF listening antenna for the past year or so has been a ~150 ft. random wire up between two trees on my property.  I'd been noticing that it wasn't very effective at the upper ranges of the HF spectrum so decided to resurrect my old Cushcraft trap vertical.  When we first moved in here I had it up on a corner of the house, but I had so much noise there (probably due to its proximity to power lines on the north side of the house and not having a good ground) I had about an S9 noise floor but little signal.  This weekend I put it up next to the garage and it is working great.  I still need to run a few ground radials, install a grounding rod, and get about 100' of coax and run it properly under the eaves of the house and garage rather than the just-long-enough coax running across the ground from the window to the house.  But for now it works.

I built a switchbox to be able to switch between either the wire or the vertical, and to switch both of them in together if I want.  I've found that on some signals with selective fading, it helps to have both antennas connected since sometimes the horizontal polarity fades but comes in strong vertically, and vice-versa.  I've noticed that signals which were coming in OK on just one antenna really jump up a few S-units when both are switched in.  This is what I learned in the military is called polarity diversity.  There's also the advantage of space diversity, but my two antennas probably aren't far enough apart to take advantage of that.

At any rate, I should be able to pick up signals in the upper HF spectrum better.  With the 10/11 meter opening this weekend, I definitely noticed a difference between the vertical and the wire.

10
TV DX Loggings / I miss analog TV!
« on: October 12, 2012, 2111 UTC »
Just gotta say I miss analog TV and picking up TV channel 2 on my Icom R75 on 59.750 MHZ a few years back.  Best TV DX I had was hearing a station located in Eastern Virginia.  Funny how the Sporadic-E was that day, I could hear two different stations by switching between a vertical and horizontal antenna, and only one station was audible on either antenna.

11
North American Shortwave Pirate / Deliverance Radio
« on: October 09, 2012, 0004 UTC »
Deliverance Radio on 2345 6925 USB with dueling banjos, pig squealing, commercials for EIEIObonics and Squeal like a Pig alarm.

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