Messages

16

Equipment / Re: Advice on Tecsun vs Sony

« on: February 05, 2019, 2229 UTC »

I have both the Sony 7600 and the Tecsun 880.  I never listen to the Sony anymore.  Tecsun hears better, tunes easier especially ssb no comparison.  Rechargeable battery via usb which hardly ever needs charging.  Why do I have that damn Sony sitting around still?  I guess for trips and stuff where if it was stolen I wouldn't really care.

17

General Radio Discussion / Re: Resource Advice

« on: December 14, 2018, 2241 UTC »

Simple dipole, pretty much any type of copper wire.  Inverted v at least 20 feet up at the center.  Ends off the ground.  Start with a bit too much wire and twist in the ends a bit at a time and check with swr meter if transmitting.  If receiving then no need to get it within inches of good swr.  Yeah drawback is transmitting you need to pick a small frequency range you want it to behave well on.  Ya prolly got the shit laying around to build an almost free one.  Chunk of coax going to center was ever my only real cost.  You can leave extra wire on the ends twisted inward if you want to ever go down lower in freq.  Easier to chop off wire than add some if you are off resonance a bit.

18

Huh? / Re: Buzzcocks co-founder Pete Shelley dies at 63

« on: December 07, 2018, 2259 UTC »

I read it last night and it saddened me.  I must have listened to Singles Going Steady hundreds of times.  Now he can be reunited with his POS Starway guitar.  He said something like it was like playing a 2x4 with strings up a half inch.  Legend has it he broke the sob in half.

19

QSLs Received / Re: Toynbee Radio eQSL

« on: December 02, 2018, 2024 UTC »

Same here.  Music was by Elastica, Armitage Shanks, Ramones, Dow Jones.

20

The RF Workbench / What kind of build and output do YOU want to see?

« on: November 19, 2018, 2344 UTC »

Lots of talk about 200-400 watt designs but I imagine most everyone would not want to run this as it is practically asking for the knock or a nice arcing fireball when something goes wrong.  I know what I like and what I would like to have exist.  I'd like a grenade type design.  It is easy to build with basic electronic knowledge and gets out nicely with a good dipole.  What I would like is for more than a sub 10 watt carrier with 20 max PEP.  Maybe double this while still using 12-15 volts.  And without the obsolete 270-030 which is increasingly hard to find.  That is the only problem part with this solid design.  I don't know if this would be a laughable request, like maybe the design is already maxxed out at 10 watts, but it is what I'd be willing to spend some $ on with schematic and just my nice multimeter.  Yeah I know there are Dave M designs that may kind of fit the bill but I have never been able to get one of them to work well.  Either not at all or with terrible audio.  Grenade works first time every time and can be tweaked up a couple watts maybe by experimenting with filter caps.  So what do you all want to see?

21

Equipment / Re: Linear Amp for Just Below 40m

« on: November 03, 2018, 1751 UTC »

12v like old school cb linear or a plug in the wall kind most likely with tubes or quite expensive?

22

Bacon, BBQ, Beef, And More / Re: How to properly make chicken wings

« on: October 19, 2018, 2156 UTC »

BLARG!  To the refined hot sauce palate all are like vinegar other than the cheapo -el yucateco-.  Even rooster sauce is preferable to me.  Try you some Ring of Fire habanero for some tasty sauce.  Or for more of an orange-y BBQ like taste, Crazy Jerry's Brozac.  I make my own but mainly only buy the mentioned ones.

23

Bacon, BBQ, Beef, And More / Re: How to properly make chicken wings

« on: October 16, 2018, 2049 UTC »

Sounds awesome.  I personally dislike tabasco. Not very hot and very vinegary.  Try ya some -el yucateco-- red.  It is significantly hotter, no vinegar, and about $2 a bottle at wallyworld. Omg got to figure out how to not auto spell check.  It would not take the brand name and kept correcting it to do hydrated - there i just typed the name again.

24

The RF Workbench / Re: New here, and my journey building a SW xmtr

« on: September 26, 2018, 2139 UTC »

Yeah don't believe quite all of the book values and antenna voodoo you read.  An inverted v 20 feet up in the center and legs just off the ground to 6 feet up is only supposed to give NVIS.  Why then have I seen 10 watts cover well over 1000 miles?  Magic resonance I guess.  My first 2-3 watt crap build was heard (poorly) almost the entire N-S distance of the US in the daytime, tossed center wire 20-25 feet high over a limb, edges maybe even touching the ground.

25

The RF Workbench / Re: New here, and my journey building a SW xmtr

« on: September 21, 2018, 2047 UTC »

Those riceburners don't support audio input just cw right?  Let's not take a steaming load on this.  Didn't channel z do the experiment like 25watts/10 watts/1 watt during a broadcast and there was a slight decrement each time?  The lowest power was still listenable.  I bet he had a nice high dipole.  Remember this broadcasting power thing is logarithmic.  Lots more power needed to increase coverage.  I bet half a watt with a nice inverted v at the highest height you can reasonably get would perform as well as a ten watt run into a vertical or shitty nonoptimized dipole.  I say go for it and post when you will try broadcasting on the broadcast thread.  If you can do breadboard shit go for it but I take the easy way out and would try copper board manhattan style coz that's the way I think and might work better.  Just my 2 cents.  Go ahead and yall rec.pets.cats flamewar on me.  I encourage you to build that sob and learn from it.
PS yeah I miss alt.tasteless back in the day.

26

Equipment / Re: How can I get into this hobby?

« on: August 16, 2018, 2255 UTC »

So probably you would want a portable you can take up on the roof----like a Tecsun 600-800s series.  If you don't care about it being portable, for close to the same price you can get a PC controlled SDR like one of the SDRPlay boxes.  It would be significantly better.  Then you could hook up a larger chunk of wire or dipole on the roof.  And you have to be prepared for a learning curve.  I swear I would have had some issues figuring everything out on the SDR radio if I didn't have a portable and a big radio sitting there to compare and tweak it.  It would have REALLY pissed me off rather than just irritating me because you do really have to muck around with settings, and if you screw up just a little bit you may hear nothing on HF.
Oh and if those 'old radios' still pick up shit, try running a long chunk of wire up to the roof or around the top of the room.  If it is old like Hallicrafters tube radio old, well you probably will not hear much.

27

The RF Workbench / Re: What exactly could cause a modulation transformer to ocscillate?

« on: July 23, 2018, 2319 UTC »

Drench in krylon triple thick spray glaze x2.  It will most likely still sound like a tiny flea band but hey you dont need to have a receiver on all the time.

28

General Radio Discussion / Re: FCC enforcement website

« on: June 12, 2018, 2256 UTC »

God they really screwed up viewing what happened recently.  You can stop loading the page after a tenth of a second or two and still see what happened recently before it switches view. 

https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/rfo/ActAct.html

If you are too slow you get the dumbed down tonka toy view but you can zoom in on a map and see enforcement items.  That is the only improvement.

29

General Radio Discussion / Re: Antenna 4 bedroom setup

« on: June 12, 2018, 2244 UTC »

If you have $400 burning a hole in your pocket get a Wellbrook loop.  I had great results way back with my R8 just running a chunk of very thin wire up the wall and around 3/4 of the ceiling corners.  It always was quite good as long as you had some chunk of wire at least 20 feet long even on the first floor ceiling.

30

Equipment / Re: Touching MFJ-956 increases gain.

« on: April 21, 2018, 1832 UTC »

I've seen that lots of times on portables. Maybe you become part of the ground plane.  Like touching rabbit ears on ancient 1970 TV.  HOLD IT RIGHT THERE.