Messages

5896

Shortwave Broadcast / 60M Bandscan 0055 - 0115

« on: October 02, 2011, 0144 UTC »

When I'm bored, I have been in the habit of doing bandscans, which is incredibly boring, and by comparison, the previous state of boredom I was in previously just doesn't seem that all that boring after all. 

Hope you don't mind if I share them here.  It makes it a lot easier to have target ideas handy on nights when there are good openings.

4716.65  Trace audio, poss Span
4746.90  Weak het only
4765.00  Trace audio
4774.89  Weak het only
4803.50  Swooshy beacony thingy
4814.91  Trace audio, poss Span
4835 - 4845  WWCR (pres) and all its slop @ S9+20
4885.00  Fair in Portuguese - Para?
4905.00  Weak het only
4925.18  Trace audio, poss Portuguese
4935.19  Weak het only
4949.68  Weak het only
4949.95  Weak het only
4964.99  Trace audio, poss English, CVC?
4974.91  Trace audio
4985.00  Trace audio
4989.92  Trace audio
5000.00  Beep - Ft Collins only
5009.95  Trace audio?
5015 - 5035 Rebelde and all its slop @ S9
5035.00  Good het in Rebelde splatter
5040.00  RHC @ S9+
5051.00 WWRB pres @ S8

5897

Shortwave Broadcast / 5010 R Madagasikara

« on: October 01, 2011, 0307 UTC »

Starting to peak @ 0255 from 0238 fade in.  Talk by YL/OM in Malagasy over instrumental valiha music.  Program of contemporary Mad music.  0301 two definite IDS, followed by possible news.  S3 in moderate to heavy static. 1 Nov 11
Still there @ 0320 recheck.

5898

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Radio Ronin Shortwave 6925 AM 0108 UTC

« on: October 01, 2011, 0116 UTC »

Still UNID here and very weak, with mod static
0108 EJ - "Benny & Jets" with break; ment "...taking it too far..." and back to "Benny & Jets"
0111 EJ - "I'm Still Standing"
0122 Bowie - "Ground Control"
0128 In brief fade up "...youngsters who drink and use drugs..."
0133 OM annoucements, seems gone @ 0134

Just not happenin' here tonight, but thanks RR!

5899

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: UNID 6924.7am

« on: September 24, 2011, 2136 UTC »

Came in from combing a BA turd out of my dog's coat to hear final song and ID block.  Sounded like "WFMT" on a couple of plays of the tape.  Good sig and I got good audio here.

5900

Other / Re: That yucky Buzz tx

« on: September 23, 2011, 2219 UTC »

Ran across this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDnPS6U5JX4

I guess when I hear the term OTH Radar, I immediately think in terms of military use.  This piece of corpo-propaganda suggests civilian and scientific uses (e.g. tracking iceberg movement).  That certainly doesn't bode well for the future. 

Perhaps they can use it in the short term to track UARS...I've got Pakistan in the pool at work.

5901

Equipment / Re: DDS-60 Direct digital synthesizer

« on: September 22, 2011, 2131 UTC »

Chris;

A very timely post for me.  My R7 is plagued by 3 annoyances, 2 attributable to old age, and one by design.  I was looking at this a short time ago and decided that the DDS-60 accompanied by an Arduino SBC should be able to solve all three problems.  First, the R7 PTO gearing just reaches the far end of the bathtub curve at some point.  The plastic gears become worn, out of round, and prone to lockup.  Using a DDS to implement a digital VFO would be a nice replacement.  Most likely will just need a simple BPF to get to the spectral purity of a permeability tuned oscillator.  Secondly, the band Up/Down buttons at some point just get tired, and are prone to contact bounce.  No amount of contact cleaner seems to do the trick for very long.  Punch Up, and it can be a guess as to what frequency band you end up on.  Thirdly, the RIT control is difficult to use by design; +/- 2.5kHz in a single turn pot makes it very difficult to use in practice.

An Arduino has a lot of flexibility for $30.  14 IO lines to handle DDS loading, frequency increment/decrement buttons, etc.  One of the on board 10-bit ADCs could be easily used to implement the RIT function and possibly the Passband Tuning function (do I see a joystick here?).  It has EEPROM which can be accessed by the code (written in C) to handle last tuned frequency, memories, etc.  It does have a USB port which is used to download code from the compiler, but which can also be accessed programatically for control by a host program.

All in all, one should be able to put together a great PTO replacement for a lot cheaper than an RV75.

Thanks for the post!

5902

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Unid 6924.8 AM

« on: September 17, 2011, 0232 UTC »

S2 at best in Chicago, with only occasional readable audio.

5903

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Rave On Radio 6925 USB 0107z

« on: September 13, 2011, 0132 UTC »

Weak here also, SIO 242.  Songs alt w/ IDS.
Poss Neil Young @ 0130