Messages

4156

Huh? / Re: Russia 'to revive the KGB' after Putin wins biggest majority

« on: September 27, 2016, 0645 UTC »

Lol maybe more like this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To5wKh9Ypec#t=2.880479

4157

General Radio Discussion / Re: Over The Top Craziness on 7200 LSB!

« on: September 27, 2016, 0639 UTC »

The beauty of 14313 and 7200 and the rest is it gives those inclined a place to congregate, leaving the rest of the bands alone for the most part. This is a good thing.

4158

General Radio Discussion / Re: This New Brunswick town was literally haunted by the radio

« on: September 26, 2016, 1545 UTC »

Then there was the guy who strung a wire over the graveyard, with a neon bulb in the middle to help him tune up. Even had the cops in the crowd of people watching the glowing thing hovering in the graveyard one night.

4159

Equipment / Re: Advice on choosing an antenna that won't make my transmitter go boom

« on: September 26, 2016, 1543 UTC »

A dipole cut to the operating freq and in the clear will be very hard to beat for efficiency, a vertical with ground plane may get you a lower angle of radiation, however.

4160

Huh? / Re: Russia 'to revive the KGB' after Putin wins biggest majority

« on: September 23, 2016, 1659 UTC »

Little of the Soviet era mil/gov apparatus was actually disbanded in the "collapse" of the Soviet Union, just changed the names of the departments. The old commies then changed into anti commies and continued on in their old occupations. And let some oligarchs walk away with millions from pilfered public property and natural resources.

4161

General Radio Discussion / Re: AT&T Promises Gigabit Speeds Using Existing Power Lines

« on: September 23, 2016, 1639 UTC »

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Promises-Gigabit-Speeds-Using-Existing-Power-Lines-137931

AT&T's AirGig system would utilize low-cost plastic antennas...

Plastic antennas 

Maybe they're talking about this type;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_resonator_antenna

Even das Ubooten in ww2 had dielectric antennas in a late war radar warning antenna system.

4162

Equipment / Re: LoG receive antenna, Loop on Ground!

« on: September 23, 2016, 1619 UTC »

Some of the arrl antenna compendiums have on ground and in ground hf antenna articles. They make for interesting reading.

4163

SDR - Software Defined Radio / Re: New version of RTL-SDR.com dongle now available

« on: September 19, 2016, 1522 UTC »

Am evaluating one right now for hf, so far it's promising. A highpass filter or preselector at the antenna port really is needed to reduce images and imd, but other than that it works wonderfully with my fav sdr app hdsdr even without preselection. The antenna system is a ocfd (obsessive compulsive fed dipole) up about 30 ft via rg6 and a b&w 30MHz lowpass filter straight to the sma.

Very low cpu usage once hdsdr is set up to draw the waterfall a bit slower. Anyway, as mentioned before the sample rate has interesting effects, too high and the panadapter is stunning to view (many signals may prove to be imd or images) but performance lacking on the channel of interest, too low and it seems to degrade dynamic range. I find the 256 sample rate causes audio output to be oddly hindered while 1m and up to 2.4 does very well in all instances, I settled on 1m.

The various decoder apps seem to leap into action once near a given signal derived via the dongle, I attribute this to the dsp filtering and tcxo. Speaking of the tcxo, wwv @ 15 was one cycle off in ssb mode and pretty much perfectly stable, how's that for a 20 dolla dongle. I had read about instances where the case got almost too hot to touch, mine ran at room temp with hours of use, perhaps higher sample rates makes it heat up.

4164

The RF Workbench / Re: My homebrewed magnetic loop antenna

« on: September 17, 2016, 1823 UTC »

I've been making minor improvements to the antenna recently, such as making the tripod more stable, remounting the variable capacitor, etc. I found a rubber covering from a banana plug to put on the capacitor where a knob goes (I never found a knob that really fit it). So, now that I'm able to tune without causing a short or ground or whatever makes the signal drop out from direct contact, I have discovered that the upper range is much higher than previously thought. I just logged Russian polytone station XPA2, which broadcast at 1500z today (9/16/16) on 16147 USB using the loop. And it came in much better than it did on the 48' wire, which at 14.4m is usually quite reasonable for higher band reception.

Up above I said I don't think this is a true DX antenna, but I'm reconsidering that conclusion.

Back in the late 80's I had a poor man's NSA setup, an Icom R70 and an infotec M600 with shielded crt fed by a cliff dweller antenna resting upon the curtain rod in the bedroom or a sloper out about 70ft or so from the same window. All of wich provided the means for a selectable  horizontal and vertical polarisation rx setup. For example, when Rabat Morocco fsk signal was coming in around 19MHz (as I recall), I would switch between the two antennas and usually see a difference, however slight, between horizontal and vertical polarity of rx antennas. At fade in/out the difference was amazing, often one polarity would be perfectly readable and the other no sig at all. It's nice to have both.

4165

Huh? / Re: The Mammoth Pirates

« on: September 10, 2016, 0024 UTC »

They'll dredge up a t-rex and that will be the end of it. Next thing you know you're up to your bum in t-rex clones.

4166

Huh? / Re: Prince Buster, Ska Pioneer, Dies Aged 78

« on: September 10, 2016, 0016 UTC »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOJSM46nWwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRaO9112mco

4167

General Radio Discussion / Re: Swling

« on: September 09, 2016, 2359 UTC »

Oh what the crap, here's the vid as it sposed to be seen;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzapOem41Gg

4168

General Radio Discussion / Swling

« on: September 08, 2016, 0005 UTC »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzapOem41Gg#t=50.541

4169

SDR - Software Defined Radio / Re: New version of RTL-SDR.com dongle now available

« on: September 07, 2016, 2354 UTC »

That'd be neat of you could df with it.

4170

General Radio Discussion / Re: The criminally annoying Russian Woodpecker

« on: September 05, 2016, 1425 UTC »

Was going to say. The problem with Chernobyl, other than the design, was experimenting with it like it was something safe to play with. Something happened in the experiment they couldn't correct and it took off on them.