Messages

256

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 am 1533 UTC 7 June 2018

« on: June 07, 2018, 2149 UTC »

Sorry about the lag time in this posting, I was sans computer - just had pen and paper..  This was from the beach at Meigs Point, Hammonasett State Park (Long Island Sound), Madison, Connecticut.  I had the PL-880 with its accompanying wire. I did not know many of the songs/artists.  Thanks for program, fine way to spend a couple of hours in between doctor appointments! 

1533z unid music OM singer - fair reception
1539z OM lead singer, guitar (Dave Matthews?)
1543z Phil Collins song
1552z Long Instrumental intro to OM singer
1556z "I'll Melt With You" Modern English.   EXCELLENT RECEPTION
1600z "Roxanne" Police.     WIRE NO LONGER NEEDED, SOUNDS LIKE LOCAL AM
1603z "Beautiful Day" U2
1611z "Tom's Dinner" Suzanne Vega
1623z Barely hearing music, RECEPTION TO FLOOR WIRE NEEDED
1633z "Superstition" Stevie Wonder
1643z Music at floor - some boy band?
1646-1715z Music just above floor, off at 1715?

damn, pretty damn good catch for the power levels i was operating at.
prior to 1615z, i was at 500mW
at 1615z i was at just under 1KW until 1617z (the last 2 minutes of "Toms Diner" 1615z-1617z) where i then brought it down to less than 500mW, i figure somewhere between 100mW and 300mW is likely where its at.
i actually have to connect a small telescopic antenna on my RSP2 just to receive it decently enough in my own premises lol.
propagation is amazing isnt it ?
ill be leaving this on throughout the evening and night and for the remainder of the week until either friday evening or saturday if i have any shows to relay - if no shows to play, i may just play a few tunes for a bit.
thanks for the logs and magnificent catches all of you especially Ct Yankee using a PL-880 with a wire antenna on the beach
you all have way better receivers than i do but then again, my transmitting dipole doesnt seem to work too well for receiving when i am in "listening mode".
PS - if any OP wants to use the 6880Khz frequency, please go right ahead and use it even while i am transmitting, i dont mind at all as my broadcast is just QRP propagation gauging measurements for everyone interested.

257

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 1336 UTC 6 June 2018

« on: June 07, 2018, 1527 UTC »

thanks guys !
ive been asked to reduce the power level further to 100mW which i will do as soon as i get some work done
i will update this post when the TX is at 100mW (its not easy to get it that low).
at 1615z, i will bring up the power to just under 1KW for about a minute as short test.
1617z - now back to 500mW - that was a very interesting test to say the least, it seems i heard some audio distortion during the test, ill have to investigate this some other time though it may have been the online SDR i was monitoring myself on since the S meter on it was "pegged".
edit 1 - located and corrected the source of the distortion, it was in the audio chain.
edit 2 - i believe the power level to be well below 500mW, somewhere between 100mW and 300mW.

258

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 1336 UTC 6 June 2018

« on: June 07, 2018, 0001 UTC »

as of 2200z, the power has been reduced from 1 watt to 500mW.
congrats on the very low QRP catches gentlemen

259

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: UNID 6920 USB 0006 UTC 06 Jun 2018

« on: June 06, 2018, 1550 UTC »

i was provided an audio sample and screen shot and i am surprised to see and hear this kind of fidelity of wide audio for SSB operation, looks to be beyond 15Khz !
i wish i was awake when this OP was operating but i was sleeping like a corpse in a coffin LOL
im quite sure this is the same OP from last weekend at 6900Khz AM who also had the same audio beyond 15Khz.
hats off to that OP
https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,43099.0.html

260

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 1336 UTC 6 June 2018

« on: June 06, 2018, 1522 UTC »

Not very strong on the different east coast web sdrs that I frequent during the day. Still enjoying the oldies, though. Thanks.

considering the TX is operating just under 1 watt, i am surprised any online SDR's are receiving the broadcast at all especially during the daytime.
is there anything interesting you have found around the bands today i can monitor from my end ?

261

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: UNID 6880 AM 2216 UTC 5 June 2018

« on: June 06, 2018, 1519 UTC »

wow, thats a great catch for all of you gentleman !
i had the TX operating at just under 1 watt and it continues to operate now playing music from the 1960's.
NVIS propagation seemed to be excellent around those times, this a great way to mark down the times and create an average time over the course of a week to give OP's an idea what times are optimal for NVIS weekend broadcasting.
thanks for the logs, have a great day !

262

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 2324 UTC 4 Jun 2018

« on: June 05, 2018, 1248 UTC »

thanks guys !
but its going to be the "temporary" band conditions as i predict sometime between 1400Z - 1600Z, the conditions wont be favorable any longer - im at the usual 50W (10Khz audio).
i was quite surprised to see the sweep go to 20Khz on the spectrum and see 20Hz very prominent as well - looks like the re-work i did on the TX worked out very well.
y'all have yourselves an excellent day today, ill be playing fascinating wonderful oldies for the better part of the day while i stability test everything
edit 1:
back down to 1 watt for 24/7 operation for the remainder of the week.

263

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 2324 UTC 4 Jun 2018

« on: June 05, 2018, 1158 UTC »

good morning to you Chris and all the respected HFU members.
i did some work on the TX and amplifier early this morning.
added a secondary 7Mhz LPF in series with the first 7Mhz LPF on the IF pre-amp output to further attenuate the second harmonic.
reworked pin 5 of IC SN169136P low level balanced modulator/RF mixer.
the amp grid current and plate current was also re-adjusted (now at 1KW RMS with 700mA plate and 250mA grid)
the amp input pi-tank was also re-adjusted for minimum VSWR at 1.2.
with this simple IC, anyone can generate full spectrum audio AM low level modulation.
simply input an RF input signal to pin 2 - audio input to pin 5 with DC bias to control carrier level with pull down resistor and DC coupling capacitor - AM RF out on pin 1.
if the DC bias is "zeroed" (balanced), you get DSB.
https://www.datasheetq.com/contents-image1/Texas-Instruments/882033-DI1.gif

264

Equipment / Re: Cuthbert AM Stereo C-Quam Transmitter Kit! Finally!!!!!

« on: June 03, 2018, 1814 UTC »

It'd be nice if the sdr app makers would add am stereo to their repertoire.

SdrDx decodes C-QUAM.  http://fyngyrz.com/?p=915

so does SodiraSDR which i prefer since it has many adjustment capabilities for the advanced user, it also has DRM decoding.

Awesome, already got sodira installed. However, it's a huge cpu hog, wonder what's going on there.

not sure but i dont have that issue.

265

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 1838 UTC 2 Jun 2018

« on: June 03, 2018, 1813 UTC »

have you tried a hanning filter?

yes. the han filter is good but the blackman is better for what im doing but each filter works differently for each application.
after last nights broadcast, i decided not to use the blackman filter and instead opted to use the built in filter in ST because the sound was lacking dynamics.

266

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Seven Trees 6933 AM 0401 UTC 03 Jun 2018

« on: June 03, 2018, 0421 UTC »

been listening for awhile on a remote SDR, enjoying the music selection, thanks !
"welcome to seven trees - shout out to ray in europe" then off at 0436z
good signal on the u-twente SDR

267

Peskies / Re: What Am I Hearing on 6900 kHz LSB? Read This. 6900 LSB Freeband Net Analysis

« on: June 03, 2018, 0159 UTC »

while the law may still apply concerning the divulging of certain sensitive information onto others that may be heard through a radio transmission, many law enforcement agencies have been switching their analog radio transmissions to encrypted digital, eliminating that possibility of sensitive information being leaked to unwanted ears.
whether those who listen to law enforcement communications (and other types of communications) find this fair or not is totally subjective upon the specific user.

268

North American Shortwave Pirate / UNID 6900 AM 2010 UTC 6/2/18

« on: June 02, 2018, 2018 UTC »

started with a very wide tone sweep then into excellent sounding AM audio, lots of lower frequencies and upper audio frequencies, sounds great ! - looks like 15Khz wide audio - impressive - shaking my sub-woofer lol
enjoying the selection of music, thanks !
at the end of backstreet boys "larger than life", signed off @ 2132z

269

Equipment / Re: Cuthbert AM Stereo C-Quam Transmitter Kit! Finally!!!!!

« on: June 02, 2018, 2008 UTC »

It'd be nice if the sdr app makers would add am stereo to their repertoire.

SdrDx decodes C-QUAM.  http://fyngyrz.com/?p=915

so does SodiraSDR which i prefer since it has many adjustment capabilities for the advanced user, it also has DRM decoding.

270

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Relay Station 6880 AM 1838 UTC 2 Jun 2018

« on: June 02, 2018, 1918 UTC »

hi Chris & Skip.
i was testing out the blackman 7 bandwidth filter i installed which is set to 20Khz Bandwidth (10Khz each side band) at a high order of magnitude.
the blackman filter provides a sharp drop off at 10Khz versus ST's built in filter which has a rolling dB drop off staring from 9Khz to 10Khz, i prefer the blackman filter as its flat across the board.
though i wasnt too thrilled about the minor aliasing at the upper audio frequency spectrum during a sweep test (with and without the blackman filter), it wont be detrimental to music and speech, its a minor issue at this point.
during the test, i sent 20Hz and 40Hz sine wave tones and observed the results at SDR demod and was very satisfied with the ending results.
you certainly would have seen your sub-woofer moving at 20Hz provided your receiver is capable of receiving the low end of the audio spectrum