16
Equipment / Re: Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: April 15, 2019, 1657 UTC »
@ Josh - Radios that cause body harm? As in high voltage risk or something else? You make me curious!
Shortwave Pirate Radio In North America And Around The World, And Other Signals That Go Bump In The Night
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17
Equipment / Re: Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: April 15, 2019, 1424 UTC »
Yeah I bought those sovjet radios because they link to my first shortwave listening experience since my childhood. Right after that night I became addicted to radio hobby and alike. My interest in radio all started when I discovered a mysterious station on the shortwave band. The Buzzer (UVB-76) which I wasn’t able to get out of my head after the very first day. Following it for 10 years since the first time I’ve heard it on my little handheld world radio I got as a child back in 2009 
On my midland I’ve discovered a lot already in 2 locations. One here at my main house and one in a big apartment with a balcony and a large roof where I mounted a long wire all the way from the window to the end of the roof (about 50 meters long) and discovered 7 CB’ers in 3 hours evening time. (From 7pm to 9pm)
Here at my shack I discovered 4 CB’ers so far. With a Gipsy dipole attached to the Midland Alan gave me great success. Even on my SDR I can catch CB’ers with a long wire antenna so I expect to see a lot more in the summer season when the band is more clear. All I need to get is an SWR meter to test the current installed setup. If it all fits within the limits I am ready to DX when the summer arrives
The next thing I want to do is getting a active antenna for my SDR (probably gonna be the PA0RDT miniwhip antenna) and building a stable tower to mount it on. My current tower is only 3 meters in length. My goal is to get it up a little higher to about 5 meters so it sticks above the walls around my little garden. Allowing more free space to radiate. I bought 10 meters of RG58 Coax cable to mount on the new antenna I want to buy soon.
Out of all my radios I have the best one to me seems the R-250M which has a very good noise filter to get almost any signal in clearly without disturbances. Using the TLG function with the tone adjustment wheel. The radio has only one downside which is, after listening to something for a while the tone isn’t always on the position where I set it to. Maybe it’s something that I need to fix inside the radio. It gets a little off frequency after an hour or so without turning the dial. I got the manual for it but due to my lack of knowledge I won’t open the radio yet. I think I easy mess things up inside the circuit so I am first going to read the manual (it’s German, a language I also need to learn) and search info about every single part I can’t figure out what it means. The last thing I learned about circuitry was how to read color codes on different components. That kinda describes how much knowledge I currently have. Almost nothing
On my midland I’ve discovered a lot already in 2 locations. One here at my main house and one in a big apartment with a balcony and a large roof where I mounted a long wire all the way from the window to the end of the roof (about 50 meters long) and discovered 7 CB’ers in 3 hours evening time. (From 7pm to 9pm)
Here at my shack I discovered 4 CB’ers so far. With a Gipsy dipole attached to the Midland Alan gave me great success. Even on my SDR I can catch CB’ers with a long wire antenna
so I expect to see a lot more in the summer season when the band is more clear. All I need to get is an SWR meter to test the current installed setup. If it all fits within the limits I am ready to DX when the summer arrives The next thing I want to do is getting a active antenna for my SDR (probably gonna be the PA0RDT miniwhip antenna) and building a stable tower to mount it on. My current tower is only 3 meters in length. My goal is to get it up a little higher to about 5 meters so it sticks above the walls around my little garden. Allowing more free space to radiate. I bought 10 meters of RG58 Coax cable to mount on the new antenna I want to buy soon.
Out of all my radios I have the best one to me seems the R-250M which has a very good noise filter to get almost any signal in clearly without disturbances. Using the TLG function with the tone adjustment wheel. The radio has only one downside which is, after listening to something for a while the tone isn’t always on the position where I set it to. Maybe it’s something that I need to fix inside the radio. It gets a little off frequency after an hour or so without turning the dial. I got the manual for it but due to my lack of knowledge I won’t open the radio yet. I think I easy mess things up inside the circuit so I am first going to read the manual (it’s German, a language I also need to learn) and search info about every single part I can’t figure out what it means. The last thing I learned about circuitry was how to read color codes on different components. That kinda describes how much knowledge I currently have. Almost nothing
18
Equipment / Re: Need help with dynamotor
« on: April 15, 2019, 1355 UTC »
Its a old BC-348 receiver from Russia. I’ve unplugged the whole thing and it’s now in the corner of my shack till I find out when to repeat it. I probably bring it back to the guy I bought it from as he makes and collects old surplus radios since the end of the war. So I hand it over to him as he has all the knowledge of it. Once I’ve seen how he dismantled the radio then I can save it in my memory and do it by myself next time. The dynamotor needs to be cleaned with fresh grease after about 1000 hours of use. This thing has been silent for ages. Anyway it’s a nice lesson for me to learn about old radios. I hope I can do the work all on my own in the future when I am full of knowledge about circuitry and beyond. But for now I just need some practical viewing to see how it’s done.
19
Equipment / Re: Need help with dynamotor
« on: April 05, 2019, 2300 UTC »
The images don’t really show any kind of usefulness. The thing is when I my the radio on it’s left the motor starts running again. Then slowly turning it back to its main position the motor starts to stop slowly. Now it’s running with a lot of spark noise in the rf spectrum. Kinda like the same sound of putting 2 wires to each other ( - and + ) to create sparks which sound the same as the entire motor sounds at the moment for nearly two hours of operation. Maybe this old radio has seen its last days. Probably ending in the trash.
20
Equipment / Need help with dynamotor
« on: April 05, 2019, 2104 UTC »
Hello, I have a dynamotor thats isn’t running smooth like it used to be. I don’t know how to remove it from the cabinet. I’ve tried every screw on the outside of the panel but something is keeping it unable to pull out of the radio. If someone knows how to remove it or tips for repairing it let me know.
Here’s an overview below:
https://imgur.com/gallery/HneuwdG
Kind regards, Telegrapher
Here’s an overview below:
https://imgur.com/gallery/HneuwdG
Kind regards, Telegrapher
22
Equipment / Re: Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: March 31, 2019, 1703 UTC »
Yes I really want to get into TX this summer as soon as possible. I currently have a CB radio from Midland I got in a local store (it wast the last CB transceiver they had in stock so I kinda feel lucky about that) I’ll send a Imgur link with images of my stuff after this message.
Further I am also experimenting with a raspberry Pi 3 on FM TX which is also very fun to do. Here where I live I know a few other pirates that do the same thing. But they use like 25 - 30 watt transmitters in their backyard. I hope to get my hands on something like they have too. As I spoke a local pirate and asked about the troubles that might be possible to face. He told me that he is doing this hobby for over 6 years and had a few visits from the local police. But they didn’t take him down as he was and still is transmitting on a empty frequency which is not causing disturbing results. So here in the Netherlands it’s accepted as long as there’s no interference. I always dreamed about having my own radio station and teaming up with others. That’s kinda the direction I want to grow to beside having a license for ham radio. I still need to get into my radio exam later. First I want to get some practical experience and a little fm transmitter with 5 watts is good for the long run. And the CB for contacting like a ham does.
My antenna is indeed a vertical (can handle more than 100 watts ) currently mounted on a metal fence. It’s not placed in a ideal location but at least it’s now outdoors instead of sitting indoors on a empty computer case
I can’t get my hands on a SWR meter yet as I asked a few local stores if they had one. None of them had any kind of radio equipment. I wish the days were still there when stores like RadioShack and alike did exist in town. Now everything needs to be bought from the web these days which I don’t really like.
Here’s a list of pictures of my most frequently used radios. Including the CB from Midland and a few USSR radios / others.
Thanks for the responses once again.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
Further I am also experimenting with a raspberry Pi 3 on FM TX which is also very fun to do. Here where I live I know a few other pirates that do the same thing. But they use like 25 - 30 watt transmitters in their backyard. I hope to get my hands on something like they have too. As I spoke a local pirate and asked about the troubles that might be possible to face. He told me that he is doing this hobby for over 6 years and had a few visits from the local police. But they didn’t take him down as he was and still is transmitting on a empty frequency which is not causing disturbing results. So here in the Netherlands it’s accepted as long as there’s no interference. I always dreamed about having my own radio station and teaming up with others. That’s kinda the direction I want to grow to beside having a license for ham radio. I still need to get into my radio exam later. First I want to get some practical experience and a little fm transmitter with 5 watts is good for the long run. And the CB for contacting like a ham does.
My antenna is indeed a vertical (can handle more than 100 watts ) currently mounted on a metal fence. It’s not placed in a ideal location but at least it’s now outdoors instead of sitting indoors on a empty computer case
I can’t get my hands on a SWR meter yet as I asked a few local stores if they had one. None of them had any kind of radio equipment. I wish the days were still there when stores like RadioShack and alike did exist in town. Now everything needs to be bought from the web these days which I don’t really like.
Here’s a list of pictures of my most frequently used radios. Including the CB from Midland and a few USSR radios / others.
Thanks for the responses once again.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
23
Equipment / Re: Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: March 27, 2019, 0925 UTC »
Yes I live in the Netherlands (Noord Brabant) Europe.
On channel 7 indeed I heard local traffic from farmers who just were talking about equipment and other things usually amateurs and hobbyists talk about. I heard stuff like TX amplifiers and boosting signal over 200 watts so I assume they are talking with each other from their base station. They are always heard on the same channel so it’s a local talk group I think. On channel 10 I heard also once talk about dx CB’ers and they did send results to each other about the AM and FM results. So I guess there’s a little amateur activity on CB here. That’s why I kinda want to give it my first shot for TX experience. Planning to do dx with my base station when everything is in place. On the listening side, I’m still working on the antenna. Beside my dipole I want a full band antenna like PA0RDT’s mini-whip or something better. And maybe the best SDR dongle on the market. I currently have an RTL-SDR dongle with two antenna outputs and a black cover. It’s not found on their web shop so I think it’s either an old dongle or maybe from a different manufacturer. But it works fine to me. I catch a lot of amateurs already and also few number stations I’ve seen on it last year. The English one starting with “000” is the most common received here with my little setup.
Besides my digital equipment I wanna do the real work on my analog radios to get the real feeling like almost every SWL has been through in the past with their nice tube radios.
My radios on the analog side are the USSR-types. (P-250M sometimes called R-250M, and the BC-224)
On channel 7 indeed I heard local traffic from farmers who just were talking about equipment and other things usually amateurs and hobbyists talk about. I heard stuff like TX amplifiers and boosting signal over 200 watts so I assume they are talking with each other from their base station. They are always heard on the same channel so it’s a local talk group I think. On channel 10 I heard also once talk about dx CB’ers and they did send results to each other about the AM and FM results. So I guess there’s a little amateur activity on CB here. That’s why I kinda want to give it my first shot for TX experience. Planning to do dx with my base station when everything is in place. On the listening side, I’m still working on the antenna. Beside my dipole I want a full band antenna like PA0RDT’s mini-whip or something better. And maybe the best SDR dongle on the market. I currently have an RTL-SDR dongle with two antenna outputs and a black cover. It’s not found on their web shop so I think it’s either an old dongle or maybe from a different manufacturer. But it works fine to me. I catch a lot of amateurs already and also few number stations I’ve seen on it last year. The English one starting with “000” is the most common received here with my little setup.
Besides my digital equipment I wanna do the real work on my analog radios to get the real feeling like almost every SWL has been through in the past with their nice tube radios.
My radios on the analog side are the USSR-types. (P-250M sometimes called R-250M, and the BC-224)
24
Equipment / Re: Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: March 25, 2019, 1730 UTC »
Yeah I noticed a few truckers from like Poland that drive all the way down to deliver goods. I discovered a local community here as I hear every evening especially when sunset a lot of talk on band 7. Right now I heard a few conversations. Little noisy but some are close range and came in clearly.
I still haven’t got my hands on a SWR meter so I don’t TX that much at the moment. Only a few test calls a week to see if someone responds back.
It’s kinda fun to have my first TX device now and I think I can learn a lot from it and take that experience with me to the radio exam for HAM radio. Funny the people locally heard me when I was using my little dipole in the garden as TX antenna once. Operating at the standard 4Watt output. I’m also thinking about buying a amplifier to boost the power up to 250 watt later.
Nice stories tho. I appreciate all the tips and info I have already got from this forum
I still haven’t got my hands on a SWR meter so I don’t TX that much at the moment. Only a few test calls a week to see if someone responds back.
It’s kinda fun to have my first TX device now and I think I can learn a lot from it and take that experience with me to the radio exam for HAM radio. Funny the people locally heard me when I was using my little dipole in the garden as TX antenna once. Operating at the standard 4Watt output. I’m also thinking about buying a amplifier to boost the power up to 250 watt later.
Nice stories tho. I appreciate all the tips and info I have already got from this forum
25
General Radio Discussion / Re: Six Things Broadcasters Should Know about the PIRATE act
« on: March 24, 2019, 1042 UTC »
This sounds to me like they now allow anyone to broadcast on the shortwave spectrum (music, spying, bootlegging, smuggling and a lot more)
26
Equipment / Re: Antenna / Radio Patch Board Mark II
« on: March 24, 2019, 1034 UTC »
Nice project to look at. It’s nicely designed at the point of view already
It kinda reminds me of the first telephone booths where each call had a single line for a local service to plug into to connect the caller back in the days
Good luck with your project. Nice to see the first steps u described above. Gives some inspiration as well.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
It kinda reminds me of the first telephone booths where each call had a single line for a local service to plug into to connect the caller back in the days
Good luck with your project. Nice to see the first steps u described above. Gives some inspiration as well.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
27
Equipment / Re: Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: March 24, 2019, 1029 UTC »
Hello all, thanks for the nice responses. They are very useful for my summer project I am building throughout this year. I just hooked a vertical CB antenna to the wall near a fence covering my small garden. In the middle of that garden is a antenna pole of 3 meters height with a dipole on top. Covering 24MHz in the total length from both ends of each pole to the other is 3.1 meters in diameter. The center of the dipole is at 1 and the poles are 1.5 meters long each. It worked nice for my first contact. I heard a response saying yes I can hear you but there’s a lot of noise in the background. Tested with the vertical antenna last night but I did not get a response this time. Maybe the conditions aren’t that good indeed right now. I live in the Netherlands near a little town where some farmers live. I hear a few on band 7 and 10 during the evening. AM seems to get better to the other end who heard me testing than the FM mode did. I know that most AM stations are from other countries I hear on my little handheld radio. So that makes me think AM travels much larger distances than the FM signals do.
The only little thing I noticed when first operating the CB radio all inside my apartment was that when TX in AM mode, I heard some speakers turn on or make a popping sound even without being connected to any audio system. Maybe the RF is strong enough to feed the speakers lines and activate them somehow
I am planning to get a HAM license later when things get more quiet in my daily routine. I am at the moment just trying and experimenting with little things to get an idea of how to take care of it. So when I have my final project build I don’t face the old problems I may experience during this first experimental stage.
The only bad side here is there’s no radio shack or anything similar to go to pick up stuff I need and get information directly from the store. All has to be done mostly on the internet these days. Which gives me less space to talk about everything I do. But I’m glad I found this forum as it’s dedicated to all about radio
The only little thing I noticed when first operating the CB radio all inside my apartment was that when TX in AM mode, I heard some speakers turn on or make a popping sound even without being connected to any audio system. Maybe the RF is strong enough to feed the speakers lines and activate them somehow
I am planning to get a HAM license later when things get more quiet in my daily routine. I am at the moment just trying and experimenting with little things to get an idea of how to take care of it. So when I have my final project build I don’t face the old problems I may experience during this first experimental stage.
The only bad side here is there’s no radio shack or anything similar to go to pick up stuff I need and get information directly from the store. All has to be done mostly on the internet these days. Which gives me less space to talk about everything I do. But I’m glad I found this forum as it’s dedicated to all about radio
28
Equipment / Re: Whats wrong with my antenna?
« on: March 20, 2019, 1940 UTC »
At the moment I use a dipole antenna called Gipsy made by windcamp. It’s about 3 meters up and length is 3.1 meters. Covering the 24MHz band as it’s strongest spot. I use this antenna for my ussr P-250M (currently listening to the Russian Buzzer (UVB-76) coming in very clear with little background noise. Due to limit of space I cannot stretch it out further. I’m still thinking about buying the PA0RDT mini whip later this year to see what that brings to the table. The only side effect is that I haven’t grounded the antenna outdoors. And the street lights give a bunch of noise when they turn on as it gets darker. Maybe there’s a way to limit the rf noise from surrounding objects. The first thing I’ll do is grounding the dipole this summer.
Anyway nice information about your experience and additional information about the CB antenna on 10m height. I think almost any kind of wire is suitable to use as an (temporary) antenna under the right circumstances. The possibilities are almost endless when it comes to designing.
Thanks for the nice response. It’s a pleasure to learn about new things to improve the art of building a project to the very finish.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
Anyway nice information about your experience and additional information about the CB antenna on 10m height. I think almost any kind of wire is suitable to use as an (temporary) antenna under the right circumstances. The possibilities are almost endless when it comes to designing.
Thanks for the nice response. It’s a pleasure to learn about new things to improve the art of building a project to the very finish.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
29
Equipment / Questions CB and TX base station project
« on: March 20, 2019, 1847 UTC »
Hi,
I am planning on building a base station at home for basic TX experiments. Starting with CB.
I currently have a CB antenna hooked up to a magnet mount attached to a aluminum plate from a disassembled pc case. With an additional wire of copper going from the antenna to one of the water pipes that are used for the heating temperature in the room.
I need to build a tower still. Which I am planning to do when the weather gets more pleasant later this season.
I watched a lot on the web about things to look out for. Like using a SWR meter. And some other technical details.
It all sounds really complicated to me. RX doesn’t really have much technical details to work. But for TX I read several topics talking about risk of the radio burning from the inside when the SWR doesn’t match or something.
If anyone has a easy list of tips and/or suggestions I would love to hear them. After I heard about the things that could happen when the antenna isn’t attached the right way (the radio might blow up inside, etc) I just unplugged the whole rig and it’s sitting in the corner collecting dust.. I really want to be able to experience the real TX without worrying about my radio losing a capacitor or smelling smoke after pushing the TX for a while.
Anything is helpful and appreciated!
Kind regards,
Telegrapher.
I am planning on building a base station at home for basic TX experiments. Starting with CB.
I currently have a CB antenna hooked up to a magnet mount attached to a aluminum plate from a disassembled pc case. With an additional wire of copper going from the antenna to one of the water pipes that are used for the heating temperature in the room.
I need to build a tower still. Which I am planning to do when the weather gets more pleasant later this season.
I watched a lot on the web about things to look out for. Like using a SWR meter. And some other technical details.
It all sounds really complicated to me. RX doesn’t really have much technical details to work. But for TX I read several topics talking about risk of the radio burning from the inside when the SWR doesn’t match or something.
If anyone has a easy list of tips and/or suggestions I would love to hear them. After I heard about the things that could happen when the antenna isn’t attached the right way (the radio might blow up inside, etc) I just unplugged the whole rig and it’s sitting in the corner collecting dust.. I really want to be able to experience the real TX without worrying about my radio losing a capacitor or smelling smoke after pushing the TX for a while.
Anything is helpful and appreciated!
Kind regards,
Telegrapher.
30
Equipment / Re: Whats wrong with my antenna?
« on: March 20, 2019, 1827 UTC »
Just tested a hour ago all connections. First the meter did show a few indications of short circuitry. But after I blew some air through each end of the lines it surprisingly went away. Maybe the screw wasn’t exactly on its location or maybe a little thin piece of leftover copper was hiding between the center and the braid. Well the first antenna line is fixed. The next one will be the line of my SDR.
I contacted a local guy I knew who has been working in the past with coaxial antennas and he said to me that if there was such a short circuit in the cable; then the radio wasn’t able to pick up any signal from it. Even with only the center conductor it wasn’t possible he said. This leads to a few more questions I want to get a clear answer for. I knew from the early months of my first antenna design that I was thinking that coax alone acts as an antenna (which is totally wrong as I’ve learned later on my journey) but I was able to pick up some stuff by coax only. Maybe the little end of the cable was just enough to pick radio China and Romania to lead me to think that coax was just all I needed back then. Funny noob story’s that lead to the more technical side as experimenting leads to solutions in funny ways. I love the hobby more and more every day
I contacted a local guy I knew who has been working in the past with coaxial antennas and he said to me that if there was such a short circuit in the cable; then the radio wasn’t able to pick up any signal from it. Even with only the center conductor it wasn’t possible he said. This leads to a few more questions I want to get a clear answer for. I knew from the early months of my first antenna design that I was thinking that coax alone acts as an antenna (which is totally wrong as I’ve learned later on my journey) but I was able to pick up some stuff by coax only. Maybe the little end of the cable was just enough to pick radio China and Romania to lead me to think that coax was just all I needed back then. Funny noob story’s that lead to the more technical side as experimenting leads to solutions in funny ways. I love the hobby more and more every day