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Post by kenglish on Oct 5, 2021 18:11:07 GMT -6
Ordered a new wideband receiver today. The Icom R8600. Just hope my neighbor's Dremel Tool wears out, so I can hear something on it.
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Oct 5, 2021 20:49:22 GMT -6
Looks like a lot of fun, though "too rich for my blood" as they say. Any idea what you plan to listen to on it?
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Post by kenglish on Oct 6, 2021 11:21:24 GMT -6
I would have liked the big, rack-mount unit (Icom R9500), but it was about $10K more money 😳. This one will do, until I win the Lotto. This is a lot more portable, but I would have liked a bigger screen. As such, I am getting a laptop for some other uses, so I ordered the remote control software so I can "drive" it with the laptop and bigger screen, when I want. I bought all the accessories (cables, software, handles and brackets), so I'm set for anything. Probably portable use, though, until the RFI situation clears up. I'll be using it a lot for RFI tracking, much like my old FRG-9600. Sadly, it's the Cellular Blocked version. I think the missing frequencies will be a bit of an issue when looking for intermods from cell sites. The ECPA 1984 is beyond just obsolete in those matters, since there are so many other frequencies used for "cell phones", and they are not blocked. It's just a hold-over from the early days of analog phones, before digital and encryption. It's like still requiring a certain number of horse troughs in front of a new business. Hopefully, there is a way to get that changed, one day. I listen to most things, including broadcast, ham radio, shortwave, etc. I want to play with more satellite stuff, and even fart-around with some radio astronomy (gotta try the 1420 Mhz Hydrogen Line DIY antenna). My friend, Todd Emslie in Sydney, just bought this model (non-blocked), to replace his un-serviceable 30 year old receiver, so I decided to give it a shot.
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Post by kenglish on Oct 8, 2021 0:33:36 GMT -6
It came today at noon. Reminder to myself: Always drive to pick up any package. The tracking messages made me think that today's delivery would be an envelope with a couple of cables and software, coming from Reno. I'll walk over. Nope! It was the rig and speaker/power supply...20 pounds. I managed to get it home on one shoulder. The rest should be here (from Ohio) tomorrow. All together, pretty good for UPS Ground free shipping 😁 .
Played with it for eleven hours. The spectrum display and waterfall really show how bad the RFI is in Midvale.
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Post by kenglish on Oct 11, 2021 0:20:02 GMT -6
Played a bit until 2:30 AM, mostly looking below 30 MHz. Got up about 8:00 this morning, did some daytime listening. Pretty noisy here in the day, much worse at night. Was able to hear a few LW airport marker beacons, but their calls were not anything I could find listed on line. Spent some time cleaning up and found my solder. I've had that roll since 1970, and looked all over. It was in a tub with a bunch of TV/FM MATV amps and filters. Now, I can solder the new leads on a couple of VHF preamps (for TV and FM portable use), and maybe get the OSCAR antennas going. I'm converting all DC cables to Anderson Power-Pole connectors, so I can use battery power, and can swap filters around. Why couldn't I find the solder before May, when the tropo season started? 😒
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Oct 11, 2021 22:41:20 GMT -6
Sounds like fun. If you hear anything interesting (legally of course) and get a recording of it, feel free to upload it or message me about it.
I hope you're better at soldering than I am. I've always been terrible at it. I just found out a few years ago that I've been doing it wrong for about a gazillion years. Oops.
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Post by kenglish on Oct 12, 2021 11:46:30 GMT -6
When I was in school in the Navy, I went to one of those "NASA-Certified" soldering courses. Learned a lot there. Still takes a ton of practice, though. It's like installing "F'-connectors.... the first thousand don't count.
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Post by kenglish on Oct 16, 2021 11:48:51 GMT -6
Stayed up until 3:30 AM (Saturday morning), playing around a bit, then listening to Radio New Zealand's "Saturday Night with Phil O'Brien" on 7245 KHz. About 3:00 AM something that sounds like contactor noise from a bad motor came up across all LW, MW and HF bands. It wasn't the Dremel tool, but more raspy. It wasn't going away, so I went to bed.
I found that the SMPS that ICOM sells as a power supply and external speaker combo adds about 10 dB of noise across the lower bands. Ferrites haven't helped much. The noise radiates from the steel cabinet! Some, I suspect, also gets in to the post-amp of the Wellbrook antenna. It sits a bit too close on the desk right now Best thing I found is, to run the antenna on the small 8 Ah battery (as I have always done), and the radio on the big 35 Ah battery. I also tried the Samlex power supply, which I've only used as a charger, and it is unbelievably quiet. I may connect it up as a power supply/battery-backup for home use.
Found my solder, so I'll finish the wires for DC power for some preamps (VHF & UHF). I'm using PowerPole connectors for eveything.
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Oct 16, 2021 18:36:32 GMT -6
If you have a chance, can you take a look at 494-500 MHz (TV 18) and see what you might be able to see there. The only thing I can detect are MPEG2 null packets (0x1fff).
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Post by kenglish on Nov 25, 2021 1:04:12 GMT -6
Midnight in Midvale, and all is Hell. Dremel tool runs 15+ hours a day, 7 days a week.
I need to go test my car horn. I wish I had kept up that hobby of restoring and testing Civil Defense Air Raid Sirens. Those are fun to play with in the middle of the night!
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Post by kenglish on Dec 25, 2021 12:32:55 GMT -6
Got a few new antennas a couple of weeks ago. Haven't had tons of time to play, but did a quick test of each. The Wellbrook Flex is a portable version of the ALA-1530 that I use at home. It was designed to be used by travelling diplomats, so it uses a semi-flexible coax instead of the rigid 1-m loop as an element. The other two are amps for wire-loop antennas. One is for a "Medium Aperture" wire loop, about 8 feet square. It's the preferred antenna for long-wave reception, especially Non-Directional Beacons (NDB) used for navigation. It seems to find the shopping cart wheel-lock transmitters really well, too. Both of those are good up to about 30 MHz. The other is designed for KAZ and Flag/Pennant loops. Haven't built up antthing for that yet. I laid out a few snow-stakes on the lawn, to visualize how big those would be. The biggest (Double-KAZ) would be 88-feet long (not counting guy wires), and 23-feet high. Maybe worth a trip to someplace big and quiet, later. That one is good to about 10 MHz, for LW, MW and lower HF bands.
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Post by kenglish on Jan 14, 2022 22:47:35 GMT -6
More and more, it seems useless to try and receive anything at night, where I live. Daytime is noisy enough. A dozen or so swaths of Switch-Mode Power Supply noise, each a Megahertz or three wide. The neighbor grinding ceramic tile in his apartment 15 hours a day. I wonder if he wears any eye or dust protection. And, what the inside of the apartment must be like. Nighttime is getting impossible. Another dozen or so SMPS. Signs and outdoor lights everywhere. (We no longer have pigeons. The extreme daylight-blue, bright as noon sun LED lights ran them off. The first few nights, the birds all teetered on the railings, eyes wide open in a startled look, never sleeping. After a few days, they would get so tired that they fell off the balconies and died, I suppose.)
Never heard back from the Ross people. Need to do some tests at the mall. I can't believe how bad the radio spectrum has gotten. When I first moved here, I copied the French Navy station on Reunion Island. It's exactly 12,000 miles from Midvale, in every direction. Their QSL Card always caught people's eye...the call sign is "FUX".
Mayor Joanne would never have tolerated it. After a local guy's wife slammed the door in an FCC inspector's face, she went over and shut the guy down! I wish they would let us use the parks after dark.
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Post by David on Jan 18, 2022 18:41:59 GMT -6
Played a bit until 2:30 AM, mostly looking below 30 MHz. Got up about 8:00 this morning, did some daytime listening. Pretty noisy here in the day, much worse at night. Was able to hear a few LW airport marker beacons, but their calls were not anything I could find listed on line. Spent some time cleaning up and found my solder. I've had that roll since 1970, and looked all over. It was in a tub with a bunch of TV/FM MATV amps and filters. Now, I can solder the new leads on a couple of VHF preamps (for TV and FM portable use), and maybe get the OSCAR antennas going. I'm converting all DC cables to Anderson Power-Pole connectors, so I can use battery power, and can swap filters around. Why couldn't I find the solder before May, when the tropo season started? 😒 I'm surprised there's still LW aircraft beacons to be heard in this area. I was under the impression that all of the long wave CW beacons had been decommissioned at least 10-15 years ago. I have a Yaesu FRG-100 in my basement shack that's hooked to a 75-80 foot random wire antenna, and I can't remember when the last time was that I heard any airport beacons on LW. IIRC, Tooele Army Depot had a CW beacon on 283 kHz, Brigham City Airport had one on 294 kHz, and Ogden Hinckley Airport had a beacon on 371 kHz. My understanding is that LW CW beacons are still in use in parts of Canada and remote areas of Alaska, but I was convinced all the ones in the lower 48 had gone silent by now. Maybe I'll have to fire up my FRG-100 early some morning when I can't sleep. 🙂
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Post by kenglish on Jan 19, 2022 23:46:39 GMT -6
What frequency was the Tooele Airport beacon? I used to hear that on my Ten-Tex RX-350, but haven't heard it for about ten years.
I have a home-brew low-pass filter that I used to knock out the MW and higher frequencies, but it only worked well down to 640. I just ordered a KIWA LPF-380, which Craig customized from a 400, to get KNRS-570 down by 35 dB.
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Post by David on Jan 20, 2022 15:15:54 GMT -6
This LW beacon list says the Tooele Airport beacon was on 371 kHz, not Ogden-Hinckley Airport as I stated earlier. The call sign for the Tooele Airport beacon was TVY, for Tooele Valley. The Brigham City Airport beacon is also listed at 294 kHz, with a call sign of BMC. I was off by one kHz on the 283 beacon, which was actually on 284 kHz, call sign DPG. I also got the location wrong: it was located at Dugway Proving Ground, not the Tooele Army Depot. Oops! 🙂 www.w9wze.net/SWL/LWBeacons.htmFWIW, my friend Paul Walker lives about 1/4 mile from the "VTR" CW beacon in McGrath, AK. It's on 350 kHz with 1,000 watts power. Yes, a 1 kW CW airport beacon! Paul says the power output is so high because the international flights going in and out of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport travel through McGrath, which is 230 miles SE of Anchorage.
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