Shack update and OS choices

A shack is what someone interested in radio usually calls where they have their radios permanently installed and used. I´ve never had a shack like that as I live in an apartment and all radio use from here has been temporary and the serious DX chasing has been done at the DX listening club.

Now I start to have something that could be called a shack in my wifes parents summer house where I recently installed a 15,5 M longwire antenna. The receivers you see on the picture here is a borrowed Icom R-70 and the QS1R. I struggle with some interferances but I think I will be able to solve them very soon (more about that in later blog post).

I also got a computer on the bench. It´s actually one of my older main PC:s from a couple of years back. It´s an AMD Duron 1300 MHz with 768 MB RAM and 120 GB disk. It runs Windows XP and soon will have Kubuntu on it too. I actually have been a Linux user since the early days of Slackware, and then Debian (used when I and a friend set up the first email system at our school) via OpenSuse  (chosen because we use Novell Suse Enterprise at work for database servers) and now I think I will try Ubuntu (or actually Kubuntu to give it an european touch). I see Ubuntu being mentioned on the ham radio groups and mailing lists so it might be the best choice now.

I gave up with Linux and changed to Mac when I got the opportunity to be a Campus representative for Apple at my university a few years ago. I liked MacOS very much as it gave me both Unix and some fancy software like iLife. Something I learned during this period was that I will not work with sales in future careers!

I moved to Windows again and it was actually because of radio. My first SDR was the SDR-IQ from RfSpace and the software, SpectraVue, could only run on Windows. But I would like to go back to Linux and if recording capabilities in the new QS1R software arrives I might be able to do that.

MKARS80 - via the West Indies

I ordered a MKARS80 transceiver kit a month ago and when it didn´t sbow up here I started wondering. But given that there has been and still is a ash cloud over Europe I understand that it could be delays. Today it came. Take a close look at the package above to see where it went!

Small steps...

...to the goal to be active on the HF bands are what I´m taking. But I´m in no hurry.

Last week I found someone that sold "a lot of radio equipment". It seemed to be mostly CB equipment but I went there and took a look and see if I would find anything interesting. I stayed there for 2 hours! I had to stop myself from dragging home too much, "maybe good to have" things.

The best thing I bought was a manual tuner from MFJ, 941E. I also got a HT for 70 cm by Kenwood and a scanner AOR AR-1000XLT (seems dead....) and an amp of unknown kind (probably CB) and two SWR meters. I do not have any antenna for 70 cm with BNC connector, so I might try to homebrew something like some of these:

http://blog.g4ilo.com/2010/05/satellite-antenna.html

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/collapsible_fabric_yagi_antenna.html 


I also received an order from kitsandparts.com . I´m very impressed with their range of stuff, both parts and kits.. ;-) He got building blocks called RF Toolkit so you can add them together to form a transceiver or receiver of different kinds. Really cool.  I will definitely be a returning customer! This is what I got:

The T130-2 toroids I will use together with longwire antennas. The ferrites are for a receiver and good to have in the future. The 30 m LPF I will use with the Genesis Q5 probably in QRSS mode but have to get a 10.140 MHz crystal first. Probably will be from Genesis if I don´t get any other option? The SWR bridge will go together with two ampere panel meters that probably is on it´s way from China right now.Also got 5 NE602 mixers to use with the receiver (more on that later).

During last week I tried to build a dipole, with Slinkys! I really didn´t have any time to evalutate performance (and it was also hanging maybe too low to be a good antenna) but I kept it on receive on the WSPR system.

Make: Electronics

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I got a nice gift from my wife, Make: Electronics. A well illustrated book on basic electronics. I think I know a bit about the subject, but I thought that it would be good to go through all the experiments to make sure I really understand the basic theory. It also includes some chapter on digital logic which I have not played with at all. I might document some of the experiments in future blog posts.

Here is a blog that documents all the experiments:

Hands On - Make: Electronics

WSPR receive and flea market

Using the same equipment and QTH as last time I now finally tried the WSPR system that I´ve heard a lot about lately. I only run with receive but I hope to be able to transmit sometime soon. Basically WSPR is a narrow digital mode to be used as a beacon. When you receive and decode a WSPR station, which is done automatically in the software, it uploads the spot to a central database and can be tracked by other users.


Here are a few links to get more information about WSPR:

http://wsprnet.org/drupal/

http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wspr.html%20


Here are the 2 most noteworthy catches in terms of power and distance:

G4PEC 30m 0.001W 1060km

RA9CUA 17m 2W 2710km


The complete log can be found here:

WSPR log SA5BKE 20100417



This weekend I also went to some flea markets to look for interesting equipment. I came home with these things:

2 Valve radios that of course included variable capacitors, an old box with big variable resistors, some kind of alarm controller (atleast a box for other project) and an equalizer. Also got some telescopic antennas and cables (twin lead and speaker cable). I didn´t pay much, so I think it was a bargain!