Was just having fun watching YouTube , and discovered some ham radio related videos like this one. EA3AJW operate ED3SSB contest station during WPX contest 2006.
Broadband and digital camcoders make this possible today ! [tags]hamradio,ham radio,contest,video,dxing,amateur radio[/tags]
Aeronautical & maritimes radio scanning
During last years, waiting to obtain my licence I’ve spent a lot of my “radio-times” listening to broadcast stations and also trying to intercept unknown and strange signals. Monitoring “extra” bands for unknown signals, still give me that taste of misterious that fascinated me so much in past years.
Although in italy the “utility station listening” was not so popular, I’ve been in touch with some friends that were interested in this kind of excercise, expecially, aeronautical and marine listenings.
I do remember that one of the hardest information to obtain were frequency lists of course, and during the early 90’s, some photocopied tables with undeciphrable words and numbers were circulating among shortwave listeners.
Starting in the mid 90’s and the diffusion of the internet those informations become easier to find and more readable.
Today many sources are availbale for scanner enthusiasts, and frequencies are at public domain.
Here you can find some usefull resources.
- Radio Scanning links
- Monitoring Times
- Radio Scanner at wikipedia
I’ve also fond copied of articles originally hosted ad the WUN club, went QRT during this year, that are a bit old but still very interesting.
- Digital signals FAQ
- Government and Military Frequency Lists
- Marine Broadcasts
- Maritime band plan HF
- US Coast Guard Aircraft
Many more info from old WUN club site, could be retrieved at the wayback machine
[tags] hamradio, scanning, radio scanning, maritime, shortwave, amateur radio, vhf, ham radio[/tags]
Getting started with Digi Modes
Finally I’ve started my activities with digital modes too.
After a lot of years spent on swl-ling and reading, I’ve received today my radio-to-PC interface cable.
I ordered two weeks ago a Donner’s interface for my Yaesu FT-857D. Shipping has been fast (two weeks to italy), but italian taxes are always so expensive… 16 euros for a 40 USD value declaration.
As I expected, I’ve been able to make some contact with extremely low power, 5 Watts into my buddipole antenna placed right out of my balcony. Currently I’ve setup the Buddipole antenna in vertical mode with a wire on “black” side, and tuned on 20 meters.
First QSO, have done in PSK31 with SP9CV Cezar from Poland, and received a 569. I’ve been testing connections and setup with ham radio deluxe, using the PSK31 Deluxe.
I will take the opportunity to test RTTY and SSTV later on this week.
During the night I’ve done some more QSOs into europe ON OK G all with readable signals. It really looks I’ve found a funny way to be active also from my apartament. I know is not the best, but it works for the moment and let me making contacts.
On next days I will post some more infos on the new buddipole antenna, since I’m getting experienced with this portable antenna expecially on finding the best whip lenght for a perfect resonance.
Last weekend I’ve worked also last special DR2006 stations I needed for the Soccer World Cup Award. Just need to work some more DL stations to complete the requirements, will try next weekend or with my “all-new” operating modes. Hi
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[tags] ham radio,hamradio,psk31,rtty,digimode,sstv,[/tags]
My IARU HF Contest
Yesterday evening, even if in late and for just one hour, I’ve taken part to the IARU contest. As I did for the ARI contest, I’ve just partecipated in real sport-spirit….
The occasion has also been good to test the new antenna (buddipole) on 15 meters band, where I did the most of my contacts.
An interesting info for newbies, about the contest log, that need to be in the “Cabrillo format”.
I use ham radio deluxe as main Logging program, and it includes, as many logging program, functions to export to cabrillo log format, so has not really been a big problem
For those who do not have skills on exporting logs into the Cabrillo log format, you can have a look at this online cabrillo form generator. By submitting a simple text log, by typing in the textarea field, it will generate and sumbit the log in the correct format for you.
Bazooka antennas
Just back from holidays and while testing my new ham radio toy, the buddipole antenna, I’ve done an interesting QSO with YO3FXL Mihali about bazooka antennas on 17 meters band. He told me that his roof is plenty of monoband dipoles, generic dipoles, and he is using a bazooka antenna for 17 meters.
According to him, the bazooka antennas outperforms dipoles, and that he is going to dismiss in this summer all his dipoles in favour of the equivalent bazooka type.
I’ve heard and read someting about this antennas, but never gone in deep with technical specifications. They really looks interesting, for those who looks for cheeap and easy to build antennas.
Here you can find some bazooka antenna plans
IS0/IW5EDI Sardinia Isl.
I will try to be active on HF bands (mainly 20 meters) from 26th June to 7 July.
QTH will be north-East of Sardinia Island (EU-024)
More info will be posted on this blog.
–
Update to 3 July:
I’ve setup my triband dipole in the camping and I can currently works on 20 meters band with an acceptable SWR.
Propagation during the day is very poor but get increasing starting from 17.00 GMT, and during all sunset time.
Done interesting contacts into Europe, with some countries difficult to get from my home QTH on 14 mhz.
“Unfortunately” family tasks, don’t let me stay on air as I would… HI.
Will continue my activities till 7th July.
QSL route: via bureau.
Ham Grids
HamGrids will allow you to perform calculations with the popular Maidenhead Grid Square system. This grid system is used worldwide by amateur radio operators for many aspects of ham radio. Currently in version 0.5 Beta, with HamGrids, you can Convert Latitude and Longitude into a Grid Square, Convert a Grid Square into Latitude and Longitude, calculate the distance between two Grid Squares, and calculatea beam heading between grid squares.
Require Windows 95/98/2000 or Windows NT 4.0 or higher, Visual Basic 5.0 Runtime DLL
Download HamGrid
IARU HF Band Plan
Yet another interesting table I’ve recetly found on the net and tha I believe it could be usefull expecially to travellers. The followind table represents, the ham radio band plans for the 3 IARU regions.
Continue reading
ARI News widget
I’ve published this week a new Yahoo! Widget.
It’s a ARI (Associazione Radioamatori Italiani) RSS reader, includes also the ARRL and DXZone feeds.
That’s a new ham radio widget for the Amateur radio Konfabulator community.
Download the widget from the Widget Gallery
or learn what Yahoo! Widgets (aka konfabulator widgets) are…
I’ve coded a couple of widgets more during the last yeat, including an ham radio dx cluster interface… have a look at my works
