AmateurRadio.com

Carl from Chameleon antenna left a message on my blog offering a 20% discount to their CHA P Loop  2.0 antenna  for my blog readers and it's available until the end of July! 
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Carl from Chameleon antenna left a message on my blog offering a 20% discount to their CHA P Loop  2.0 antenna  for my blog readers and it's available until the end of July! 
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Playing with the new FT8 mode on 50MHz, I spotted something interesting on semi-local signals affected by aircraft scatter. On JT65A, I notice quite a few UK stations affected by aircraft scatter – you can always tell by a slight (sometimes more than slight!) slant to the main trace.

What’s interesting on FT8 is that you get two separate decodes – one of the main signal and one of the reflected signal. Look at this screenshot and the signals from G0GGG

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

This weekend has seen another SSTV event from the International Space Station, this time in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station)

The 20 year history of ARISS was displayed through a collection of 12 images highlighting the accomplishments of the project over the last two decades.

As the ISS has orbited the world it has been transmitting the SSTV signals using FM on the usual downlink of 145.800 MHz, here at my QTH in the UK the passes have occurred late at night into the early morning, averaging 3 - 4 reasonable passes each day.

The signal has been very strong and so some excellent low noise images have been received by many people using just modest equipment. While not the greatest technical achievement in the world it nonetheless generates much needed interest in ARISS and amateur space communication.

My own system consisted of the Yaesu FT-857D and MMSSTV running on the shack PC and was left on automatic receive (I was tucked up in bed) and managed to get decent copies of all the images.

Image 8 reminded me of the fun I had back in 2011-2012 of receiving the ARRISAT-1 and was one of the key things that convinced me to finally get off my backside and actually get licensed, even if it took me another 12 months and to this day haven't really cracked satellites myself! My previous blog posts on that can be found at http://nerdsville.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/arissat-1

Here are the best of my images, for a full description of what each one depicts visit http://ariss-sstv.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/anniversary-image-descriptions.html
















Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

This weekend has seen another SSTV event from the International Space Station, this time in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station)

The 20 year history of ARISS was displayed through a collection of 12 images highlighting the accomplishments of the project over the last two decades.

As the ISS has orbited the world it has been transmitting the SSTV signals using FM on the usual downlink of 145.800 MHz, here at my QTH in the UK the passes have occurred late at night into the early morning, averaging 3 - 4 reasonable passes each day.

The signal has been very strong and so some excellent low noise images have been received by many people using just modest equipment. While not the greatest technical achievement in the world it nonetheless generates much needed interest in ARISS and amateur space communication.

My own system consisted of the Yaesu FT-857D and MMSSTV running on the shack PC and was left on automatic receive (I was tucked up in bed) and managed to get decent copies of all the images.

Image 8 reminded me of the fun I had back in 2011-2012 of receiving the ARRISAT-1 and was one of the key things that convinced me to finally get off my backside and actually get licensed, even if it took me another 12 months and to this day haven't really cracked satellites myself! My previous blog posts on that can be found at http://nerdsville.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/arissat-1

Here are the best of my images, for a full description of what each one depicts visit http://ariss-sstv.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/anniversary-image-descriptions.html
















Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

A FT8 contact

Well I took the FT 8 plunge this weekend, I have read many blog and twitter posts about it and it's such a cool digi mode! After watching some YouTube videos  I downloaded WSJT-X 1.8.0 bata software. The only changes I made was I  went into the General tab and set up some custom "behavior" settings:
1. Double-click on call sets Tx enabled.
2. Disable Tx after sending 73
 All the Radio settings were passed from the older release to the beta release. I found as others have posted that the FT 8 section of the band is very busy for a brand new mode it sure has caught on very fast. Watching the YouTube videos was a big help as this is a very fast mode compared to other digi modes. In the past with JT8 and JT65 I was able to get some blog writing done when operating BUT this new mode you have to pay attention. If you are searching and pouncing the software is very automatic when you make contact with a station as it moves through the contact process on it's own. I have up to this point only made State side contacts but having said that with the solar conditions that's great for my QRP.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

A FT8 contact

Well I took the FT 8 plunge this weekend, I have read many blog and twitter posts about it and it's such a cool digi mode! After watching some YouTube videos  I downloaded WSJT-X 1.8.0 bata software. The only changes I made was I  went into the General tab and set up some custom "behavior" settings:
1. Double-click on call sets Tx enabled.
2. Disable Tx after sending 73
 All the Radio settings were passed from the older release to the beta release. I found as others have posted that the FT 8 section of the band is very busy for a brand new mode it sure has caught on very fast. Watching the YouTube videos was a big help as this is a very fast mode compared to other digi modes. In the past with JT8 and JT65 I was able to get some blog writing done when operating BUT this new mode you have to pay attention. If you are searching and pouncing the software is very automatic when you make contact with a station as it moves through the contact process on it's own. I have up to this point only made State side contacts but having said that with the solar conditions that's great for my QRP.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].