AmateurRadio.com

Transmitting with my wet noodle

I was off work on Friday and in the afternoon I found some time to get on the radio, I was pleased to see conditions had somewhat improved. The bands most active for me were 20 and 17 meters. The MFJ 1788 loop was very good at picking up DX I heard but was not able to contact G3XOV from England his signal was a strong S8 but as I waited for him to clear the callers who were before me his signal faded to S2 I still tried but was not able to make the contact. I then came across a station who's call started with "Z" that letter always gets my attention. From these parts a "Z" call could be very good DX. The call was Z63MED very odd call I thought maybe a special event station, I looked it up on QRZ.COM and found out it was a station from Kosovo. This country is still a developing story when it comes to ham radio. It does not as of yet have DXCC recognition as it just became a country in 2008. For more Kosovo ham radio history go to QRZ.COM and look up the call Z60A this is the call for the Amateur Radio Society of Kosovo.
Now for the exciting news…….I ended up only making one contact and it was with EG4GET and this I found out was a special event station in Spain and has to do with football or soccer as we know it here in North America. There are 20 special event stations you can contact and contact (from North America) with 5 gets you a silver award and 10 will get you the gold award, for more information follow this link . So back to the exciting news…….I dropped the power on my K3 to 1 watt and made the contact with this special event station without really any trouble for a distance of 3,754 miles per watt! Looking back when I moved into the condo and only being able to use a small antenna  in less than ideal conditions I felt my DX was going to be south of the boarder and that's it. I have come full circle to hitting over and above thousand miles per watt contacts. My record for miles per watt at this location is still 18,470 per watt in the ARRL CW contest.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at ve9kk@hotmail.com.

I haven’t been to the Ledges in Sanbornton for several years. The place is beautiful! Tim, W3ATB and I hiked up there today. We worked Macedonia, New Mexico, Germany and England.

We met at 2:00 pm and drove up Wadleigh Road. We went several miles passed the spot where the town stops maintaining the road. It’s essentially a logging road full of ruts and large rocks. Things changed since I was here last, and we took a wrong turn on a new logging road. Fortunately, a man was working with a chainsaw and a skidder, and we hiked in to talk with him. He set us straight and we backtracked, parked the car, and started hiking.

Twenty minutes later we made the final ascent through some huge boulders and tall pines. It was well worth the climb! I tossed a wire over a nearby maple tree, setup the KX3 on some rock, and started operating on 17 meters.

Vinco Z37M in Macedonia was calling CQ, and I answered him. He gave me a 559 and I was thrilled. Working half way around the world with a peanut whistle rig, while enjoying a view to die for… what could be better? I switched to 15M and answered Paul KW7D in New Mexico. Paul gave me a 579 and I promised to send him some photos of the hike. “Solid CPY 5W,” he sent. “I will look for those pics.”

Next I switched to 20 meters. DL1BUG was just finishing up a QSO and I called. Red gave me a 569 and we finished a nice exchange. I called over to Tim and told him to switch to Red’s frequency and give a call. Tim was running an HB-1B with a Par End Fedz. Tim got the QSO… and a 579 report! Better than mine… He was grinning from ear to ear.

With that Tim tuned around some more and quickly made another DX contact… this time with England. G4XRV near London gave Tim a good report and we both packed up.

I think it’s a good bet that we’ll be back when the leaves start changing color. It’s a glorious spot for ham radio.

Jim Cluett, W1PID, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Hampshire, USA. Contact him at w1pid@amsat.org.

Weather balloons have been routinely launched into the atmosphere for many years by government and commercial organisations for the purpose of scientific and meteorological observations and research. Hundreds are launched daily around the world, using predominately renewable Hydrogen as the lifting gas.

These balloons invariably carrying radiosondes, a battery powered telemetry instrument package to measure various atmospheric parameters and transmit them to a ground receiver. Worldwide they operate on radio frequencies around 400MHz and 1680MHz.

Last year I discovered the hobby of High Altitude Ballooning, where enthusiasts send up their own balloons loaded with experimental payloads and radio telemetry trackers using low power transmitters and amateur radio data modes and frequencies. I have since had a great deal of enjoyment receiving and decoding these as well as developing my own payload.

I decided last year to also try my hand at decoding the commercial radiosondes. Reception of the telemetry signals is relatively straightforward as they are of higher power than the hobbyist transmitters and decoding can be done by the Sondemonitor program from COAA available to individuals to produce graphs and charts of temperature, pressure, humidity as well as the location (if transmitted) and height of balloons.

The software is available for a 21 day trial but when I attempted to install it I was thwarted by a licensing issue caused I believe by installing trial versions of COAA's ShipPlotter and PlaneSpotter programs in the past, despite this I still decided to purchase a software licence for the princely sum of €25.

However this was just before the Christmas upheaval and the dismantling of my receiving set up and so it got mothballed and I have never got around to using it till now.

It was quite by chance that I was flicking around the SDR yesterday using my original (Version1) FUNCube Dongle PRO when I spotted a Radiosonde signal on 404.2MHz, my interest was piqued. (It should be noted the later FUNCube Dongle PRO+ unfortunately has a coverage gap on this frequency so cannot be used)

I connected to my magical HAB antenna and using SDR# and the Sondemonitor program I received and decoded my first radiosonde early this morning and a second flight around noon.


The program produces some interesting graphs showing temperature, humidity, pressure and other measurements during the ascent and after the balloon burst, as well as Tephigrams.


 
I am not sure where these balloons are launched from. The Radiosondes are identified by the software as Vaisala SGP models (but have no GPS data?)  Checking the Vaisala website there are a number of devices and one downloadable document is a comparison of the Vaisala Radiosondes made by the UK Meteorological Office in 2013 (pdf file) which mentions a site in Camborne in Cornwall, but I have also seen mention elsewhere of a site in Larkhill on Salisbury Plain.

The Met Office document also hints that the Radiosonde currently used by them is one of the Vaisala RS92 range, indeed the RS92-D appears to be a device which has no on board GPS and would fit with the GPSless decodes I have made.

Definitely another interesting radio diversion and if you are interested then reception can be made using RTL-SDR receivers as this tutorial on RTL-SDR.com demonstrates, but bear in mind the demonstration/tutorial shows GPS information being received which I have not seen on either of the two launches.


Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at nerdsville@gmail.com.

I was finally able to put the finishing touches on the new GW3UEP Class-E transmitter by mounting the hardware on a small 19" panel.

Added to the panel were a 5A DC meter to monitor drain current, a keying jack and a key shorting-switch for keydown testing. This is the third version I have built using the design on Roger's page, with all three performing pretty much as advertised. It is an inexpensive, easily reproducible design.


Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at ve7sl@shaw.ca.

…..the summer of 2014 that is. Boy it has been hot lately. Last Monday we had a record for September: over 38 degrees Celsius and my own weather station peaked at 39.0 degrees. And the end is still not in sight. Tropical storm Fung-Wong will bring some much needed rain this weekend and with it somewhat lower temperatures. But after that it is back to spending day after day with sweat soaked clothes stuck to your body. With the shack on the top floor and without airco it is now oozing heat, even at night. And I so long for heating up my iron and getting ready for winter DX fun on the lower bands. Patience is a virtue and I need lots of it. 73 and stay cool.

Hans "Fong" van den Boogert, BX2ABT, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Taiwan. Contact him at hans.bx2abt@msa.hinet.net.

G1KQH has found some very low cost TDA2003 ICs.  I use one of these in my VLF beacon shown in my RSGB RadCom article and on my website. Best range is just short of 6km by “utilities assisted” earth-mode.  When fitter again (currently I am not allowed to drive and I am still too clumsy when on my feet and moving because of my brain bleed last year) I intend to continue my VLF experiments. I have used these ICs at 8.97kHz, twice, and sub-multiples of that frequency.  Beyond 20kHz would be outside their spec limits, but they may still work?

G3XBM 5W VLFearth-mode CW/QRSS beacon

Evening Roger,

Used in your LF PA 10p each nuts!

http://www.banggood.com/100pcs-TDA2003-10W-IC-Car-Radio-Audio-Amplifier-Integrated-Circuit-p-944202.html

Or you can buy in 10s @ 16p each inc delivery!

http://www.banggood.com/10pcs-TDA2003-10W-IC-Car-Radio-Audio-Amplifier-Integrated-Circuit-p-922620.html

Banggood sounds Chinese. I have no idea if these are genuine parts or not. They are advertised as 10W car radio audio parts.

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.