Radio Furries

"Amateur Radio is poised to gain access to two new bands! The FCC has allocated a new LF band, 135.7 to 137.8 kHz, to the Amateur Service on a secondary basis. Allocation of the 2.1 kHz segment, known as 2200 meters, was in accordance with the Final Acts of the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07). The Commission also has proposed a new secondary 630 meter MF allocation at 472 to 479 kHz (...)"

About time. :)

Is anyone left on this group to even read this? ;)

A while back, I acquired an Eddystone 840A receiver at a rather good price. It had been "got at" internally by a previous owner, the power-supply choke being replaced by a monstrous stack of resistors and the valve rectifier had been replaced by a BY127 semiconductor diode.

I reversed these 'modifications' - using the correct UY41 valve rectifier and fitting a choke-I-happened-to-have, then acquired a replacement UL41 output-valve (the original having gone leaky) and - lo and behold - it worked!

On all except frequency-band 1 [10-30MHz]. Which, it has to be said, is where a lot of the daytime radio-activity takes place.

Initially I suspected that the UCH42 frequency-changer valve had gone weak and lacked enough emission to oscillate properly at the higher frequencies - I was about to blow £6 on a new-old-stock valve from Langrex but decided first to do some more investigations.

So - time to do an "AVOscopy"^[1] - which revealed some odd readings round the oscillator-coil for band 1. Further research revealed that the coil showed signs of having been soldered by Stevie Wonder and quality-checked by Ray Charles.
Cleaning up the joints, resoldering them, refitting the coil - I was rewarded with full-on oscillator-action and the ability to listen to Russians talking to Central-Americans on 28MHz.

Now, time for me to fully realign the coil-pack



and finally re-spray the outer cabinet.

^[1]  an "AVOscopy" is the technical term for an investigation using an "AVOmeter", such as the traditional AVO Model 8.

While setting up the PC to track APRS data especially from an aircraft (validate sensitivity and range), I notice this. I did not know Howl's Moving Castle had APRS. Actually it is a car and the guy forgot to configure his TNC.

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Here's a pic of my latest little toy - a 100-watt HF transceiver - sitting on top of the Kilowatt-rated 'match-anything-to-anything' antenna-tuner I use to couple it to my long-wire:

Delayed crosspost from my personal journal.

I picked up an Icom R-20 handheld wide coverage receiver a couple months ago, and have been re-living some of my childhood playing around with that (and with software-defined radio, another post).

While trying to figure out digital modes I'm hearing on the receiver, I came across this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbh…

Much to my amazement, I heard several of these when I was a kid on ham radio -- especially things like the piano scales and gongs which are pretty unforgettable. There were a couple others that had children's voices speaking numbers which didn't appear on that recording. At the time I just wrote it off as someone playing with the radio, but... interesting.

It's kind of strange to think that I accidentally witnessed a portion of history in an era that will never really return, now that we have all the Internet stuff and satellites and all... kind of like finding wild feeds on analog satellites... these days it's just too easy to scramble.

Anyway, figured it'd be neat to see if anyone here remembers anything like those... plus I so rarely hear any activity here any more!

Hey guys,

Don't know if there's anyone still alive in this community, but I've had an issue nagging me all evening and was hoping someone out there could help.

In the section of the Hoth battle in the control room (0:27-0:30 and 0:40-0:45 of the video below) there's a digital signal that I *KNOW* I've heard before, at least back when I was more into radio stuff in the early 90s. I'm thinking it's the digital blurb that was sent for several seconds in the WWV rotation, but I can't find any reference to that in the current WWV specs, nor any videos of it (I no longer have a compatible receiver).

Can any of you pick it out? I would love to know what it's saying. :)

28MHz seems to be opening-up at last - the 'quiet sun' of the last decade has lifted and given way to some rather good propagation.

This weekend I've had a few nice natters with Thailand, India, Brazil, Sri LankaCeylon, Sicily, Nebraska - all using 30 watts either to a dipole or - when portable - to the standard 2.4-metre whip antenna on the PRC320.

My other band-of-choice - 5MHz - has yielded Iceland, Norway, an obscure and seemingly highly-desired-by-the-IOTA-crowd island off Denmark, and the Isle of Man.

UK to Guadeloupe on 28MHz using only 7.5 watts PEP to an 8-foot whip antenna on a PRC320 manpack.

Another nice 'grey-line propagation' natter with Iceland on 5MHz. This is rapidly becoming my favourite band: no crazy contesters!

https://www.rac.ca/en/news/stories…

On Wednesday 22nd January, the Canadian regulator, Industry Canada (IC) released a decision to allow amateur radio operators to use the 5332 kHz, 5348 kHz, 5358.5 kHz, 5373 kHz and 5405 kHz frequencies on a no-interference, no-protection basis, 2.8 kHz bandwidth, same modes as U.S., 100W PEP maximum power.

These are the same channels, modes and criteria as those available to US operators on 5 MHz and are as the result of an official IC consultation held earlier in Summer 2012.

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Right now, at the right time of day there are plenty of 'Northern' stations to be worked on the band - earlier today I had a nice half-hour chat with a couple of Norwegian stations and also TF1EIN located around 45Km from Reykjavik - my first Icelander on 5MHz.