ON3JT

On wednesday the 24th of december 2008 the vlf transmitter SAQ will be aired again. Not really in the evening, although it depends where in the world you live.
Transmission is planned at 08.00 UTC and 08.30 UTC.  The frequency is 17.2 kHz CW. Running up an tuning of the transmitter begins about 07.30 UTC.

And for 2009 :
The Alexanderson Day 2009 with transmission is planned to Sunday 28th June.

Sadly I have to work that morning, but nevertheless I find it a nice Christmas gift

Merry Christmas to all !!

Tonight I used WSPR again to see the activity on 30m. Now I received about 7 stations from the USA, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, UK and the Czech republic. After a few hours I ticked the 20% T/R option. This switches the transceiver on for 20% of the time and the remaining 80% listening.

And yes, my signal gets out. Using only 2 watts my signal is picked up by VK6KHD, Nigel in Australia. My first.
That is about 14190 km or 7095 km per watt or very very far from my qth

Last saturday night my computer has been running all night long the WSPR (whisper) software from ….. to see if I could receive that mode too. My wife had the night shift in the hospital and could not argue that the computer is making too much noise in the bedroom That is the downside of having the shack in the bedroom.
I set the receiver to 10.138.7 in the 30m band and went to bed.

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I’m currently experimenting with a PIC processor. The term microcontroller is actually better, but you know what I mean. It all started when reading about the bitx20 kit. This transceiver has no frequency readout and if you look around you’ll notice that everyone is using a PIC or an AVR to build a frequency counter with LCD readout. I knew little about PICs, nothing about AVRs. Not that I dislike AVRs but PIC feels better to me personally.

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After reading this site : http://paginas.terra.com.br/lazer/py4zbz/hamdream/rxdrm.htm I modified my Icom IC725 with a similar capacitor. It worked more or less. Switching to the CW-N mode on my trx and decoding with Dream I could listen to some DRM radiostations. At that time the only antenne I could use was a magnetic loop, mounted near the window. Not the setup that everyone dreams of
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It has been a while that I posted something on my blog here. Don’t panic, I’ll try to do it more frequent.
I’ve been busy with all kind non-ham related things.

But yesterday I managed to find a free moment and put the transceiver on the 20m psk band. Around 20:40 UTC I noticed a qso that needed more attention.
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My most ill prepared attempt ever.
I took my laptop and my BBB4 receiver and some wire as antenna. 

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