The June 2009 six and ten report hasbeen issued by Martin, G3USF. Please take a look
SDR station update
Posted 03 Mar 2010 — by Alex
Category Radio
Category Radio
Some time ago I set myself a task of turning my current beacon monitoring station into a low cost SDR based system. The idea has developed over time and the lack of simple low cost SDR receivers (I mean less than £100) meant that the only option was a Softrock kit.
At the time the only option was a TXRX kit that was fixed onto one band. A long wait after first thinking about this later and the HF lite kits came out. This allowed a receiver only to built. Next up comes the electrically switched BPF add on.
These kits seem to come in two flavours and as I type there aren’t any available from tony’s website.
So that’s the rf side. On the computer side I have been looking various different options from ultra low power drain mchines like the fit pc through to the cheap atom based netbooks or even the original eeepc.
Obviously funding plays a large part in this and as a result that may force me down one particular route but I’d really like to go through the fit pc route as they claim to draw less than 10 watts which makes battery power fed from solar top up.
Still I’m a way off doing that but as the masters course comes to an end I may have a little extra time on my hands. Perhaps the xyl will present me a list of jobs to do instead!
Aggghhhhhhhhhhh – @*&^%^??? Softrock
Posted 02 Feb 2010 — by Alex
Category Radio
Category Radio
A while ago I purchased a softrock kit with a view to building the HF lite receiver and eventually a switchable bpf kit to use as a sdr based beacon monitoring system.
After 2 tries at building separate kits I still get stuck with the same issue. A large spike in the centre of Rocky and no other signals to speak of. The first kit must have had some dodgy soldering as there were some weird voltages coming out the IC’s. I got myself another kit and spent a lot more time constructing, checking etc and low and behold the same issue.
I won’t give up with this idea but boy is it testing me….perhaps stepping away is the key and getting some guidance……any offers?
Back home
Posted 01 Feb 2010 — by Alex
Category Me
Category Me
Back home now, thought it best not to advertise that I’ve been away in case we had some unwelcome visitors at home.
Back on the bike
Posted 20 Jan 2010 — by Alex
Category Me
Category Me
Had a quick 20 mile run out on saturday to see how bad my cycling legs are and surprise surprise they were pretty stiff. Got a few more miles under my belt as well on the road with a nice quick tempo run on monday evening 4.5 miles at a sniff under 7 min miles. The first time I’ve got down below the magic 7 for a while. So the pre training is nearly over and the real 16 weeks start soon.
I’m struggling to get enough sleep at times and so I’ll have to work on getting to bed earlier or getting better quality sleep. Too much tossing and turning andnot enough snoring!!!
