Posted 08 Jun 2009 — by Alex
Category Radio
50mhz is just one of those ‘get it or forget it’ bands. Either you love it or just can’t be bothered with it. A while ago i bought a 5 ele yagi from trident to try my luck and then promptly moved house. The result was that the antenna sat in my garage for a couple of years and I didn’t get a chance to use it. This weekend I had a few spare minutes and rigged it up on my decking so that it was blocked in just about every direction but southwest through to north west.
After some scanning through the band I cam across a few EA stations and fired through a few responses as they were a strong 59. EA1GE responded and my 6m career spluttered back into life. A good 1000 miles with a lashed together set up gave me a smile and although short lived the Es also allowed a good 59 on the CS5BLA beacon.
I think it’s nearly time for a new PC. I’ve been wrestling with a dying hard drive and a soundcard that only seems to work on a few randomly chosen days so it’s probably about time to put it out of it’s misery.
It has been a really frustrating time trying to get a working PSK-31 set up with this rig and I was beginning to think that it was the rig and not the PC, but after switching things around with our Advent netbook and several copies of Ham Radio Deluxe and using both the ACC socket, RJ45 and speaker output I finally came to the conclusion that the rig is ok but in desperate need of the mic mod.
So what to get? I quite fancy something powerful and a bit useful but also something low energy. Unfortunately the two don’t go hand in hand. I like the idea of the desktop type set ups using Intel Atom processors but it might be worth waiting until the graphics get sorted out with the Ion GPU. Also either an internal or external soundcard will be a must if I’m going to venture into the SDR route with a bit of gusto.
Decisions, decisions
At least the rig is ok
