My trusty Icom 703 has been sold. Feels like I’ve lost a faithful friend. So there won’t be any beacon monitoring or wspr’ing for a while. I’m looking to get a nice second hand ft817 and spotted one on eBay. I wasn’t prepared to pay as much as the winner so he got it. Still no rush and it’ll allow me to buy the bits I need to make up the portable cobwebb
Posts Tagged ‘Beacons’
Thinking of a new rig
I’ve spent the last 3 years collecting data from the NCDXF beacons to see if I can hear them using Faros. The results have been displayed on this site as a way of keeping a valid copy of the data away from the home pc’s which seem to give up the ghost or lose data. Lately I’ve been really frustrated that I haven’t really had a spot for a long time.
The rig is fine and the PC is getting the sound in, theres just no spots. So I’m thinking of a slight change of rig so that I can get a bit more out the set up. There are a few hams locally that use APRS and I’m wanting to get a bit more involved, so I’m thinking of putting the trusty and very reliable IC-703 onto Ebay so I can get hold of a FT-817 and a TNC to run APRS both out and about and in the car as well as switching over to WSPR instead of Faros.
I do go up to Scotland quite a lot and have found it would be nice to have something in the car on the way up there and whilst I’m there both on HF and VHF. So that only really leaves one sensible option. The FT-817, a cross country wireless APRS TNC and a mobile whip for the car and my Cobwebb for HF
Well I’m stumped
Three different antennas, two different rigs and not a spot on the hf beacons to speak of at all. One strange thing that did happen was that the laptop stopped picking up spots on WSPR as well whilst if was on 15m. AT least they looked like spots, matched the profile on the screen that they usually did. Just not decoded. I’ve noticed this before and assume that the problem was at this end with the desktop pc (which is a nettop thing) running windows 7 not picking up things as sometimes it has a mind of its own with the soundcard. I’m going to try and bring back the old laptop from the grave as today seems the most appropriate just to be absolutely sure.
The whole thing doesn’t make sense to me
Beacon station
Posted 25 Oct 2010 — by Alex
Category Uncategorized
Category Uncategorized
I’m begining to think that something is quite wrong with the beacon monitoring station. So much so that this week I’ll be using it for WSPR just to do some checks. Its been hooked up to the Hustler 6-BTV and will also be TX’ing as well on the 15m band as a compromise.
The idea is to get a feel for wether there is a problem with the receiver or that there is something wrong in the set up as there are so few spots coming through especially as the activity seems to be on the increase
Are we at the bottom yet?
Posted 02 Apr 2009 — by Alex
Category Radio
Category Radio
The beacon station still going strong but no propagation to speak of. I keep checking the site during the day to see how the 4UN1UN beacon is and I can safely say that it’s getting weaker and weaker. With few or no spots at all in many of the days. It makes you think that there is something wrong with your equipment.
Hopefully this long trough will start to pick up so I have a chance to pull together a secret mast for my 6m beam before the XYL finds out what I’ve done just in time for the Es season! I know she doesn’t read this blog too often so I’m sure she’ll not find out what I’m planning.
I still need to do some fault finding with my Softrock and / or build the second kit. I really enjoyed the first one I bought the second one to try and practice a bit more with the SMD soldering, but unfortunately things conspired against me.
