Whatever Happened to Ham Radio?

[Cones]

Hi,

I started with a SDR setup a few weeks ago. I bought an Afedri SDR receiver http://www.afedri-sdr.com/ and it will feed 2000 khz of bandwidth via the Ethernet link to the SDR-Radio.com software.
Using it with a Wellbrook ALA1530 active loop antenna. http://www.wellbrook.uk.com/
I am still amazed at what I can hear. Also being able to visualise the bands is a massive help in understanding what is going on.

Got the bug and joined the local club. I have now taken and passed my foundation licence. Registered on the 15th of this month. M6OBL

I bought a KX3 as I did not want a massive setup taking over the space. But I can see a 100W amp in the future as I progress through the next two exams.  I am interested in all of the data modes like PSK31.

Mark

[MikeCL]

I've have my call now for about 7 years now, I would still be active but a friend.. or I should say was a friend stole my HT my yaesu VX-170 and I haven't replaced it yet still upset over all of that.

[dr.diesel]

Ha, that's not very nice of him.  However, you can buy new ones for $59 bucks now:

http://universal-radio.com/catalog/ht/1008.html

I don't own one, but have heard they are not all bad.

[Clint]

I loved ham radio back in the day, I could not afford a black box so had to modify or build, that was the fun, them eureka moments when you got it working; I was lucky and had a couple of good mentors local to me.

Nowadays I don't get on much but do still have a station, I like old equipment and am currently rebuilding a KW Electronics 2000B model, they have history and were only based 7 miles from my house.

I still repair a lot of radios for people though, so it is still fairly strong as a hobby, for me its nostalgia now, not as much fun as it was, very rare you find people who are running built or modified equipment.

G7MNZ !

[Clint]

I thought I would pop a picture up of my KW2000





Isn't she a beauty ?

[xrunner]

I've have my call now for about 7 years now, I would still be active but a friend.. or I should say was a friend stole my HT my yaesu VX-170 and I haven't replaced it yet still upset over all of that.

That sucks. I see it's been discontinued, but the new replacement for that model, the Yaesu FT-270R is about $145, but it's a single band radio.

You can get a new Baofeng UV-5R - a dual band radio - for only $32. I own two of 'em now. 

http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual-Band/dp/B007H4VT7A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376947410&sr=8-1&keywords=baofeng+uv-5r

[dr.diesel]

You can get a new Baofeng UV-5R - a dual band radio - for only $32. I own two of 'em now. 

WOW, that is crazy cheap.  I've heard rumors there are HF rigs in the works.

[dr.diesel]

Ha, I guess so, appears there is also newer model as well:

http://www.wouxun.us/item.php?item_id=302

[xrunner]

WOW, that is crazy cheap. 

Yep. That's why I got another one. The first cost me $42. I'm waiting to buy a mobile rig for my base station, and I was using my outdoor ant. with the UV-5R. I got tired of screwing and unscrewing the SMA connector from the main ant. to use the HT in other places with it's rubber ducky. The price of another Baofeng HT was just so crazy cheap I just went ahead and bought a second one to use as a carry-around.

I think the Chinese are out to crush the competition (the Big Three Japanese Companies - Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom). If I were them I'd be worried big time. Like the price I quoted before - $145 for a single band Yaseu HT. I can buy four Baofeng dual band HTs for that price!  It's crazy! And they are very well made rigs, else I wouldn't have bought another one. I mean $32! How do they do it?

I've heard rumors there are HF rigs in the works.

Ha, I guess so, appears there is also newer model as well:

http://www.wouxun.us/item.php?item_id=302

Look out Big Three! The Chinese are coming!

[ElectroIrradiator]

Look out Big Three! The Chinese are coming!

I wouldn't start worrying until the Chinese manufacturers start to publish detailed specs, and same specs are verified by independent third parties.

With ever increasing noise levels and crowded bands, actual real world receiver performance is a Very Big Deal(TM) to a lot of people.

[vk3yedotcom]

WOW, that is crazy cheap.  I've heard rumors there are HF rigs in the works.

You mean the X1M?

That's not the only one.  There's also the planned FX-4 which will be sold through American company LNR. http://j28ro.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/lnr-fx4.html

They started with CW QRP gear, now they're getting into SSB QRP, next the'll be into larger home station rigs.   

If it performs well enough and is reliable this one may answer the call for a very basic HF rig (although some will want a bit more power out):   http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/hf-transceiver-for-under-400-kn-920/

[ErikTheNorwegian]

HAM was nerver popular here in Norway, very few used it, like CB, only for truckers.  Mostly due to the nature of the country, mostly hig montains and deep vallys..

So i think, the HAM was eaten and the radio went digital...

Have a digital day..
Erik

[xrunner]

Oh yea - I also ordered a Ham it Up up converter so I can use the dongle on the HF bands, should be here this week. That will really be fun. 

I would be very interested in hearing how this goes. Practically all the wideband SDR chips I have seen, have fairly weak receivers (IMD, phase noise). As such I would expect IMD troubles if you pour all of shortwave into one at once, without filters and when using a halfway reasonable antenna.

Just got it in the mail.  Will report on performance soon ...

[xrunner]

Here's some displays taken from the US AM broadcast band using a longwire ant.

First is 1270 AM which is also an AM HD station. You can clearly see the digital data on both sides on the carrier and sidebands.

Second one is the whole band using SDR#. Lots of stations there, but some of the lines are artifacts.

Tonight I want to see what it will do on shortwave. During the day this time of year it's mostly dead, however I could get WWV but it was weak.

[Cones]

Looks good.

This was the 40m band a few minutes ago with the Afedri SDR box.

The hash in the middle at 7150KHz is from the wireless router.

Mark
 

[marshallh]

I have no idea what I'm doing

[xrunner]

Got some good results last night.

Ist we have the 49 meter SW broadcast band.

Next a very interesting one. I stumbled across a weird sweeping signal in the 12 MHz band. It would sweep across ~10 kHz several times and then move to a higher or lower freq. and do it again. Between the sweeps, it would sometimes send three "dits" at a single freq. Very strange. I followed that for a while. From what I could gather it was an OTH radar? Can't see that with a normal SW receiver!

[marshallh]

Managed to get a clean capture

[xrunner]

Managed to get a clean capture

Nice - what setup were you using to get those pics?

[marshallh]

University of Twente NL webSDR with my mic pointed at the speakers, then FLDIGI to decode the fax.
I have a HackRF also but need to get an upconverter to use that. Any recommendations on antennas?

[DRT]

You should try Virtual Audio Cable (http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm). This provides an internal loopback between a program's speaker output (i.e. WebSDR) and another program's input (the demodulating software you want to use).

[xrunner]

University of Twente NL webSDR with my mic pointed at the speakers, then FLDIGI to decode the fax.
I have a HackRF also but need to get an upconverter to use that. Any recommendations on antennas?

Not at this time.  I'm just using a longwire at the moment.

You should try Virtual Audio Cable (http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm). This provides an internal loopback between a program's speaker output (i.e. WebSDR) and another program's input (the demodulating software you want to use).

Yea thanks I did run across that. What I'm diving into now is a new little project relating to HDSDR and my JRC NRD-535D communications rx. I was viewing a YT video where a ham had an IC-7200 transceiver linked to HDSDR via a program called Omnirig.



http://www.dxatlas.com/omnirig/

What it does is link the two via serial ports so that if you tune the rig, it tunes HDSDR along with it, and vice-versa - if you tune HDSDR it tunes the rig. Pretty cool. So if you have a rig that Omnirig has an .ini file for you can use HDSDR as a panoramic viewer. Well it turns out that there was already an .ini file built for my NRD-535 

So seeing that I just couldn't resist setting that all up. What I'm doing today is resurrecting a PC I had in my closet to run with all these new radio toys. My main PC is just getting too cluttered with extra USB cables, serial cables and whatnot. I want to have a PC dedicated to the radio stuff and a monitor sitting right over the radio. So perhaps in the coming days I'll have some neat things running here. 

[DRT]

I'm really getting back into the radio stuff again too. I tried out using WSPR (http://wsprnet.org/) last night. A few transmissions using 1W @ 14MHz got me some pretty amazing distances (see attached map).

[xrunner]

I got the PC resurrected and my NRD-535 receiver to work with HDSDR.  I had to dig down into a junk box to find an rs-232 cable (with 25 pin male end!) and a null modem adapter, but it's working. The proc is a dual-core with 4 G memory and Win 7/64 and it's working OK with HDSDR. It's pretty neat. Although due to a quirk in the way the old NRD-535 works, the control won't work in both directions at once with the Omnirig app, it does control the HDSDR when tuning and changing modes. So I can just tune along and the display follows perfectly.

It's really a nice thing to have. I don't even look at the radio now. I just tune along and watch for interesting signals instead of listening for them. The dongle is really sensitive too. I was going back and forth between the radio audio and the SDR audio trying to compare quality and more than once I had to look down to remind myself which device I was actually listening to. It's amazing that a small device that cost just $20 and some free software can compete with a $1,600 communications rx (in 1990 dollars)!

I have a small numeric keypad on order so I can set the keyboard aside. I really don't need the keyboard most of the time, but I can use the numeric keypad to enter frequencies and I can also set the Windoze password to a number too. That will free up desk space.

Cool!

[vk3yedotcom]

A 3.5 MHz direct conversion phasing SSB transceiver.  8 transistors, 1 IC no crystal filters.

Power output 1w. Contacts up to approx 400km so far. 

Modified from SP5AHT and earlier Russian designs.