This weekend, the VLF station in Grimeton was having an Alexanderson day. On Sunday June 30th, two transmissions were announced. Although I read about the station several times and watched various YouTube videos, I never tried reception myself. On Saturday, I tested a number of wire antennas that were connected to a USB sound interface,… Continue reading »
Regular readers of this blog know that noise (interference, to be correct) from various sources is my most prominent nuisance. A few weeks ago, I stayed for a weekend on a rural location in France and took my IC706 and antenna with me. A wire antenna was put up, using a tall tree and two… Continue reading »
This article drew my attention. Another story about “Megahertz” wireless power transfer. If something is going to kill radio communications, this is spot on: Wireless power transfer Old school efficiency There were times we had trains. Electric trains. In The Netherlands, most railway lines use electricity to convey power to the locomotives (like this one… Continue reading »
An excellent opening to New Zealand was observed on 11 February 2018. The station was switched on around 0700 UTC and several ZL stations came in with good signals. At some point, I decoded 4 ZL stations at the same moment and the 4 calls shown on JT Alert was an unique and impressive experience…. Continue reading »
Today, I stumbled upon a write-up of Joe Taylor, K1JT about developing a version of FT8, intended to be used by DXpeditions. In spite of the fact, that I do not favour FT8, especially because it takes out the lower tier of the signal to noise range, I consider this an interesting and valuable development…. Continue reading »
Last weekend, New Zealand issued permissions on a trial basis to operate on 60 metres. That was very good news, first of all for the ZL ops who had been waiting for this opportunity for a very long time after the WRC-15 results came into force January 2017. It is hoped that this will lead… Continue reading »
It is quite obvious that the internet helps to spread news very fast and thus, a real FT8 explosion took place. On busy moments there is a myriad of stations and it is impressive to watch how good the WSJT-X software decodes the whole bunch every 15 seconds. Hats off for the developers! The FT8… Continue reading »
FT8 has been around for some time now. It was adopted fast by the amateur radio community and it is clear that FT8 overtook JT65 quickly. But is it an improvement? It has to be said that Franke and Taylor (FT) have done a tremendous job with the development of various weak signal modes and… Continue reading »
Trying to improve reception on 60 metres, many experiments followed, but nothing worked… It reminded me about Catweazle, a wizard in a TV series that ran during the early seventies. Numerous receive antennas were tried, but none of them outperformed my dipole. Close to the dipole were a flag and a resonant loop. The flag… Continue reading »
In PA-land, the telephone network is underground. Overhead telephone lines are a thing from the past here. I do not know of interference cases, which does not mean that interference does not exist. As the industry tries to find ways to make money increase the bandwidth, new standards are developed. One of them is G.fast…. Continue reading »