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 »
A paper, prepared for the upcoming IARU Region 1 conference, raised another alarm bell for me. Although up till now, no wind farms are near my QTH, but from the IARU paper, it can be learned that wind farms cause interference at distances up to several kilometres! Here is the report:Radiated RF emissions from wind… Continue reading »
A few days ago I worked PJ7/W9DR for a new entity on 6 metres. In the past, the entity was deleted because of the change in governmental structure. The contact with PJ7/W9DR was greatly appreciated! Looking W9DR up on QRZ.com led me to a nice video of his water cooled 6 metres amplifier, that runs… Continue reading »
The FCC recently issued an order where AFX inc. will have to pay a $ 90,000 civil penalty for marketing non compliant equipment that caused interference. The company marketed LED lighting devices without prior authorisation. This is the FCC Order. It is about time, Europe adopted the same policy. The industry will think before marketing… Continue reading »
After putting up the 5+5 element YU7EF 6/4 metre dual band antenna, I was curious how the new antenna performs. Although I realise that a real measurement requires quite a bit of effort, a simple comparison between the new antenna and an antenna with a more or less known performance at least gives a clue… Continue reading »
Recently, I received a note that Chines radio modems are used for telemetry. The note states that these transceivers are operating on our 2 metre band between 144 and 146 MHz. More details are expected. Along with the note, a link was sent with a URL to a Chinese company, selling these transceivers. They operate… Continue reading »
These days, we often hear the abbreviation IoT, which refers to the Internet of Things. For me, the abbreviation triggered the term “Interference of Things”. We live in an age of ever growing numbers of electronic devices, that all have one thing in common: they need power and thus can be the source of unwanted… Continue reading »
Last week, I put up a dual band antenna for 6 and 4 metres. It was difficult to decide what to build. Last year, I had separate antennas for both bands. Dual band antennas are attractive, because of lesser wind load and also because it leaves some room for other antennas. Another aspect was that… Continue reading »
A short while ago, I had problems with my antenna system on 20 metres. It took a while to trace the cause. In 2015, I “restarted” amateur radio and put up a dipole for 60 metres. After a while, I decided to consider options to become QRV on other bands as well. I tried a… Continue reading »