20 m SSTV

Good SSTV signals the last day of the year in Zuidzijde on 14.230 MHz !

Off topic:

Maasvlakte2

FT-8 40m

Impression of 40 m FT-8 stations that received my 40 m. signals today.
I used the FT-450 Yaesu trscvr on 5 Watts RF.

FT-8 experiment on 6m

This morning I made an FT8 QSO with Belgium on 6 m.
I found Noel, ON4APU, on 50.313 MHz:

Off-topic: Funghi from my garden

50 MHz WSPR

Today I received WSPR signals from Belgium on 6 m WSPR:

Off-topic:

Sunny autumn afternoon in Soest, 18 Nov 2018

PI4HAL

eQSL from PI4HAL was received today:

Link to older QSL-cards: http://s4.photobucket.com/user/PA2RF/library/?sort=4&page=1

Off-topic:

Mauritshuis Willemstad December 2018

DARES

This weekend I visited the National Safety day in Culemborg. Red Cross, the Navy, Army and Police showed their skills. Also the DARES was present. DARES is an abbreviation for Dutch Amateur Radio Emergency Service.

I spoke with PA3GJM, Hans, the regio coordinator of DARES in Gelderland-Zuid. He explained how, in emergency situations, communication tru VHF/UHF and Short Wave can be established.

Interesting is the communications vehicle that also contains equipment to route emergency e-mails via Winlink2000 / PACTOR protocol.

More info:  http://www.dares.nl/

Culemborg harbour

DARES communications vehicle

FT-8

Today I received my first FT-8 signals. I installed latest version of WSJT-X and had the Yaesu FT-450 up and running for the first time since about 2 years,

 

                                                    FT-8 stations received, 21 MHz

Also the G5RV jr. antenna is doing its job after a long time of in-activity.

Discone Antenna

This weekend I installed the Albrecht disconne antenna '"Allband'".
It is an omnidirectional discone antenne capable of receiving 25 - 1300 MHz signals.
Transmitting is possible from 50 - 1300 MHz (VHF till 300 Watts, UHF till 200 Watts).
Antenneheigth is appr. 6 m. above sealevel. In the north, east and west direction I have a clear view. 
I used Aircell7 coaxial cable to limit the losses on the higher frequencies.
I was able to receive various 2 m. repeaters in the neighbourhood ( Goes, Rotterdam, Bergen op Zoom) using a Boafeng BJ-218 VHF/UHF transceiver. First contact with this antenna was with PA0RPA via the repeater of Goes (145.775 MHz, 88.5 Hz CTCSS).

                                                         Discone antenna 

Coming period I will do various trials on various frequencies (50 MHz, 70 MHz, 430 MHz) to get an impression how the antenna performs.

Boafeng BJ-218 VHF/UHF transceiver 

QSL from the past

In the eQSL inbox of my former callsign PH0RF, I found a QSL from Vlad YL2GC from Latvia. The QSO was from 2004 in SSB (20 meter band);

Off topic:

Steam locomotive over the Lek bridge in Culemborg, 28 Sept. 2018

70 cm FM transmitter

Last months I am not very active in radio homebrew activities. Luckily other radio amateurs are. I visited Hans, PE1DWA, last week and he realized a nice DIY 70 cm Wide Band FM  transmitter with an RF output of 5 Watts.

430 MHz ATV transmitter combi; the Local Oscillator is on top

Local Oscillator, inside

David Edward Hughes

I always thought that either Heinrich Hertz, Marconi or Faraday realized the first radio transmission. But someone was ahead of them;

David Edward Hughes (16 May 1831 – 22 January 1900), was a British-American inventor, practical experimenter, and professor of music known for his work on the printing telegraph and the microphone. His family moved to the U.S. while he was a child and he became a professor of music in Kentucky. In 1855 he patented a printing telegraph. He moved back to London in 1857 and further pursued experimentation and invention, coming up with an improved carbon microphone in 1878. In 1879 he identified what seemed to be a new phenomenon during his experiments: sparking in one device could be heard in a separate portable microphone apparatus he had set up. It was most probably radio transmissions but this was nine years before electromagnetic radiation was a proven concept and Hughes was convinced by others that his discovery was simply electromagnetic induction.

Hughes seems to have come across the phenomenon of radio waves nine years before they were proven to exist by Heinrich Hertz in 1888. In 1879 while working in London, Hughes discovered that a bad contact in a Bell telephone he was using in his experiments seemed to be sparking when he worked on a nearby induction balance. He developed an improved detector to pick up this unknown 'extra current' based on his new microphone design and developed a way to interrupt his induction balance via a clockwork mechanism to produce a series of sparks. By trial and error experiments he eventually found he could pick up these 'aerial waves' as he carried his telephone device down the street out to a range of almost 500 meters.

Hughes wireless apparatus, a clockwork driven spark transmitter and battery (right) and a modified version of his carbon block microphone (left) which he used in his 1879 experiments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Hughes

Ouddorp antennapark

After a visit to the beach of Ouddorp I drove past a field with lots of antennas. It turned out to be a site of the Royal Dutch Navy with shortwave antennas. 

On shortwave the Navy communicates (encoded voice and data !) with its frigates and vessels. One of the antennas I recognize as a logper antenna.

Ouddorp beach:

Le Forty

A couple of years ago I have built Le Forty; a 40m QRP transceiver.
I received a nice picture from Carlos EA1CGK in Salamanta from his version of Le Forty ('Building in progress').

See also  http://lpistor.chez-alice.fr/forty2s.htm

Radio scale

In the days digital frequency readouts were not available, radio tuning was done while looking at the scale. Names of radio stations were present on the scale;

A nice example is the scale of a Telefunken 876WK receiver from around 1938.

Telefunken 876WK

Off topic: The island of Tiengemeten in 'het Haringvliet', about 5 km's from my QTH. The island is forbidden for cars. Only pedestrians and bicycles allowed.

Home-built TV sets

Around 1948 employees of Philips could buy DIY kits to assemble TV receivers. Two pictures of home-built TV receivers from private collections:

Off topic:

Coastguard vessel near the harbour of Middelharnis

Digital Voltmeter

Geekcreit produces mini digital voltmeters for general purposes. Because the price of such a voltmeter is low (less than 2 euros) you can incorporate the voltmeter into each of your do-it-yourself projects.

Range is about 2.5...30 VDC and the voltmeters, to be found on aliexpress or banggood.com, are offered in various colours: red, yellow, blue, green and white.

I used one on my 144 MHz transverter:

TV test pattern

Just a nice picture of a TV test pattern from 1956. The era when black/white TV's conquered our continent:

Off topic:

Spot the frog in the pond

eQSL from Zakynthos

A nice eQSL from SV8KOM in Greece received today:

Discone antenna

Discone antennes cover a wide frequency range. 
MFJ has introduced a new discone antenna: the MFJ-1868.

It is designed to receive radio signals from 25 - 1300 MHz and to transmit from 50 - 1300 MHz (up till 200 Watts RF power). Interesting because it covers 6m, 4m, 2m, 70cm and the 23 cm band.

A discone antenna is omnidirectional, vertically polarized and has a rather narrow radiation pattern in the horizontal plane. This makes the antenna sensitive in the direction of the horizon. SWR remains below 1:2 for the 50...1300 MHz frequency range.

Interesting if you do not want your garden covered with lots of antennes.

The MFJ-1868 has a vertical whip affixed to the centre in order to extend the low frequency response.

Price of this antenna: appr. $70

MFJ-1868

LM3886 for lower bands

DIY audio fanatics appreciate this ‘chipamp’ a lot. See for example https://audio-creative.nl/audio-creative/diy-lm3886-chipamp/

                                 LM3886 as 65 Watt audio amplifier

It provides 65 Watts audio into 8 ohms. Audio quality is more than all right. PCB’s with this chip are available for about 10 euro’s (eBay, Aliexpress). 

Bunch of low-cost LM3886 PCB's (10 euro each)

The frequency response curve shows that we are dealing with a broadband amplifier. @ 200 kHz the attenuation is only 1.7 dB !

Frequency response

Therefore, this chip should be able to be used as an RF amplifier for the 2200 m band (135.7 – 137.8 kHz) and lower bands.

A challenge for the designer is of course to adapt the 8 ohms output to the antenna impedance.