I think that, in a previous life, I should have belonged to a Signal Corps. Since I became an ham (my 1st year of license recurred in the last week), I’m convinced that a day without a radio on my shoulders is a lost day. But if the radio you’re carrying is a VHF, like my FT-290 IIR, there are a few chances to score nice receptions, or contacts, if you don’t climb as high as possible. Read more →

Maybe it’s because of my age, or maybe it’s because I’ve seen it happen live (I won’t go down that road now, but at 12 I had a Vic-20, at 14 a C64, and so on…), but I’m in the bunch convinced that a ham should try something new every day of his life! So, since I’ve read the first time about the RTL-SDR project, I decided I’d go deeper. First was to secure a DVB-T stick featuring Read more →

In this post, written once back home from last summer holidays, I told about how troposheric reception enhancement allowed good signals, on the beach of Cattolica (loc. JN63IX) and with a simple HT, from the 9A0VRI 2m repeater, located in Ucka, Croatia (loc. JN75CG). One morning, I noticed that tropo was so strong, that not only receiving the repeater, but also transiting through it Read more →

This week-end weather was fine (altough a bit cloudy), but previous one was rainy and humid all the way. One of those couple days you're forced to stay home, like a prisonner. When things seem to go completely wrong, what you have to do is to completely reverse your perspective. So, I told myself that if below clouds I had no joy, to find some it was necessary to chase something in the heavens above. Launched "Orbitron", checked "ARISSat-1/KEDR" tracking for my area, and was lucky enough to have a good pass within minutes. I tried to get this bird when it was still in its "high power" days, soon after deployment, but it didn't awarded me so much satisfaciton in terms of signal quality. Anyways, I made as if it didn't happen, and decided to play it funny this time, with my newly arrived Baofeng UV-3R bi-band HT. At AOS, ran out (and luckily enough rain wasn't falling in that very moment), aimed the rubber bi-band antenna I got at a recent fair (forget the "dedicated" antennas the HT comes with, or sooner or later, forgetting you're on the band opposite to the aerial you have on, you'll burn your radio), and Baofeng's DSP did the trick you can check below. This time, considering my very basic set-up (and the really low power from up there), I was satisfied. I already sent my ARISSat-1/KEDR reception certificate request, and who knows if I'll get one. Matter of fact is that you can still receive the ISS deployed satellite with a minimal rig. Don't miss your pass!
 

73,
Chris