The first 10 minutes of the 2M contest were absolutely cracking with Es propagation to Italy. I only worked one (I7CSB) but that was with only 10W SSB to an 8-element beam, so I was pretty chuffed. Given the presence of enhanced propagation I spent quite a lot of time in S&P mode looking for distant bonus squares before they disappeared. This resulted in working a number of squares that I don't normally get, including JO12 and JO22 and up to IO64 and IO94.
70cm was...
Read More
The first 10 minutes of the 2M contest were absolutely cracking with Es propagation to Italy. I only worked one (I7CSB) but that was with only 10W SSB to an 8-element beam, so I was pretty chuffed. Given the presence of enhanced propagation I spent quite a lot of time in S&P mode looking for distant bonus squares before they disappeared. This resulted in working a number of squares that I don't normally get, including JO12 and JO22 and up to IO64 and IO94.
70cm was...
Read More
Another good month on 2m, not quite as high-scoring as last month (also fewer QSOs and fewer bonus squares) but I did have some good sustained runs. 70cm was interesting, I kept a really good rate up for the first 30 minutes, with pile-ups at times, but then conditions suddenly turned dire with long stretches of no contacts. In fact I got bored of calling CQ at one point and so tried an AO-92 pass, to no avail - I didn't even hear the satellite!
Read More
Another good month on 2m, not quite as high-scoring as last month (also fewer QSOs and fewer bonus squares) but I did have some good sustained runs. 70cm was interesting, I kept a really good rate up for the first 30 minutes, with pile-ups at times, but then conditions suddenly turned dire with long stretches of no contacts. In fact I got bored of calling CQ at one point and so tried an AO-92 pass, to no avail - I didn't even hear the satellite!
Read More
This was my best month to date, 2m felt fantastic and I kept up a good rate so even though others worked more bonus squares than me I'm still confident for a good result. 70cm was also good but felt frustrating - others were clearly taking advantage of tropo openings that I couldn't seem to get in to.
Read More
This was my best month to date, 2m felt fantastic and I kept up a good rate so even though others worked more bonus squares than me I'm still confident for a good result. 70cm was also good but felt frustrating - others were clearly taking advantage of tropo openings that I couldn't seem to get in to.
Read More
Satellite Reception using RTL-SDR, GQRX and GPredict
This is mostly sourced from http://teslaintheether.blogspot.com/2018/02/setting-up-gqrx-and-gpredict-for.html, all credit goes to Jacen Solo and it's only reproduced here in case the original disappears. All images come from his original blog post.
-
Install and start both GQRX and GPredict
-
In GPredict, click Edit > Preferences
-
Click...
Read More
A number of years ago I bought a neat little LCD/Button add-on module for my 1st Gen Raspberry Pi. The company that produced these (Emsystech Engineering, Germany) no longer produce them and they no longer host information about them on their website. This is a mirror of the info that I've managed to collate from a number of sources, primarily the Wayback Machine.
The following is text that has been copied from Emsystech's website after being...
Read More
