brainwagon

YouTube – Adam’s Airman Run, July 31, 2008 (Higher Quality) Today we got to see Adam for the first time in six and a half weeks. He’s been off for Basic Military Training in the Air Force, and tomorrow will be his graduation ceremony. Today, we saw him take part in the Airman’s Run. Around [...]

Just testing the wordpress application for the iPhone.

Tonight was a momentous occasion. Using 5w of power into a low end fed antenna, I managed to get two contacts. The first was Chuck, KB7OGE on 30m, and the second was Don, W7DTG via 40m. It’s very odd. I can’t seem to hit hams who are just a few miles from here (probably because [...]

While mucking around last night, I ended up asking myself how i could find out what the attenuation of the TV antennas atop Sutro Tower would be. While trying to answer this question, I found out about Splat! SPLAT! A Terrestrial RF Path Analysis Application For Linux/Unix I haven’t worked out the attenuation from Sutro [...]

While digging around for information on how to observe radio echos from meteors, I stumbled across this fascinating link about using reflections from the NAVSPASUR system (a government system to find and track satellites in orbit) using equipment that isn’t beyond the capacity of amateurs to create. Very, very cool. NAVSPASUR Title Page

Today, I decided to code up a little test of something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time: to write an implementation of a tunable bandpass filter. The algorithm is actually pretty darned simple, at least if you have a couple of pieces of code available. Let’s say you want to create [...]

DJ1YFK suggested this site for info on small magnetic loop antennas. I should check this out. Magnetic Loop Antennas, Magnetic Loop Info, How to Build A Magnetic Loop, W2BRI Loops

Just stashing a link to some papers on VLF radio that came across a mailing list. Index of /~talves/VLF

I need to remember to bookmark DJ1YFK’s website. He’s a regular on the #hamradio irc channel, and he has a bunch of nifty stuff on his website. I was most interested in his experiments with simulated Morse at various noise levels, which duplicate some experiments I’ve been tinkering with for the last few days. DJ1YFK [...]

While tuning around below the 30m band on my FT-817, I heard a rather loud and clear weather broadcast on 10.051Mhz. It turned out to be a “VOLMET” broadcast from New York. These broadcasts are apparently provided for aviation purposes. Here is a page which lists the various broadcasts: HF Volmet Broadcasts I went down [...]

I subscribe to a number of different mailing lists related to radio topics. Something that has intrigued me for quite some time is VLF or Very Low Frequency radio, especially so-called Part 15 or “lowfer” operation. There has lately been some overlap with my interest in software defined radio. Some people have recognized that there [...]

On this day in 2002, I made my first posting to this blog. If any of you have hung around since then, you will see that it’s gone through a number of twists and turns, just as my own interests have twisted and turned throughout the last six years. I wonder what people have learned [...]

I have been monitoring 30m to try to detect some of those MEPT (Manned Experimental Propagation Transmitters) that I wrote about a few weeks ago, without any real luck. I’ll be trying again this weekend, but since I was bored, I decided to tune down to 10.000 Mhz and try receiving the time signal. It’s [...]

39 years ago today. YouTube – First Moon Landing 1969

The All-Star game is going to the bottom of the 13th in a 3-3 tie. Both teams are 3-27 with runners in scoring position. There have been something like 19 pitchers used. Gadzooks. Addendum: Uggla just committed his third error, a new player record for the All-Star game. Addendum: Michael Young gets a sacrifice fly, [...]