Cool.
Daily Archives: 3/3/2009
SolderSmoke Daily News: Homebrew WSPR from W3PM
Bill posted today about W3PM’s design for a dedicated WSPR beacon transciever. It’s very slick: basically a crystal oscillator that can be mixed with the signal from a PC sound card, then piped through a narrow crystal filter and through an amplifier chain into an antenna. Check out the PDF, it’s quite nice.
Cycle America
A friend of mine from the Chabot Space and Science Center, Don Saito, was recently laid off from his IT job in Berkeley, and decided to celebrate by embarking on a circumnavigation of these continental United States on a recumbent tricycle. He’s got a blog called Cycle America, and seems to be equipped with all the gadgets that will make following his trek fascinating. Good luck, Don! Stay safe!
WA0UWH grabber/K6HX beacons back on the air…
WA0UWH announced that his awesome grabber was back in a new temporary location, fed by satellite internet. I had some difficulties getting images earlier in the day but it’s up now, and you can easily see my DFCW beacon, sending K6HX.
QRSS over morning coffee…
This morning I see that Dan, NM5DV has worked out his issues with this Softrock, and is now putting out a nice signal up above WA5DJJ. Yesterday, his signal made it briefly into Belgium alongside WA5DJJ: I’m wondering if anyone has been using Softrocks as beacon transmitters.
Down below, you can perhaps see hints of VK2ZAY as well as VK6DI. VK6DI will be shutting down operations from Western Australia soon and moving back to Eastern Australia. Too bad: I’ve really enjoyed these DX opportunities.
I’ve had the beacon off for a few days, but I think it’s time go get it back on. 10 minute repeat time.
Addendum: I was on IRC, and got a quick note from NM5DV indicating that he thought I had gone off frequency. Yep, I had bumped the knob on my radio while I was resetting the beacon (now operating near the top of the subband, around 10.140090). You can see that the 20hz shift was quite clear. 🙂
