About 68 years ago my dad bought a Zenith All Band portable radio receiver. It used B and C batteries which gave it about 4 hours of battery life, otherwise one had to use the power cord. It had an extension antenna, similar to what used to be on automobiles, about 5' long. I played with that for hours on end, mostly at night, listening to AM stations all across the country and shortwave stations all around the world.
Back 55 years ago, when I was in grad school, I took a class in electronics. That was during the time when vacuum tubes were giving way to transistors. I decided to get an amature radio license, which was WN5VSX. As a novice I was restricted to CW and Morse code. I built a whittle bug and a Heathkit 60 Watt DC transmitter. I bought a Swan Receiver. I built a 15' cubical quad antenna, which focused my 60 watts like a laser.
Then I began tapping out "CQ CQ CQ WN5VSX", and listen for the response. The problem was that the bug let me tap out at 20 wpm but I could only read at 5-10 wpm. However, I had a blast with those willing to put up with me. My best contact was getting a 5X9 in Japan. The quad antenna was allowing my 60 watts to swamp 1,000 watt rigs that were less focused.
The radio bug hit me again this week end when I noticed a YouTube video about the CubeSDR (Software Defined Radio). I checked and found it in the repository, so I installed it and ordered this RTL-SDR kit for $30. It can tune from 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz and has up to 3.2 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth (2.4 MHz stable) It came yesterday and I managed to set it up this morning. The CubeSDR software handled it nicely.
Now, to track down the ISS, and, SpaceX's frequencies!
Back 55 years ago, when I was in grad school, I took a class in electronics. That was during the time when vacuum tubes were giving way to transistors. I decided to get an amature radio license, which was WN5VSX. As a novice I was restricted to CW and Morse code. I built a whittle bug and a Heathkit 60 Watt DC transmitter. I bought a Swan Receiver. I built a 15' cubical quad antenna, which focused my 60 watts like a laser.
Then I began tapping out "CQ CQ CQ WN5VSX", and listen for the response. The problem was that the bug let me tap out at 20 wpm but I could only read at 5-10 wpm. However, I had a blast with those willing to put up with me. My best contact was getting a 5X9 in Japan. The quad antenna was allowing my 60 watts to swamp 1,000 watt rigs that were less focused.
The radio bug hit me again this week end when I noticed a YouTube video about the CubeSDR (Software Defined Radio). I checked and found it in the repository, so I installed it and ordered this RTL-SDR kit for $30. It can tune from 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz and has up to 3.2 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth (2.4 MHz stable) It came yesterday and I managed to set it up this morning. The CubeSDR software handled it nicely.
Now, to track down the ISS, and, SpaceX's frequencies!
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