Category: Radio

In the image below, created yesterday evening, you can beautifully see the effect of what is called the ‘gray line‘ (see explanation by Paul NA5N Harden below). It is the line between day and night, as can be seen in the image. Along this line radio connections are ‘propagated‘ by… Read the rest

Yesterday I replaced my broadband Diamond Discone antenna with a dual band Diamond X-300N. The Discone is a broadband antenna with a range from 30 MHz up to 1300 MHz. The new one gives a much better reception on the 145MHz and the 430MHz bands. old (DisCone)new (Dual band) Correction… Read the rest

Today I got my IC-9700 back from the repair I sent it of for. That took a while longer than expected, but hey, I’m glad it’s back. Here it is, In my (again) rearranged shack:… Read the rest

A fellow HAM – Jon K60J – pointed me to a nice program: HAMclock. Click on the name to go to the page where you can have a look and download it when you like it. I did, and installed it on my Raspberry Pi 4B. I also had a… Read the rest

Today I received a lot of stations on my HF radio using FT8 even one from the vicinity of Australia (from a boat perhaps?). Mainly on 20 meters (yellow), a couple on 10 meters (pink) and a couple on 40 meters (blue). My experience so far is that FT8 is… Read the rest

What is FT8? The last couple of weeks I have been trying to get digital mode FT8 working. FT8 is a means of transmitting (which I don not do yet) and receiving messages that are digitally coded, and then encoded into analogue signals so that they can be transmitted over… Read the rest

Amongst the ways we can receive (and transmit) information are the digital modes. One of the popular modes is called FT8. The program WSJT-X that I use is capable of coding and decoding that FT8 protocol. Using that program I received (and was able to decode) the stations in the… Read the rest

Today I drilled a hole through the ceiling of my office / shack to feed the antenna coaxes through. A nice piece of PVC pipe inserted in the hole and through the isolation helps make it clean. An old rag inserted in the hole from attic helps keep the cold… Read the rest

Since I do not yet have my license, I listen a lot. Today I made use of one particular feature of the IC-7300 receiver, namely the ability to decode telex (or RTTY) transmissions. I thought this was fun, because I worked with telexes in my time in the military. See… Read the rest

Together with the ICOM radios we get the ‘basic manual’, which is okay to start with. But soon one wants to dive in a bit deeper and investigate the more advanced functions. For that purpose one can download a PDF file from the ICOM website, for both the IC-7300 and… Read the rest