vk2rh: a blog about ham radio

  • Egypt old tech

    The people power demonstrations in Egypt over the last week were probably fueled just that bit more by the government’s decision on 27 January to cut mobile phones and the internet. The deteriorating situation in Egypt is currently sharing top news position here in Australia with the monstrous tropical cyclone Yasi due to hit major population centres of far north…

  • SDR needs more UX

    Spotted a very interesting post from Tobias, DH1TW on his blog ‘Contesting & SDR‘ titled Does SDR really suck?. He wonders out loud if the performance, flexibility and cost of SDR is so excellent, why hasn’t it taken off? What possible barriers might there still be to it assuming a place matching its promise and achievement?…

  • Heathkit Genesis

    Last week at the Waverley Amateur Radio Society monthly meeting there was a fascinating and well-prepared talk from Justin Lavery VK2CU on the history of the Heathkit company. The scene at the front of the clubroom was not unlike this great shot from the website of Fred W1SKU. Only there were more pieces of equipment on display! Justin’s…

  • Arctic DXpedition

    Over the weekend sunspot 1112 erupted and produced a strong solar flare. Now according to space weather sites there’s a 25-35% chance of high latitude auroras on 19-20 October. And right now a group of four Norwegian friends are enjoying their annual DXpedition to Kongsfjord – well and truly in the high latitudes – at 70°43′N 29°21′E at…

  • And they’re racing!

    Interesting thread on the softrock40 email list about how easy it is these days to get a good sense of how well your station and the ionosphere are performing in an almost ‘hands-free’ way. Increasingly modes like WSPR and tools like SDR have enabled us to let the radio do its thing and in a short amount…

  • LCWO on iPad & iPhone

    Great news for owners of Apple portable devices who want to access Fabian Kurz DJ1YFK’s brilliant lcwo.net site on the move. LCWO stands for “Learning CW Online”. If you don’t know the site and you want to learn morse code or improve your code skills, this is one of the best destinations available – and it’s totally…

  • Arnie Coro and the Super Islander

    Looking back over some older email list posts today I came across an interesting exchange of posts on the QRPp list. In early August Arnie Coro CO2KK announced latest progress on the ‘Super Islander Version 5 QRP transceiver project’. Key design criteria include using “as much as possible parts that could be recycled from easy to find sources of electronic…

  • Guide to A123 battery packs

    Charles Preston, a member of the Buddipole User Group email reflector has just posted links to two clear and useful guides to using the A123 Battery Packs available from Buddipole. While the Buddipole site links to documents about the batteries there’s very little practical information available about how to nurture these batteries. Similarly the Cellpro Multi4 charger documentation is…

  • webSDR

    I’ve spent a little time playing with websdr over the last day or so. This is certainly one way to achieve the subliminal morse background mentioned a couple of posts ago! (Assuming of course the workload is low and the wifi is up!!). You can see even before you ‘tune in’ if a CW signal might be…

  • Subliminal morse

    Tim G4VXE posted an interesting ‘random’ thought about one suggestion he’d heard recently on air to raise your CW speed: “one of the ways to improve your speed and competency is to listen to as much morse as you can – for example, have the rig running whilst your watching TV or reading. It’s almost as if…

  • Overland Telegraph – 140 years ago, yesterday!

    An ABC News story today tells of the celebrations in Darwin this week marking the start of the Overland Telegraph on 20th June 1870 when the South Australian parliament voted to dedicate about half its annual budget to building the telegraph line! Barrie Barnes of the SA & NT Morsecodians and others appear in the video accompanying…

  • CW resources

    Via a link to a Facebook page I found two morse related applications (for Windows) here. This page is interesting not just for the RSS Morse and Morse Keyer programs, but also some handy morse related links. I discovered a free pdf book ‘Zen and the Art of Radiotelegraphy’ by Carlo Consoli, IK0YGJ. Interestingly Carlo wrote the book in Italian, translated it…