Author Archives: Joseph

Got an antenna up

Today I spent some time and got my G5RV / dipole back up in the air. It’s only temporarily up, the ends are on poles and the middle is on a ladder in an olive tree 🙂

Oh and the coax feeding the balun/600ohm ribbon is pretty horrid.. So I have some work to do before it’s a permanent or useful fixture.

Still this afternoon a quick listen on 20m CW I copied KH7Y from Hawaii, and a quick tune up to the shortwave band I heard Voice of Malaysia on 15Mhz.

So maybe not too bad for receiving, although transmitting at this point isn’t an option. Will see how much I can improve it or what other options I can find to get a signal back on air.

-.-

WLW 500KW AM Transmitter

I recently stumbled across this while reading something else on the web, as you do 🙂

Somehow, he finagled the Federal Radio Commission into an “experimental” authorization for 500 kW, first with the special callsign of W8XO, finally as commercial WLW.

More at: http://www.ominous-valve.com/wlw.html

It makes pretty interesting reading, 500KW on AM is not to be sneezed at!

More radio kits – Small Wonder Labs

Been looking around for some kits to build and one of the places I came across was Small Wonder Labs.

I’m a bit taken by the Rock-Mite CW transciever, even a kit building noob like myself should be able to have a go at that.

The PSK kit for something like 30m might be interesting, although some of the stuff that you can do with SDR makes it a bit pricey for a once use type kit.

I dropped an enquiry email to Dave K1SWL asking about stock of the RockMite and I had a response in aobut 30 minutes, pretty good customer service.

Will make an order soon I think, mmm the smell of solder smoke, can’t wait 🙂