Aug 7
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.
-.-
Jul 30
I recently stubled across this link while reading something else on the web, as you do :)
http://www.ominous-valve.com/wlw.html
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.
It makes pretty interesting reading, 500KW on AM is not to be sneezed at!
Jul 25
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 :)
