Serving the Northwestern Vermont Amateur Radio community.
STARC wishes all the best for 2020 to you and your family.
73,
– STARC
QST QST QST - SSTV from the ISS on Aug. 4th and 5th
This is a QST.
MAI-75 SSTV activity planned for Aug 4 and 5, 2020
The final crew schedule for the week of Aug 3-9 was released recently and it showed a MAI-75 activity scheduled for Aug 4 and 5. This is soon after the Space X Demo-2 undock so changes to that event could impact the schedule.
The current dates and times of the activity are as follows:
Aug 4 (12:25-18:10 UTC) is setup and day 1 operations.
Aug 5 (11:15-18:45 UTC) is day 2 operations and close out.
This is the Moscow Aviation Institute SSTV experiment that is activate for orbital passes over Moscow, Russia. It has traditional been PD-180 or PD-120 and transmitting on 145.800 MHz.
Please let us know if you were able to copy some of the images.
73 de STARC
QST QST QST - STARC July 2020 monthly meeting is this coming Thursday July 30th at 7:00pm on Zoom.
This is a QST about this month's meeting.
Virtual Meeting on Zoom
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing recommendations, we will be holding this month's meeting on Zoom. Message us here on FaceBook so we can send you the link to join this meeting.
We hope to see you there!
73 de STARC
This comes to us from Bob W1ICW:
" [STARC] For you SWLs out there
So here's my free advice regarding copying new stations. I offer it without reservation.
There is no such thing as the "magic receiver". Full stop. Repeat. There is no such thing as the "magic receiver".
I've spent 40+ years and a butt load of money trying to find that "magic receiver" that copies signals nothing else can. Along the way, I've owned receivers such as the Yaesu FRG-7, Icom R-75, Drake R-7, Collins 651S-1, Watkins-Johnson WJ-8615, Ten-Tec RX-325, several flavors of the Icom "black box receivers" from the PCR-100 up through the PCR-2500, and tons of boatanchor tube rigs including a National HRO-60. And more recently at least six different SDR receivers, such as the RFSpace SDR-IQ, Elad FDM-DUO, SDRPlay RSP1a, and the Airspy.
More money brings you more features, and better filtering, the ability to reject the crud, unwanted stations or other signals that aren't part of what you're looking for, but ultimately even the most rudimentary of portables has the sensitivity to receive pretty much anything that can be received. Usually the average receiver is noise limited by the environment it's in.
Here's the magic, and fortunately for the most part it's free:
Propagation-- if the MUF is 7 MHz and you're trying to receive a signal at 15 MHZ, it's probably not gonna work. Find some good online tutorials, read everything you can find for articles from ARRL, etc. The other part of this is making sure you have the correct time. More than once I got caught out being on at the wrong time or day. The whole UTC -vs- local time thing is confusing at best, (thank you Daylight Savings ) never mind when there are different days involved. Moral of the story? With all the other things perfect, perfect quiet rural location, excellent antenna up high and in the clear, and the world's BEST receiver, if there's no propagation none of that will matter.
Location, location, location-- Not only in Real Estate, this counts in radio too. If you have a noisy, urban environment, you'll hear a lot less than at a quiet rural environment. I remember looking at a ham's QTH in Essex, because he had a very high noise level, so much so he couldn't check into a regional 40-meter daytime net. There were so many power lines crisscrossing his neighbor's property, had to be AC feed lines going in at least 7 different directions at once. Of course the local power company would be GLAD to come out and DF (Direction Find) the source of his noise, IF HE was willing to pay for it. Not much could be done for him, except consider operating in the field. Or move.
Antenna-- I think I saw that you had a pair of portables, and using an outside, large antenna can sometimes be detrimental to them. The iconic Sony ICF-2010 portable was a phenomenal receiver, (I had one so I know) but a lot of folks were tempted to use a large wire antenna with them and the front end transistor was often blown from static as a result. Assuming you have a desktop receiver, a good wire antenna can be erected in the clear that will give you good performance. It's nice to have a couple up, one with a relatively omnidirectional pattern for general bandscanning, then one aimed at the area of interest to home in and reduce the noise level from other directions. Here I use a couple of Alpha-Delta DX-SWL shortwave slopers. One is aimed at Europe, the other splits the difference between South America an Africa. One of the members on a Facebook group I'm subscribed to popst amazing loggings with noting more than a W6LVP magnetic loop antenna up 12 feet. I've been tempted to try one here, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. The W6LVP is safe to use with a portable, so might be an upgrade worth looking at for you. If you're handy with tools, you could probably homebrew something similar for cheep.
So there's a lifetime (nearly so) of Shortwave Listening experience, distilled into a couple short sentences.
73, ICW "
73 de STARC
Something to read in case you are not sure if 'HAM' is alive these days.
73 de STARC
