Blowing off the dust..

[Primerump]

Just returned from some extended camping, will be at home for about 4 months. wife is scheduled for surgery, so i have plenty of free time ( or so i think ) to fix up things around the house. I also brought down a box from storage that has not been opened for many years. These were inside and they are the only two pieces of Ham gear that I ever purchased. I had many other home brew converters, tnc, test gear etc that i sold off. These items I bought in 1982 and 1985 so over 40 years ago !!
To my surprise, the R1000 powered up and works perfectly, the FT290, not so much.. as you can see the LCD display has bit the dust. It will have to be replaced...
I setup a simple wire antenna and looked around the bands.. I was particularly interested in RTTY and SSTV all those years ago..
here is an image I received the other day.. looks like the bands are still active. !

 

[Larry N.]

Welcome back to the airwaves. That SSTV image, was that on 14,230 or so? Things are still active in that area. Some folks are now into HDTV over the air, using the European DBV-T protocol in the Denver area, along with many other areas, but some are into ATSC, but it's less suited for the low-power and for multipath recovery.

Here's a sample -- the 4 black rectangles are supplied by the receiver, with top left being received on 1.243 GHz, lower left is call sign of transmit (not my call), upper right is signal strength, and lower right is S/N ration. Lighting is poor on this video excerpt. I won't detail the circuitous path of the transmission, though, but it includes a TV repeater.

 

[DonTom]

Just returned from some extended camping, will be at home for about 4 months. wife is scheduled for surgery, so i have plenty of free time ( or so i think ) to fix up things around the house. I also brought down a box from storage that has not been opened for many years. These were inside and they are the only two pieces of Ham gear that I ever purchased. I had many other home brew converters, tnc, test gear etc that i sold off. These items I bought in 1982 and 1985 so over 40 years ago !!
To my surprise, the R1000 powered up and works perfectly, the FT290, not so much.. as you can see the LCD display has bit the dust. It will have to be replaced...
I setup a simple wire antenna and looked around the bands.. I was particularly interested in RTTY and SSTV all those years ago..
here is an image I received the other day.. looks like the bands are still active. !

Are you still a licensed ham? Do you work any CW? I only do CW and had a few QSOs tonight.

I hear Texas nice and strong here on 40M. At least a few hours ago. Skip is a lot longer right now, as expected.

73, -Don- AA6GA/7 Douglas, AZ

 

[Primerump]

Welcome back to the airwaves. That SSTV image, was that on 14,230 or so? Things are still active in that area. Some folks are now into HDTV over the air, using the European DBV-T protocol in the Denver area, along with many other areas, but some are into ATSC, but it's less suited for the low-power and for multipath recovery.

Here's a sample -- the 4 black rectangles are supplied by the receiver, with top left being received on 1.243 GHz, lower left is call sign of transmit (not my call), upper right is signal strength, and lower right is S/N ration. Lighting is poor on this video excerpt. I won't detail the circuitous path of the transmission, though, but it includes a TV repeater.

View attachment 2400992

that sstv was on 20M 14.231 quite a few qso's going on..
to be honest, hdtv doesn't interest me.

i was more interested in rtty, amtor and sstv. I did make a 23 cm repeater for my local club all those years ago.. much more fun making waveguide stuff..

 

[Primerump]

Are you still a licensed ham? Do you work any CW? I only do CW and had a few QSOs tonight.

I hear Texas nice and strong here on 40M. At least a few hours ago. Skip is a lot longer right now, as expected.

73, -Don- AA6GA/7 Douglas, AZ

no, I am no longer licensed. my last qso was probably in early 1990 LOL
I don't do CW.. my brain just won't do it.. LOL
ironically, i can and did program a small microprocessor system to decode and send it.. !!
I need to get a new license... then perhaps try again..

 

[woof-n]

The Ham radio stories bring back fond memories. My father and brother was/is a fluent ham radio operator. I never picked up the hobby. My mom liked to tell the story of one day when she asks me, (I was about 4 or 5 years old) what your father is doing, to my reply he is "Q See Qwin". Yeah, yeah, I know it is only funny if you grew up in a family of Ham operators.

 

[John From Detroit]

I don't do CW.. my brain just won't do it.. LOL

Though I can still copy CW if it's slow enough I'v an app on the phone that does a great job at least if the signal is clear.

Funny side note Movie Enemy of the State. When the cut to a shot of a satellite to Track the "Enemies" with they are sending a coded signal.. CQ CQ CQ in standard Morse Code .

 

[DonTom]

When the cut to a shot of a satellite to Track the "Enemies" with they are sending a coded signal.. CQ CQ CQ in standard Morse Code .

So far, I think I have only seen one movie that actually sent the correct CW for what it was supposed to say--out of several--just a few words, but I cannot remember which movie, but I think it was a WW2 movie.

I heard the CQ thing a couple of times.

73, -Don- AA6GA/7 Douglas. AZ

 

[Primerump]

Progress so far... after scanning the bands, It would seem that RTTY is really only up during a contest, very few qso's going on otherwise. SSTV a few heard, CW on the other hand is quite active so I decided to build a cw decoder. here is my first test program working and the screen shot is from a few minutes ago on 20M. fun stuff, i haven't done any serious work like this some time. ! next up is a better decode function, this is just basic timing stuff. top trace is classic waterfall spectrum, lower is the energy at the selected frequency ( cursor ). I did run for about an hour and copied many calls from ON,AR,CA,MD,NJ,AZ to name a few.. there is a contest today, both on 20M and 40M.