!!!??&&!!##^**!!

My antenna has touched the infinite. Infinite SWR, actually. Darn old coax. That is the most likely culprit, the end of the dipole and coax connection has gotten water in it and shorted out. If I didn't have to work I'd check it out, but it will have to wait for a few days...

Can I spend money.....

I guess that is a little redundant for a Ham- it is not always a cheap hobby even if you fabricate your own equipment.  (I did see a neat video of a French fellow making his own home vacuum tubes- I'll look for it sometime and post it).  But what I purchased this time was a 1.4 GHz feedhorn and choke as part of my plans to manufacture a radio telescope out of the 8 foot aluminum dish I purchased last summer.

Oh, I can hardly wait!!!

New Series of FM birds planned

AMSAT is planning a new series of FM dual band repeater satellites like AO-51 (RIP).  All they need is money.  Consider this worthy cause....

QRP and Winter Cold Weather

I walked up and down a local field with my backpack radio Icom 703 trying to drum  up a QSO on 10 meters.  I heard many stations but could not compete with the big guns with my AH 703 antenna and 5 watts.  QRP is one of those Ham activities that take either a lot of patience or an exotic high altitude location in order to make it worth the while of the poor folks on the receiving end of that weak signal.  But it was still fun, and a definite "geek" moment with ground wires dangling at my calf level and a meter high antenna sticking out of a backpack while wearing earphones.  Wish I had gotten pictures....

Digital CQ VHF now available!

Zinio is an iPad based magazine viewer, and it now has CQ VHS! I have subscribed.

Buddies in the Caribbean on the air again!

The Buddipole folks are back in the tropics on a QRP DXpedition. Look for them this weekend including the 10 meter contest.

http://sites.google.com/site/caribbeanbuddies/home

Arduino!

Such a long time since last post, and so many adventures..... AO 51 has passed away :(, 10 meters has come alive(!!), and I acquired an 8+ft aluminum satellite dish which I plan to turn into a radio telescope. Very exciting! I also acquired a SignalHound analyzer which I intend to use as my initial radio telescope receiver,

and just a few days ago started playing with a Arduino Uno control system.

I am thinking of welding/building an Az-El mount for the dish and using the Arduino or something like it to point the dish in the correct direction. Ideally I will be able to input the declination and right ascension of an object, have a program identify the current universal time and the location in the current sky of the object, calculate the position of the azimuth and elevation rotors, activate the motors and point the dish at the right spot, and then track the object as it circles the sky. I think I have a basic grasp of how to do the motors and how to let the program know where the dish is pointing at any particular time, but the other aspects are going to take some work. But that is a lot of the fun!