Re: [IRCA] Hand capacitance issues
On 04/12/2012 01:13 PM, Mike Westfall wrote: I've got a big black plastic knob on the thing. I think the main problem is that the tuning capacitor is mounted inside the loop, and I get hand capacitance effect without even touching the capacitor or the knob. What is the design of that loop Mike? I have built quite a few of them, and with a center-tapped primary and a split-stator tuning capacitor with the capacitor frame connected to the loop center-tap and mounted just below the loop, I haven't had any hand-capacitance issues. The center-tapped loop with a split-stator capacitor also gives you a better loop balance and that means deeper and symmetrical nulls. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] New logbook started and new antennas tested
On 09/03/2011 12:32 PM, Tim Hills wrote: One is a dual spiral, 10 turns total and 30 diameter in 2 layers 1 apart with varactor tuning and a single turn pickup loop. I'd be interested in seeing a photo of that loop, and a schematic as to your connections. I've built a lot of loops over the years and have some ideas that you might find interesting. I built a lot of spiral and solenoidal loops, as well as ferrite loops. The air-core loops always outperformed the ferrite loops. One of the things that I found important as far as loop pattern and null depth is symmetry, something yo cannot get right with a spiral loop because the windings are different diameters. Traditional split-stator air dielectric tuning capacitors always gave me a higher Q than varactors did. And this is important as you referred to off-channel rejection. With the frame of the split-stator capacitor connected to the loop center-tap I was able to get some good pattern symmetry and good null depth. I either used a center-tapped secondary winding, or later on did away with the secondary winding entirely and used a high-impedance FET preamp across the primary that did the preamplification and conversion to unbalanced low-impedance output. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Slightly off topic - Advanced amateur license
On Saturday, December 04, 2010 07:58:43 pm Colin Newell wrote: Passed my Advanced amateur ticket today. Have been reading study guides for the last 3 weeks non-stop. Now I can get back to some actual medium-wave listening... No, really! DXped Congratulations Colin!! Rick Kunath, k9ao ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable connectors
Craig, I'm curious to know about the construction of the RG-6 cable that you used for your test? Was this just braid shielded? And if so what was the shield coverage? Was there any foil over the dielectric, and if so was that foil bonded to the dielectric or just folded? Good quality RG-6 cable will have a polyfoam dielectric. Over that will be a foil covering. This foil will be bonded (glued) to the dielectric and overlapped along the seam. You can tell this because you can't peel it back if you strip away the outer jacket and braided shield. If it's loose or the seam opens, it's pure junk. Then over the top of the foil should be a shield of 98% coverage. This will be easy to see by eye. If you can see through the braid to the foil or the dielectric if there is no foil, i.e. the weaves of the braid are open. It's junk. After that, if it's overhead RG-6 there will be a black vinyl jacket and generally a single messenger wire. This is designed to support the weight of the cable as it hangs in the air. This is generally called figure-8 cable, because of the way a cut cross-section looks. If it's designed for underground use, there will be no messenger, but there will be a sticky flooding compound between the braid and the jacket. This is designed to keep out water should the jacket get nicked. The jacket of direct burial cable is generally thicker too. You'd be surprised at how much junk CATV cable there is out there. I always strip back the end of anything I'm going to buy if I don't already know the source and examine it visually. Additionally, I always place a ferrite choke over the outside of the cable at the termination end as well as the receiver end, to choke off any common-mode currents on the outside of the shield. As to quad-shield cable, the additional shielding effects of this may be offset by the fact that's most of it is not designed for outdoor use. Connectors are more difficult to install, though not by much of you have the proper tools and connectors. As to connectors, what did you use on that RG-6 cable you tested with? Was this a standard 1/4 inch cable prep (stripped with a calibrated stripper tool) and the foil left intact to fit inside of the connector barrel, then the shield fanned out symmetrically and crimped using the approved crimping tool for the connector used? This varies according to the connector manufacturer. The problem with any balanced feedline is always line-balance. Since the electric and magnetic field of the signals extends outside the physical area of the twisted pair, there will always be interaction between pairs within a CAT type cable. You would need far more spacing between pairs than is available in the CAT cable design to prevent interaction between pairs. Additionally, laying the cable on the ground or near to conductive surfaces will also upset the line-balance (for UTP cable.) And this prevents the common-mode rejection of signals common to both wires of the twisted pair from canceling completely. Shielded CAT cable is a different animal, outside effects being much less, but the inter-pair coupling is still an issue. Anyway... I'm just curious about the test setup. TIA Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable connectors
On Monday, September 06, 2010 12:21:22 pm Mark Durenberger wrote: Got a question Rick. Given the shielding properties of well-built RG-6...do you think the ferrite choke placed over the shield can be effective? Mark, The ferrite over the shield won't improve the shielding performance of the foil/shield combination in well made RG-6 cable. What it will do is prevent any energy on the outside of the shield from getting on the inside surface. The ferrite choke prevents any energy that is riding on the cable's outer shield (as the outer surface acts like an antenna) from getting past any connector imperfections and onto the inner surface of the shield, and via that into the receiver as leakage. Remember that in coaxial cable there are 3 conductive surfaces when we are talking about radio frequency energy. Because of the skin effect, RF flows on the surfaces of conductors and not the entire cross-section. So we have 1 - The outer surface of the center conductor 2 - The inner surface of the foil or shield braid, whatever the cable has. (The electromagnetic field of the desired energy carried inside the cable is here in this space consisting of the inner surface of the shield, the dielectric, and the outer surface of the center conductor.) 3 - The outer surface of the shield. So if you can make it harder for any currents flowing on the outer surface of the shield to get to the inside surface, either via connector issues, enclosure leakage or non-shielding, improperly installed or wrong connectors, etc. You help reduce leakage around the shielding effect. The ferrite chokes do that. A good test was what Craig did. Lay out the cable and connect it to a shielded dummy load. Then the other end to the receiver and tune the bands of interest looking for leakage. Any signals there point to some failure of the shield/receiver system. Choking the antenna end deals with leakage at that end, choking the receiver end deals with that end. Again, this could be connector choice or installation, or enclosure or case issues, etc. It's important to know the impedance that the chokes you are going to use on the outside of the shield will add to common-mode currents flowing on the outside surface of the shield. Too little added impedance and the effects aren't all they should be. Usually, paying attention to the core material for the band in question, and getting large enough over-the-cable tubular chokes, or winding an appropriate number of turns of cable through a toroid core, will do the trick. No connector or case or installation technique is perfect. If we have cable that is well shielded, and can keep undesired signals picked up on the outer surface of the cable's shield from getting to the inner surface of the shield, and then to the receiver, we can make a big improvement in coaxial cable leakage performance. Balanced transmission lines depend on these common-mode signals being equal on both conductors, while the desired signals are differential. So terminations on either end, if done right, allow the common-mode signals to cancel and the differential mode signals to remain. But the key here is *balance*. This means you have to pay attention to where the balanced feedline is run, what it gets near to, and keep it away from the ground, metal, etc. essentially anything that can distort the field between the conductors and unbalance them. Since the electromagnetic field of the balanced transmission line extends some distance outside the physical space of the wires (a few times the line spacing or more), close bundles of twisted pairs will not exhibit the same isolation that you might expect. Twisting does help make sure that any environmental anomalies affecting the balanced transmission line affect each conductor in a similar manner. But you still have to pay attention to where you run it. If you get it too close to absorptive surfaces, other losses can also occur, even if the balance is not upset. Hope that made sense. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable connectors
On Monday, September 06, 2010 02:16:23 pm Mark Durenberger wrote: Thanks Rick. Not only did it make sense, but I'd like to be able to forward this to the NRC DX group, with your okay. Regards, Mark Durenberger Yes, feel free to forward that on to the NRC group Mark. This hobby is all about sharing information and tips and ideas so we can all enjoy it and get more out of it. Forward it with my blessings. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable connectors
On Monday, September 06, 2010 02:36:01 pm Chuck Hutton wrote: I liked your explanation except for the part below. Considering the choke impedance to be part of a voltage divider along with the ground resistance, you surely need a choke with at least several thousand Ohms of impedance. With a poor ground connection (sandy soil), you can need even more. I won't bore everyone with the explanation. Bottom line: I don't think you can ever get even close to that with the over-the-cable chokes. I can recommend only the chokes made with mini-coax and high permeability (at least 2000) material. Ground isn't a part of the issue with common-mode currents on the coaxial cable's outer shield surface. This isn't a matching transformer, or other circuit that may have a connection to the local ground. The choke impedance places itself in series with the currents flowing on the outer surface of the coaxial cable's shield surface. There is no ground connection. Using #31 core material, if you stacked maybe 5 or 6 toroid cores, and assuming that you wound the feedline through the cores so as to minimize capacitance coupling between turns, i.e. very large loops not wound tight on the cores surface and separating the turns radially from each other, you can get in the neighborhood of 3k to 4k of series impedance to common mode currents on the coax shield at 1 MHz with 7 or 8 turns or so. That'll drop as you approach the bottom of the mediumwave band and be worse at longwave. I haven't played with other core materials that might work better there. But you do have good impedance values up to 10 MHz or so. So it's helpful on the tropical bands too. If you need better high frequency performance above 10 MHz, adding more cores and dropping the number of turns is the way to go. But the low frequency performance suffers then. Probably 7 cores and maybe 3 turns might be a good starting point for that. The impedance of a choke core, i.e. the core and one turn, is multiplied by the square of the turns ratio. If you need more impedance, wind more turns. But you have to balance that against loss at the higher end of the frequency range because of the various capacity coupling effects on the choke design, most of which are dependent on the winding style and cable used too. If you have an impedance bridge testing the various configurations and surplus cores and testing stacked cores and various winding ideas and wiring is worth doing. And don't forget that you can series up these chokes along the ends of the cable, and the impedances will add. (series inductive and capacitive reactances, because they are of opposite sign cancel each other), but if you design with this in mind you can still have good wideband performance. For example to get the performance you want you might need one choke to deal with longwave and another for mediumwave through the tropical bands. Just wind 2 separate chokes designed for the frequencies you need and separate them at each end of the cable a little. You'd have 2 chokes at each end of the feedline. Same goes for tubular cores. These can be series placed to increase the impedance. Rarely is one core going to be enough at mediumwave. But again core material is important here. If you are using #31 material, you might see around 1k of series impedance at 1 MHz from 40 1/2-inch long tight fitting beads. Chuck makes an excellent point, it takes a lot more ferrite material in tubular form to get usable impedance than it does when winding turns through a toroidal ferrite core. The good thing is that if you are testing the chokes with the feedline connected to a shielded dummy load, you'll know with testing how things are going. Your station receiver will be plenty of tool to tell you how it's going. Having an impedance bridge is fun, but in the end, it's how it works in place that matters. And a little cutting and trying goes a long way here. Sweep the receiver across the range of frequencies of interest when signals should be there and see what you do or don't hear leaking in. One other point is that you can place turns of Ethernet cable through toroid cores too, creating chokes to reduce the leakage of crud from an Ethernet device like a cable modem or DSL router, an Ethernet switch, or a wireless access point. I actually think this works better than using shielded CAT cable, as the enclosures and connectors (RJ-45) are not designed to be RF tight anyway. And remember the power cords of these devices too. Anything leaving the device can act as a radiating antenna. But again, you need to have enough impedance in the choke you are placing over the cable at the frequency you are trying to suppress, to make the thing work. The best thing is just to start somewhere and see what happens. Experiment with several configurations and work your way to the desired level of suppression that you need. Rick Kunath
Re: [IRCA] Cable connectors
Extremely interesting... Snipped Here and there Another part of the test was to wind a dozen turns through a large ferrite toroid. No difference at all. Also tried a new un-un to do a ground isolation. Again, no change. I'm wondering about the core material for that test toroid? You'd likely need a stack of cores to get the series impedance that you need to reduce the ingress. More turns is good up to a point, then the distributed capacity gets you, but that affects the upper end of the range first. You can reduce that effect by winding the turns through the core in large loops, and splaying them out spaced equally around the core. That will reduce capacity effects. I'm guessing that you didn't have enough impedance with that particular choke. I might agree with that except CAT5 is designed to limit the interaction. The individual pairs are tightly twisted, but not identical turns per foot for each of them. What that does is cancel the interaction. It does not cancel the interaction, it tends to make the interaction symmetrical on a given pair. And that helps balance for that one pair. The fields still extend outside the physical space of the twisted wiring. The isolation can be anywhere from -40 to -80 dB between pairs and maybe a bit better. That's based on resistive termination at the characteristic impedance of approximately 100 ohms. If they weren't twisted, that may well be true. I also have to think that the loss of the cable on the ground would more greatly reduce the ingress than increase it. While I didn't add this to the article, I did run a further test. I laid out a 50' length and terminated it with a 100 ohm resistor. That made the whole thing balanced when the receive end balun was included. After taking a set of bandwidth readings, I laid a 50' length of chicken wire on top of the cable. The goal was to provide some shielding via capacitance to the ground. End result was no change at all. On that test, how much ingress was there? Anything? One of the more important things I've learned in my lifetime is to leave my ego outside. If someone has an improvement, I'll grab that in a heartbeat. Yep, me too. Ideas tend to breed better ones and better understanding. Anything that helps and I'm in. As I always say, theory is one thing, but sometimes things don't always go as you would theorize. Sometimes, through experimenting and the shared work of others, you realize that you didn't have exactly what you thought you did. And while the theory always works, you have to apply the right one to the situation at hand :) Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable connectors
Another interesting idea... n Monday, September 06, 2010 06:12:46 pm Craig Healy wrote: The goal is to reduce the signal ingress on an antenna cable to the lowest possible level. What if the receive end was run through a transformer to open the ground connection. Then, a single wire was run parallel right next to the coax for the entire length. Then coupled out of phase with the shield on the coax itself? I have to wonder if that could be tweaked to drop the ingress signals by canceling them out? A 180 degree transformer keeps that phase over a wide frequency range so it wouldn't be a frequency-specific null. Had you thought about using a transformer at the receive end that had a symmetrical center-tapped primary winding (antenna side), with the center-tap connected to your ground system, and then an isolated secondary connected to the receiver? That would shunt the common-mode currents to ground, rather than looking like the open circuit that the choke on the shield would. You could also do an impedance transformation from the 100 ohms of CAT cable to your receiver's 50 ohm input. Possibly one of each, high impedance at the ends of the cable run and then after that the shunt transformer, then out via the other winding. Kinda of rambling here, but that way you would impede the flow of common-mode currents and then shunt to ground any that remained. Seems to me that a plan like that would work best on balanced line. Anyway, just a thought. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] DXer.ca internet radio - testing now...
On Sunday, August 22, 2010 03:14:22 pm Colin Newell wrote: Running some streaming internet radio tests at http://24.69.74.182:8000/listen.m3u Getting a Host Unreachable error here. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] 1040 wandering het: who is it?
It might be interesting to take a look at the carrier with Spectran and see if there is any additional information that can be discovered. Use SSB and tune 1 KHz low for USB, or 1 KHz high for LSB and see what the traces of the carrier look like. I'd use a slow waterfall speed. The carriers on the channel will be clustered around the 1000 Hz audio tone. You might discover some clues that would help ID the carrier. I'll try to take a look alter from Michigan and see what I turn up. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] BOG question
On Friday 04 December 2009 01:01:39 pm Nick Hall-Patch wrote: Both radios have two terminals, which one would I put the end of the BOG into (not using coax)? An old Hallicrafters that I had as a kid had a similar A1 / A2 setup and a little metal blade that would short out A2, if desired. Would plugging the BOG wire directly into one would work and would I need to do a small jumper from that one to the other one (A2)? Thanks. This was a common setup on receivers that were designed to use either a balanced or an unbalanced antenna. The A1 and A2 terminals go (via the band switch) to the antenna winding on the receiver RF amplifier circuit's input coil. These receivers brought both sides of the antenna input winding of this coil to the rear panel, so that the user could select the appropriate configuration. For a balanced antenna, the ground strap is omitted and the antenna connected to A1 and A2. If the antenna is unbalanced, the antenna (usually, but it generally does not matter) goes to the A1 terminal. The A2 terminal, the other side of the antenna coupling winding, is shorted to ground by the A2-Ground jumper. If an external ground was used for the antenna, then the ground connection was generally made to the A2 terminal and the chassis ground jumper omitted. But again, test it for the best signal on any given antenna. What the A2-Ground jumper is doing is providing a return connection for the (unused on a single wire antenna) other connection of the input coupling coil. Most of the time, if you omit the jumper, the coupling decreases and the input signal levels drop. But again try it. You always get some capacitive coupling even with one end of the input coil disconnected. And with a balanced antenna, the other half of the antenna is providing a complimentary current flow into the second terminal of the input coil. Hope that made sense. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Wellbrook versus Beverage comparisons
Nick Hall-Patch wrote: I don't really know the technical reasons for this, but it makes sense that a big antenna will deliver a more robust signal than a smaller one will. It's all about the aperture of the antenna. Even though the larger antenna has a less-tight F/B or forward lobe, the fact that it is physically larger means that it is coupled into a greater area of space. So it has a larger aperture. Because of this, i.e. it's coupling into a larger physical area, it can average out the effects of ionospheric refraction of the signal, fading, etc. over a larger area. This often is perceived as a better signal, or a steadier signal. Hope that made sense. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Wellbrook versus Beverage comparisons
Not sure what went odd about the formatting in the message Chuck? Chuck Hutton wrote: The averaging is a form of diversity reception. People have taken measu= rements and found that fading is not identical (time-wise) when antennas ar= e separated as little as 1/10 of a wavelength and almost non-identical as s= eparation reaches 1/4 wavelength. This is a big reason why a long=2C long a= ntenna like the Beverage seems to deliver more usable signals. Yes. As for aperture and sampling=2C size is not such a great way to evaluate th= ings. A horizontal travelling wave antenna like the Beverage is a very inef= ficient sampler. While exact figures depend on ground and height above grou= nd=2C a decent rule of thumb is that it extracts about 10% of the signal co= mpared to a vertical. It is inefficient in transfer of energy into the beverage from the traveling wave, but the antenna size means that the aperture, i.e. area of space that it is coupled into, is still much larger than a typical wire loop. Efficiency included. So the effect of averaging the ionospheric effects is still there. I think that's what you just said another way. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Laptop computer requirements for an SDR or similar receiver.
Mike Hawkins wrote: I've been out of work for almost a year. I've got time...sadly. If I had something like that for FM when there's skip (or meteor showers), I'd be in heaven. I still think there needs to be an on-the-fly conversion to MP3. MP3 is not relevant to the way an SDR uses a wav file for off-line recording. You cannot compress a representation of the RF data across the spectrum. MP3 compression works by removing portions of the input *audio* wav file, in a manner that the ear can't well distinguish. This is not at all how the file is being used when an SDR does an off-line recording. There is nothing to compress. It's raw data and all of the data is relevant. An audio compression algorithm cannot be used to process this kind of raw data. While the SDR recorded file is in wav format, the data is not audio as is the case when a compression from wav to MP3 is generally done. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Laptop computer requirements for an SDR or similar receiver.
Mauno Ritola wrote: What about FLAC? At least I understood that it was planned to be used with another SDR rx. I saw that too. I believe that FLAC has to convert to integer data for the compression. I don't know what the A/D format of the Perseus is? The Flex is integer I believe. Might hold some promise. Did anyone hear what the compression ratio of FLAC might be if the compression of an SDR wav file could be done effectively? FLAC is supposed to be lossless, but if the input data has to be converted from floating-point to integer, is it? Or is that even relevant to the Perseus? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] The hunt for a noise source. (More info please)
BARRY DAVIES wrote: Hello Martin A similar problem here in Carlisle UK. Can you clarify what you mean by a breaker? This is an electrical circuit breaker. It is a device that trips, or disconnects, on an over current condition. It is not a fuse. There is a handle of the circuit breaker which can be set to the n or the off position, as well ad a trip condition which is often halfway between on and off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_breaker I wonder if this what I call a mains fuse box? Might be if the box you describe has resettable over current protection devices. It turns a circuit off if something blows. Yes. What is a TRF? A mediumwave portable receiver. TRF is a tuned radio frequency amplifier design. http://chowdanet.com/markc/WEB2005A/1967_realistic_10-trf.gif Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] SDR
On Saturday 16 May 2009 11:02:05 am Craig Healy wrote: I am impressed with this thing. A project I have is setting an older IBM laptop so it can run off it. The laptop has a password issue that's stopped me. I have to hack a chip or replace it to get it to work. The previous owner forgot the password and that IBM is a security nightmare. Hard drive password or BIOS password? Which model ThinkPad? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Internet option OT update
Patrick Martin wrote: 5GB is pretty good sized as I am not on the computer all that much. I have too many other interests. I know 50MB is too small, but 5GB would be more than enough. I track my usage against my cable companies 250 Gig monthly cap. My hardware firewall does this for me, keeping track of all of the upload and download data, as these get added together to form the actual cap value they use to judge you. I do OS updates, and my email lists (not that many), a minor amount of surfing, no p2p or other audio or video downloading at all, have the computers off except when I use them, etc., and I regularly hit 17 to 25 gigs in a month. At the current overage rates for wireless on a 5 gig plan, you would have an instant heart attack. The overage charges are instant bankruptcy. So (for Verizon as an example, $.49 for each megabyte over 5 gigs) that's (1,073 x 20 - get gigs to megs) x $.49 = $10,515.40 in overage charges per month for what I would use. These overages add up lightning fast. So track them if you get such a low cap as 5 gigs per month. And make sure the cap is not shared with your phone too because a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff actually uses data too. Go for unlimited if possible. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] 9 Foot Longwave Box Loop (and other projects)
d1028g...@aol.com wrote: After adding three more turns of #18 wire to the 9' LW box loop, I now have 567 feet of wire in 22 coil turns, and a tuning range from 142 to 350 kHz. This should be OK for DX testing, so I'll probably wrap it up this way. It's amazing how much wire you need to add to get the tuning range a little lower, on LW. Yes, i sure is. And I think adding the spreaders, maybe 4 per side in each loop side for total of 16 would likely increase the upper tuning limit of the loop without decreasing the lower limit. These splay the turns apart, every other turn being spread in opposite directions. The variable cap used in this project (and all the PVC loops) was a compact, 8:1 vernier drive single-section unit from the eBay seller crystalradiosupply. This split-stator cap fits neatly inside of a section of 1.5 diameter PVC pipe, for waterproofing the loop tuning system. If it's a single section cap it isn't a spit-stator cap, and can't be used with a loop primary winding center-tap. These center-tapped connections do improve loop symmetry and null depth. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] 9 Foot Longwave Box Loop (and other projects)
d1028g...@aol.com wrote: A 9-foot (diagonal) PVC-framed box loop was built for LW reception, using 1.25 diameter PVC for rigid framing. About 490 feet of #18 wire was wrapped in 19 turns across the PVC frame, with the frame offset from the coil for maximum performance. Using the standard tuning capacitor from eBay's crystalradiosupply, this monstrous antenna tunes from 167 kHz to 444 kHz, providing serious gain on any frequency near resonance. Not being a particularly active LW DXer, I assume this tuning range is suitable for some LW DXing :) Otherwise, I'll just add a few more turns to get the coverage down to 150 kHz. I'm wondering about the turns arrangement Gary. I take it that this is a traditional box-loop design and not a spiral loop? I've never seen decent loop balance out of any spiral design I tried. Assuming you used a solenoidal loop winding scheme, is the primary winding center-tapped and this connected to the split-stator tuning capacitor frame? Also, what is the inter-turn spacing on the primary winding? I generally use about a half-inch, maybe less for longwave, but not less than 3/8 inch. Did you spread the turns of the primary winding using non-metallic spreaders to reduce the inter-turn capacitance and increase the tuning range? Generally the turns need to be separated from each other, i.e. every other turn above and below the spacing spreaders, at least two spreaders per side, but in the case of a big loop like yours you may need more. This also stiffens the loop winding nicely. I can send along a photo showing how I accomplished this on my loops. This has the effect of reducing the loop winding's distributed capacitance. This distributed capacitance is effectively in parallel with the tuning capacitor, so by spreading the windings you get the loop to tune higher in frequency with minimum capacitance on the tuning cap. This actually gives you a wider range of frequencies covered by any cap, so you can add more turns if needed to get the lower end down and still tune up high on the other end. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] 9 Foot Longwave Box Loop (and other projects)
d1028g...@aol.com wrote: The design was a basic one-loop coil system in a traditional box loop (non-spiral) design, wound on a PVC support frame, tuned by a 4-400 pf capacitor connected directly at the coil ends. Is that a split-stator of a single-section cap? The coil windings are spaced by slots cut in short sections of PVC pipe, which are offset from the main PVC frame by 90 degree PVC elbow fittings. The spacing slots are separated by .25, and are all symmetrically cut into the PVC by a circular saw with multiple wooden spacers of identical .25 width. The 19 coil windings (of #18 wire) are then pulled tightly to ensure optimal loop symmetry, in a system which apparently provides excellent nulling capability. The 490 feet loop coil of #18 stranded wire tunes from 167 kHz to 444 kHz in the current setup, but I plan to add a few more turns to drop the coverage down to 150 kHz. Photos of the loop and support structure are available upon request. I'd love to see anything you might have, but can wait for your article too.I know you must be busy. The split-stator cap and center-tapped loop primary winding improves loop symmetry and balance. As to the spreading of the windings, the spreaders that splay every other turn up and down in two (maybe more) sections help a lot in increasing the range of tuning. Let me know if photos of that might help exp[lain what it looks like. I used wide tongue depressors, but small round PVC pipe sections would probably work better in that big loop. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] OT Computer issue
HASCALL, DAVID CIV DFAS wrote: I had nearly identical issues to Pat's! Count me as one who installed Firefox over the last couple of years and yes it helped but did not fully eliminate similar problems that Patrick has experienced. Pages that would load fine suddenly would get Page can not be displayed errors. Repeadetly hitting F5 (refresh shortcut) in IE would eventually allow the page to load. Firefox would normally load the trouble pages but not always and they would take forever. FF had a higher success rate than IE. Sometimes rebooting the PC helped for a while also. I did all the defrags, virus and adware scans and so on and I still had issues. The true solution, however was not switching to Firefox or restarting the PC, it was changing providers. I think Pat is on dial-up but I had supposedly high speed internet from Comcast. Once I went to ATT U-Verse, the page load errors went away even with IE. My U-Verse speed is 1.5 Mbps, which is four times slower than Comcast's 6.0 but the pages load so much quicker and that is a biggie for me and the wife. If you are on dial-up, could it be a noisy line? Too low of bandwidth? I doubt it. Likely one of several things... Defective cache in the OS of choice, or browser of choice. Delete the caches for each browser and restarting the browser will regenerate the cache. Poorly managed upstream proxy cache (this you should know is there via settings) or poorly managed transparent cache upstream (this you won't see but can test for). These two are at your ISP. Or bad DNS from your ISP, perhaps page redirection, etc. Best solution is to use alternate DNS, there are several. OpenDNS is one, or use Level3 DNS servers. Load errors are either due to bad DNS (404 errors) bad cache (404 or other) or corrupted local browser cache. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
[IRCA] Cascaded loop antenna
Wondering if anyone has ever heard of or has any idea about diagrams or schematic of one of the Villard designed cascaded loop antennas? I ran across a reference to one on line but couldn't seem to get any additional info on it. This is different than Villard's wide-loop jamming rejection antenna. Sounded like there might be something to it. Seemed to be side by side loops tuned via a single cap. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cascaded loop antenna
sa...@sounddsl.com wrote: Hey Rich: I stopped by the library today and found the article - very interesting stuff! It's for MW and SW. I just dropped you a line to your personal email about it. If anyone else would like more information, feel free to drop me a line off board. Kevin S Bainbridge Island, WA Extremely grateful Kevin... The article looks like some worthwhile experimentation, very interesting indeed. Thanks again, Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cascaded loop antenna
On Friday 24 April 2009 11:09:48 pm sa...@sounddsl.com wrote: I have been reading it, and while I am not looking to set up a diversity arrangement necessarily, I am trying to figure out what a cascaded loop would do for me. I sounds like it will attenuate the strong on-great-circle incident signal component (or its diffracted component indoors) relative to scattered fields of nearby origin. To reject skywaves, such an antenna must be able to attenuate great-circle modes arriving at various elevation angles. So, it sounds like a CLA will reject sky-waves, perhaps high-elevation skywaves from strong semi-locals, and instead preferentially receive low-angle signals that might be coming from overseas? That's what I would LIKE it to say, but not sure what all his terminilogy means. Yes, that's how it reads to me too. I know that in all of my experimentation and refining of big and small air-core MW loops, when you have mixed signals arriving, some at high angle or from reflections off of wiring in the proximity and some at low angles, nulling gets difficult to impossible. If oyu tilt the loop to null, you never can completely reach null because there is always still some signals arriving at other angles. So if the nulling is easier with the high angle rejected, we might be able to dig a little deeper, as well as closer to the IBOC hash. Not sure about his feed though. The spot he shows clipped across the tuning cap should be a high impedance. Might be OK on a whip, but I would still think it would load the loop too much and lower the Q, thus the gain, too. I might try using my balanced loop preamp. I built one that eliminates the loop secondary coupling winding because it is a high impedance input and can be connected directly across the loop main winding, and then connect this across the cap as shown. No reason that shouldn't work. The SW aspects are interesting too. With the sunspots so low, there is a lot more interference now with adjacent channels and co-channel interference. RIck ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] And now for something completely different - OT
On Sunday 05 April 2009 8:53:31 am kevin redding wrote: On Apr 5, 2009, at 12:29 AM, Patrick Martin wrote: I did not really need an HDTV set and I don't like watching TV on mot LCDs I have seen Wow, thats weird. I have LCD sets from Philips that have an awesome picture. There is no smeariness like in the very early LCDs. Just a beautiful picture. Same here. Crystal clear on my Sony 65 inch LCD. No screen door effects at all. There were some light-engine redesigns on some of the sets that were covered under and after warranty. Not published, but manufacturers were replacing them for customers. I had mine done one time. Some of the cable companies compress the stuff too much, luckily mine is decent about that. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] (OT) Re: Wi-Fi legality
Patrick Martin wrote: I read, a Wifi can be received 1/2 to a mile away or even more. But the signal is far from strong. Not hardly with a standard indoor antenna from a typical consumer class router. If the signal really is far away, there will be some sort of outdoor antenna that should be visible as you scout the area. Unless the owner is explicitly allowing a free open access and has added an outdoor antenna, and has the WiFi unit a short cable run from the antenna, this is likely a home unit and should be fairly close to you. What is it 802.11 B or G, G has even less usable range than B. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] (OT) Re: Wi-Fi legality
Patrick Martin wrote: Rick, I have no clue on who has the wireless. It could be anyone with in a mile. Too many houses to know for sure. If I ever find out and they don't have issues, I will offer to pay half of it easily. It is well worth $25 a month to me. I don't recall exactly what you wrote, but was this on a laptop Patrick that you were using the WiFi? Might be worth driving around with one of the WiFi auditing programs running. There are a variety of them out there and they will act like WiFi radar and let you know when you get near to the signal. There are also key chain sized WiFi detectors but they don't have the same range. I guess if it were me and I had an open AP and someone knocked on the door and asked if I'd be willing to split the cost and I was not knowledgeable on security enough to know I was open and vulnerable or didn't care, I wouldn't have a problem. You could for sure lock down the AP for them (and you). There are some really good (and dirt cheap, essentially free) ways to lock down a wireless AP and isolate the wireless and LAN and WAN sides of the Internet feed. If you get that far I can brief you offline. It's simple to setup, easy to maintain, works well with any app you need, and really secure. That's important these days and not just because of caps. One of the locations I have here has a 2 mile WiFi link running between transparent bridges and has been 100% reliable for years. You have essentially all of the features of a real network available on either end of the link, multiple PC's additional wireless links on other channels using second APs on either end, it's secure and isolates the various network subnets, etc. Lots you can do once you have the basic infrastructure in place. Simple to setup too. So don't give up hope of a decent fast network setup. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] (OT) Re: Wi-Fi legality
Patrick Martin wrote: Thanks Tim. As Mike mentioned, divide by 10, more like 2.4-3.6, if the computer is giving me the correct speed. I know when it is in the area of 2.4-3.6 is moves like the wind. Takes less that a second to download updates on the virus protection At dial up 2-3 minutes generally. Interesting topic... We've been doing mobile data for years in public safety vehicles here. Some via the dongles. These are certainly cheaper, but do not have the receive or transmit power of a dedicated broadband modem. There are some good modems available. Some do interface via USB, the better ones via Ethernet on the output side. EVDO is pretty old and long in the tooth, 3G has been in use here for a while and we're switching to 4G now here. Throughput depends on site loading, as channel time-slots are bonded to give you the quoted maximum bandwidth that a site can deliver. More users and you get less time-slots bonded together and less download bandwidth. One thing to keep in mind is that most modern mobile data solutions do not have a publicly accessible IP like a normal Internet connection has. You pull from inside the network, but cannot use apps that must have a defined IP accessible from the outside. We use NetMotion here and run a client that connects to a NetMotion server in a real IP network and tunnel out from there. This way the device has a real IP presence on the Internet. NetMotion is pretty slick in that it can use either the mobile data service or WiFi or Ethernet and can figure out the cheapest thing to use of what's available at the time. I suppose you could also SSH tunnel to an outside box with a real Internet connection too, but either way you need something to connect to. Or simple accept that some apps are not going to work. The other gotcha is that a lot of providers are instituting caps now. Some are as low as 5 gigs per month. I don't do downloading of p2p stuff, just normal surfing, download new apps, upgrades and the like, but run about 25 gigs or so a month. I wouldn't get a week out of a 5 gig cap. And prices are astronomical after that. So people are getting some big overage bills. You need to be sure about the caps, and if you can live with them, know exactly how much bandwidth you are using so you don't get a surprise. As a corporate customer, we really do get essentially unlimited bandwidth here, but consumers on these carriers that are now capping don't. So do your homework ahead of time. Ever think about going in half and half on that wireless connection you were getting? Offer to kick in and lock down the access point so no one else sucks off any bandwidth? A good WiFi antenna and a transparent WiFi bridge, dirt cheap to setup and you'd have a real LAN there and tons of flexibility with a real IP presence. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Ground Resistance
Neil Kazaross wrote: In normal non saturated areas of my properties, I can usually pound in a 5' piece of 1 copper pipe, but the last couple of feet are a superb workout. I don't think that I'd be able to pound in a 10 footer in most places. Have you tried soldering a male garden hose fitting to the top of the pipe and feeding a hose to it? The water running from the pipe bottom makes getting the pipe in a lot easier. It probably wouldn't help in really rocky soil, but it does in soils with small rocks. With a little up and down and side to side motion, you can work the rod right into the ground. Then the ground settles in around it after the water is turned off. Certainly nor something that would be workable in winter though. But frozen soil is hard to deal with even with a fence post driver and conical tip on a pipe then. Rick Kunath, k9ao ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] 4 Foot Box Loop Plans
Nick Hall-Patch wrote: The NRC altazimuth loop design was intended among other things to act as a direction finder, and to optimize nulls, so the construction plans are very specific, so as to not introduce vertical effect from imbalances in the winding, or instability of the frame. Yes, quite right. But I have found over the years that the improved loop balance also improves the Q, and makes sure the null depth is all it should be. Out of whack loops I have made, often just won't null as deeply as a properly balanced loop. As far as balancing one up during the building stage, it really isn't much harder. There are just a few design steps that make all the difference. I don't use a passive secondary, coupling via the primary and a balanced hi impedance preamp, on my last loop. I did have a larger loop, larger than the 4-foot diagonal measurement, but the smaller loop seemed to have deeper nulls, at least inside. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Longwave Crate Loop update
sa...@sounddsl.com wrote: Doing some testing tonight, the Crate Loop continues to couple with the Sony 7600GR and various Ultralights better than the big 28x42 inch loop. Must be the geometry or other factor – at any rate, anyone using a portable/Ultralight for LW might want to give it a look. I take it that you are passively coupling the big loop to the radio by proximity? I'm wondering whether yo have tried coupling the big loop into the radio's internal ferrite loopstick antenna? I've been doing this on a Sony 2010 for years. I It's a simple matter to do. On a MW loop and depending on the loop size, you need 2 to 4 turns at the loop's center (the cold side). These feed to a piece of twin lead or lamp cord, then on to a short ferrite bar, maybe an inch or two in length. Wind turns around this, start with 10 to 20. Experiment for best coupling. Move the little ferrite bar around until it is coupling the best into the built in ferrite. Sony sells, or did, an antenna coupler like this for the 2010 in a little stand of the right height. The method has worked well for me. Ideally, one might want to have the radio/external ferrite combo rotatable along with the loop (but at right angles) to allow for nulling, if you need to do that. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Radio on - computer off?
Len Hyde wrote: Has anyone figured out how to DX in the same room with one (without an external antenna, of course.) Mine causes a lot of QRM. It would be great if I could use the computer as a database, etc. while DXing, but I can't. Are laptops as bad as towers? Depends on the laptop, and the LCD display. Some of the laptop switching power packs are the worst offenders. I find that a fully shielded metal desktop case and a good quality LCD monitor are much quieter than any of the laptops I have tried. Too many of the commercially built desktops and all of the laptops I've seen have mostly plastic cases. Antec makes several metal cases that help a lot, as do the better filtered switching computer power supplies. A cheap power supply can create a lot of noise. Shielded CAT5 cables as well as a metal cased Ethernet switch feeding the computer helps too. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] upcoming software defined radio
Nick Hall-Patch wrote: Snip http://www.rfspace.com/SDR-IP.html Very nice! The only thing that disappoints me a bit is the fact it says intranet and not internet. yes, I wondered about that also; perhaps this is so preliminary that they only know they can make it work on a local network, but not in the wider world. Fingers crossed on that one; It's all about bandwidth... No ordinary consumer-type Internet connection would have the bandwidth necessary to handle the data rate the receiver needs. Note the 100baseT designator. They're specifying symmetrical full-duplex 100 Mbps Ethernet connectivity and using both TCP and UDP datagrams. On a local network this bandwidth (or better) is easily achievable with inexpensive hardware. Typical consumer-type (b or g) wireless networking would not meet the requirement though. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] gmail
Russ Johnson wrote: I kind of like the chat feature built in. You can IM other gmailers. It also supports traditional IM now also. Yes, that's Google Talk. It's just an XMPP (Jabber) IM network. Google runs their own separate XMPP network, but any XMPP/Jabber client can connect to the Google Talk network (or alternately the original Jabber network.) There are a lot of good things about open protocol instant messaging using XMPP/Jabber. And there are a lot of good clients for many operating systems available. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] test email de k3pi
Russ Edmunds wrote: --- Russ Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: having trouble getting postings thru. Same here, getting graylist errors. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Drift net DX update from northern Delaware
John Hunter wrote: Hi Peter, Has something changed in your email settings in the last few months or so? Your emails to this list come through all jammed together with no formatting. I enjoy reading your posts as I have a large family connection to DE and like to keep up with the area DX wise. Has anyone else noted this or is it on my end only? Looked fine here on my end. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Email Formatting/Trimming
Russ Edmunds wrote: So for e-lists, your default should be plain text. Amen. Email list posts should always be sent in plain text. Not HTML, Not Rich Text. Plain text. Most decently run lists will strip messages back to plain text, or not allow non-plain text messages period. Any decent email client will reject these non-plain text posts by default and not display the formatting unless specifically asked to by the user. Not using plain text is a waste of bandwidth, and will guarantee that your email will not necessarily look right at the other end. The reader won't necessarily have your specific composing client, likely won't have any cute little font you used thinking to make the mail look nice, and likely won't display the non-plain text formatting by default. Any decent email client can be set to automatically compose in plain text for certain email addresses, like list addresses. Obviously Hotmail and Yahoo mail and similar web based email clients can't do this, as they wouldn't be able to spam readers with the cute little ads. I know some must use these type of web based clients for posting, but if at all possible, a properly setup real email client is always appreciated by other listees :) Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Email Formatting/Trimming
Russ Edmunds wrote: I don't believe any email I've ever used, which would include Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Verizon, and Gmail as well as those already mentioned, would allow customizing the format by addressee. That would have to be a more upscale or higher-tech software. Even the freeware Thunderbird client allows you to do this, Kmail by default is plain text unless you force it to HTML, Evolution will, Outlook Express will (not that it's a great client, but everyone has it), So will Outlook (also not great, but lots of folks have it.) For Outlook: Always Send in Plain Text to Certain Email Addresses in Outlook To make sure Outlook always sends emails in plain text to certain addresses: * Select Go | Contacts from the menu in Outlook. * Locate and double-click the desired contact. * Now double-click the email address that can receive plain text only in the top right section of the contact's General tab. o You may have to click the down button next to the E-mail field to select an alternate address * Make sure Send Plain Text only is selected under Internet format:. * Click OK. * Close the contact's window. - I simply run plain text as a default, and almost never see any reason to use anything else. Yes, me too :) Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] subject line editing
Russ Edmunds wrote: --- Michael Hawkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I get much less spam on Hotmail. Gmail is my preferred one. Snipped I also use gmail which does get less spam thasn Yahoo - about 50% less. But I've never gotten used to the whole gmail setup - I find it harder to use, which may simply be having used other things way too long ;-} Gmail offers free IMAP mail access now. I don't know how many know about IMAP, it's usable from any email client, and unlike POP3, the mail stays on the IMAP server, as do any user created folders. (You can download local copies too, if you want.) The net effect is that you have your mail available on any machine and can mix them up, always seeing everything from everywhere, and using real email clients. You use your preferred email client(s), whatever it is. Gmail does have web based access to for those times it's needed. IMAP might be worth a look for someone with multiple PC needs. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] matching transformers for old tube radios
Nick Hall-Patch wrote: I believe that these old radios were usually meant to be connected directly to a random wire antenna, Bill, so their input impedance is high. Just saw Craig's suggestion, and it is a good one, though with some you might find even better signal transfer assuming input impedance as high as one or two thousand ohms. The old SAMS schematics and Ryder manuals often had the factory alignment instructions in them for the radio model. Lots of sets tell you you put a network of impedances and a resistor across the antenna terminals before connecting a signal generator aligning the front end to simulate the expected antenna. You should be able to use this info to see what impedance ratio you might need don any matching transformer. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Another back up idea ??
Patrick Martin wrote: Now, would that work? He told me about cranking power, but no mention of how many amps per hour you could get out of it. They come in different sizes. Anyone know if that would work? Of course is has the 12V to 110V but that would only be plugged in to recharge. Generally, if the battery has a cranking power rating, it isn't a true deep-cycle battery. You'd have to now the exact battery inside to know for sure, maybe the manufacturer's site would have something on a replacement that would take you to some specs. A regular non deep cycle battery is pretty well useless after 10 or 12 complete discharge cycles. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Battery back up not UPS
Patrick Martin wrote: I am looking for a battery backup that can be run several hours if needed. What kind of a load Patrick? How many amperes? I take it that you only need 120 VAC, not 240 VAC? I have several installed at my commercial sites. Some are the newer full-time always-on inverter types. I don't like these and they seem noisier, RF wise. The rest are Best Power FD series with ferro-resonant transformers that the inverter only runs as needed. These are lots better RF noise wise, and I think do a better job at power surges. But they are big and heavy. If you want several hours of run time, they tend to be about 2'x4'x4' in size, with from 4 to 8 deep-cycle batteries inside. They're too heavy to do anything but roll with the batteries inside. Some of these FD series are starting to show up used, and they aren't too badly priced. You can still get service on them (they never break, the design is really bulletproof), and the field engineers I talked to still like the older ferro-resonant types over their newer stuff. Some of these are smaller in size, maybe 1'x1'x2', but the capacity is a lot less. If you didn't need the extra current of a bigger unit, you could always create your own external battery bank. Trouble is the battery charger in the smaller unit will take forever to charge a big battery bank, as the smaller units won't fast charge the bigger battery bank capacity like a larger unit will. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Battery back up not UPS
Patrick Martin wrote: Rick, All I want is power to run the R8, 12V at 2A. I was thinking of the UPS as it is fully recharged by leaving it plugged into the wall, but I have been told the inverter is very noisy in many cases. I fiqured that was possible. So I guess the battery is my best option. Yes, sounds like it is. A good deep-cycle battery will last a long time. There are a lot of so-called deep cycle batteries, or combo batteries, but the real deep-cycle batteries have a longer life IMHO. I've a few hundred of these out there (PowerSonic PS series), and they've been trouble free. Generally, if it has a cranking ampere rating it isn't a true deep cycle battery. The key is the proper charger, which absolutely isn't a battery charger for automotive use, no matter how low the minimum output, or a DC power supply. Both will shorten the battery life. A battery manufacturer will recommend a charger that will have a properly designed float mode for the sealed lead acid batteries, and a fast charge mode too. The right charger will save you a lot of money on batteries. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] My sad HD story continues! (sorry for the OT)
Walter Salmaniw wrote: I can't wait for the day that there'll only be terrabyte flash drives out there and we totally do away with rotating hard drives. He gave me the number of a forensic data recovery service. Someone had scratched on the photocopy, $390 per hour or something like that. This is really so very x$%@* Now what the heck am I supposed to do. I did nothing to this HD to cause it to do this. It was sitting quietly on my desk and when I came home one dayno light. Wonder if I should do the deep freeze again. Sure did absolutely nothing for Alex's HD, and the tech says not tocondensation issues, etc. Now what on earth should I do? Suggestions pleaseWalt. Well, it's dead anyway... unless you are sending it off for forensic recovery, not much to lose. Freezing it isn't going to fix a dead onboard controller. Even terrabyte flash will have data loss issues. The simple answer today is that once you get this resolved, setup a RAID array of at *least* 2 drives, preferably 3. Select the correct RAID level, get some advice if you need to on just what is the right industry standard RAID level for you and not proprietary, don't fall for the junk software RAID usually foisted off as RAID on some motherboards today, buy *good* commercial quality hard drives not the consumer stuff that just can't cut it, and then don't worry. If another drive fails, just replace it and the RAID array will take care of the rest. No data loss, no loss in operation. The array will restore itself. I wouldn't have a machine without hardware RAID these days. And most folks have at least 2 drives already. Drives are cheap. Data isn't. With the right motherboard and hardware RAID, this (data loss) isn't really an issue any more. If you want to keep a consumer grade PC on the desk, you could just setup a network server as a file server and use a RAID array in that. Then it (the network file server) would be available for any machine on your network. Store your precious data on the network file server with the RAID hard drive array, and keep just the OS on any clients. That way you won't have any critical data on client PCs and can restore them easily from the OS DVD. As far as the user experience, the network server with the RAID array looks just like another mapped hard drive (or network drive, depending on the OS). Seamlessly integrates into the (any) OS. And stay away from USB hard drives. USB is no way shape or form designed to handle either hard drive data or network data. What's the manufacturer of the actual hard drive itself? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] My sad HD story continues! (sorry for the OT)
Russ Edmunds wrote: Simply put it's called BACK-UP. Yep. Sometimes easier done when the files are small. Multi gigabytes of recorded audio or other extremely large files requires huge amounts of backup space on any backup machine. You wind up using more drives to get less reliability and speed than the preferred RAID solution. RAID isn't necessarily the best way to backup, especially for small amounts of data. As you mentioned, multiple backups and off-site backups (which I also have) are easy enough to do. But for huge amounts of data, you can't beat the automatic solution of RAID. On machines that I have here on the work network that have to run or public safety is in jeopardy, or machines I use for development, or other high-reliability production machines, virtually all have RAID file systems. I just don't want to shut the machine down and replace hardware. With RAID you don't. The machine never stops, just the bad drive gets replaced. If I had any data I didn't want to lose, and it was composed of lots of large files. RAID is the way I'd go. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Quiet sun
Craig Healy wrote: 'If [trends] continue to decrease at the current rate then the number of sunspots in the next solar cycle (cycle 24) would be reduced by roughly half, and there would be very few sunspots visible on the disk during cycle 25.' We'll know more in about six months what the sun decides to do for cycle 24. All I know is that I've been through a lot of solar cycles, and they always predict this or that is going to happen. In the end, it usually turns out that the predictors don't have a clue about what is going to happen. At least we should have some extended period of better lower frequency propagation, and that's good for us :) with the delayed start of the new cycle. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] HD failure HELP!
Joe Miller, KJ8O wrote: Walt, sorry to hear about your data loss. I bought a USB Hard Drive about 3 years ago, and after spending an evening making back-up copies of data off from three computers, I went back the next day and the unit would not work. The little light would not come on when connected to my computer, but would light up when disconnected. Returning it to the store of purchase, they could not repair it, nor recover any data. I ended up exchanging if for a memory stick which has never failed. It's likely that the data could have been recovered, though not difficult, this would be beyond what a typical store would do. I just don't like USB drives, period. Memory sticks are another animal, and I do like them. --- Walter Salmaniw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some potentially very bad news, guys. My new 500 GB USB HD which I brought with me to Masset and recorded some 250 GB or so of SDR-IQ files bit the dust tonight. I noticed while working on some emails that the Blue LED light wasn't on. Again, there is a real hard drive in there somewhere, and with luck after fixing the interface issues, or removing the drive and connecting it direct, you can still take a look at trying a recovery of the data. Drives are so cheap these days and motherboards of any recent vintage can usually support a RAID array, so I either set up a RAID array on-board for data storage, or usually rely on a separate file server made from a junk machine with a RAID array on it for data storage over the network. Modern network speeds are so fast that this works really nicely, and has the advantage of being handy for moving files around and sharing data. Don't be fooled by the software RAID that some motherboards foist off as RAID, this is nowhere near as good as real hardware RAID. With a real RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) you'll lose a drive, but no data. Replace the bad drive and the array will re-sync the new one, no data loss. Plug-in RAID controllers can be had cheap too, so this can be added to any motherboard. You can make yourself up a really reliable file storage server using RAID cheaply. And they are portable, so field use would not be a problem either. There are several types of RAID, and you likely want RAID 5 or 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID Something to think about with valuable data. The main OS disk(s) I generally don't do as RAID, as I have all of the data backed up off-machine, and a recovery isn't difficult. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable work
On Sunday 26 August 2007 11:54:17 am Gil Stacy wrote: A simple way to determine that would be to lay the transformer on top of the box rather than inside of it. Good luck. As another interesting test, I'd like to see what happens with no box around the transformer and a sleeve-type choke on the feedline at the antenna connector end. One way or another, the idea is to keep the common mode currents on the outside of the shield from getting on the inside surface. It would be interesting to see what the differences in effectiveness of the box vs sleeve-type choke might be. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Cable work
On Sunday 26 August 2007 4:53:29 pm Craig Healy wrote: Oddly, it's called poultry wire. If it's the stuff I am thinking it is, about 1/4 inch squares openings, steel wire woven together and dipped in molten zinc, they call it hardware cloth out here. I've used it a few times years ago when I needed a wide fat ground connector from a radio shelf to a metal plate on a concrete floor. I was having RFI issues and the setup took care of the feedback. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Sealing against moisture
Patrick Martin wrote: As Craig said that a couple small holes in the bottom would have no effect on the shield of the box. Small holes won't compromise the shielding of the box. Small, being the key. But do cement or silicone some aluminum screening over the area with the holes on the inside of the box to keep the creepy crawlies out of the box. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Metal matching transformer box
Patrick Martin wrote: OK, 1/10th of a wavelength. I wouldn't want to see anything larger than 1/50 wavelength hole in the box. Still bigger than the box at mediumwave, even at the high end. Thickness of the box also makes a difference when you are drilling holes in it and affects the attenuation of any hole. Seams are bad, holes are good, that's why I wanted to make sure you had metal to metal contact with the cover and the box. Since there is no way this is going to look like a waveguide at mediumwave, we are safe in assuming you are well below any Fco/3 frequency, so the hole won't be acting like a waveguide. So for a box 1/4-inch thick and a hole 1/16-inch diameter (and no conductor going through the hole), you'd have something like 120 dB of attenuation with the hole in the box. If you decreased the box thickness to 1/8-inch with that same 1/16-inch hole (and no conductor going through the hole), you are down to only 60 dB attenuation, not enough. Go to a 1/32-inch hole with the 1/8-inch box thickness (and no conductor going through the hole) and you are back in the area of 120 dB again. As a general guide for holes with no conductor and at a frequency of at least Fco/3 (of the hole or slot size) the formula is: dB attenuation approximates 30 * (t/L) Where: t = Thickness L = Length or diameter of the opening Since L = the larger dimension of the two of either diameter of the opening or the length of the seam, you can see why open seams are really bad. They look like holes with a diameter of the seam length. A cover without metal-to-metal contact to the rest of the box is next to useless for shielding. Since your quad-shield coax will probably have shielding of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 dB (hardline is even better shielded), this is OK. Though you can likely increase the shielding effectiveness of the coax with the use of a sleeve-type choke on each end of the run at the connectors. Still you in good shape with a small hole in a fairly thick box. Keep in mind that you are looking for some extreme attenuation in your shielding, lots more than the average enclosure designer. Thick boxes are good. Small holes are good. Again, I'd cement some aluminum screening over any hole on the inside of the box to keep the crawlies out of the box. Hopefully some of this makes sense. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Coax update
Patrick Martin wrote: I found double shield and a good foil wrap glued inside. It looks like at least 3 or 4 covers of shielding. This sounds like the good stuff. So I put a F fitting on it along with a termination and check for leakage. Still not perfect, but better. Can you describe for us the exact F connector type? Was this an F connector made for quad-shield coax, or whatever the shielding was? How did you prep the coax? I.e., did you do a 1/4-inch standard prep based on the coax type? What did you use to crimp the F connector? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Metal matching transformer box
Patrick Martin wrote: I will have to use a bolt or plug in the hole and that should take care of any issues. The trickness of the box varies. The cover has two screws in it. It is just a conduit box that you would install a socket in a house, but I covered it with a couple tricknesses of foil and then taped it up well. As long as you have metal-to-metal contact on the cover edges you'll be OK. Some of the cast boxes have a sort of cast slot that a tongue on the cover slides into, sort of a tongue-and-groove thing. These are really well shielded. The key for shielding is the inner and outer surface separation. So the foil would have to have a solid contact with the box or the coax connector to be fully effective. Likely if the cover contacts the box all around it's edges, you're fine. The holes will not have any wires running through them, just holes, but I will put some kind of plug in them to keep bugs out. I will just have to remove the plug and shake the water out. I guess the inside will be damp, but not much I can do about it. There is always electrical fungus-proofing varnish. That stuff works pretty well. You could spray that over the innards of the box, masking off the potentiometer. I've used Krylon spray on clear acrylic coatings too in the past. Not lacquer, this stuff is a spray on acrylic plastic. It sprays like the clear lacquer, but it's an acrylic plastic. I had hardware outside for years and it looks new after being sprayed with this stuff. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
[IRCA] Installing CATV F connectors the right way
to swap the stuff around when doing antenna construction. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Metal matching transformer box
Patrick Martin wrote: I don't think there is any issue there, as the wire from the pot fors directly to the ground rod and the other wire goes directly from the end of the EWE to the pot. Yup, I wouldn't worry about plastic enclosures at the far end at all. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] moisture proofing boxes
Craig Healy wrote: Automotive silicone seal is more fluid than the hardware store kind, and will fill the corners better. That's likely RTV #736. (Room Temperature Vulcanizing) This is the flowable RTV. #732 is the stiffer stuff that is sold as caulking and as GE silicone sealant. #736 is often sold as windshield sealant because it flows into the cracks in the rubber gasketing. Both formulas of RTV silicone release acetic acid while curing, so you'll want to be sure that the innards of the box can handle this before filling up the box with the stuff. Epoxy might be another choice for potting. A Google on potting compound will return some info on stuff made for electronics. These are generally a two-part formula and are mixed just before use. Some are made to transfer heat well, others don't. But I doubt heat issues would matter in this application. If I can fill the box above all the parts, then put the cover on, it will prevent any water from getting to the components. Won't work with a potentiometer inside, however. Yes, that you'd still have to mount outside the epoxy, but you could cover the pot housing with varnish to waterproof/fungus proof it. We used to do that with milspec modules a lot. Some of the Bourns pots are sealed pretty well, especially the multi-turn ones. Normally potting compound is a type of epoxy. No clue where to get that in the quantity needed to fill a box. Maybe a boat supply house? Generally the electronics stuff is specially formulated to not shrink during curing and to radiate heat while retaining insulating qualities. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] coax update
Craig Healy wrote: Hammond also makes weatherproof boxes like the 1590CW. Far more pricey, though. I'd think that a regular aluminum box and some silicone would do the job nearly as well. The big gotcha with weatherproof gasketed metal boxes is that if the gasket insulates the cover, you've just negated the shielding. So, no gaskets on the boxes, unless they are the CATV type with rubber with a metal flexible mesh over them for making contact with the cover, and an O-ring behind that to seal the box. Scrap CATV subscriber tap cases make pretty good shielded cases, and can often be had for free. With an insulated cover, the box won't be shielded on all sides. That Hammond box looks fine. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] coax update
Rick Kunath wrote: With an insulated cover, the box won't be shielded on all sides. I should qualify that *some* rubber gasketed boxes are OK. Some bottom out on metal to metal contact and have the gasket outside that metal to metal contact. Most electrical-type weatherproof boxes just have the cover sitting on the gasket. These aren't shielded fully because the gasket insulates the cover and the only contact between the cover and the case are the cover screws. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Metal boxes
Patrick Martin wrote: It should be fine. I am going to build my second box for the SW EWE and I will see how it works out. Just make sure that you have metal to metal contact between the cover and the box body. Otherwise, incomplete shielding. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: I thought that is what you would say. hi. A metal box eh? I guess I should look for one. I have used the plastic set ups since 1988 and I still have heard a lot of great DX. I wonder going to all of this work is going to really make any difference in what I hear? I know lab tests and the like do show a difference, but in the real world will be do anything? I guess I will try it for the Eastern beverage as I am more concerned about the directivity of that more than the EWEs. The EWEs pretty much have the directional pattern they are supposed to have, even without all of the better coax and a metal box. I can try the Eastern beverage. If I notice a difference, I can always change the SW EWE set up. The vertical I don't care much about as I use it mainly for SW. The WNW EWE has more buried coax and will be harder to change out the coax there. Maybe I can find a small metal box at Radio Shack tomorrow. I can install a coax fitting on the one side and then a couple banana jax on the other. Then everything will be shielded The banana jax will be inside the metal box as well as the coax fitting. At least I can check out the coax better terminating the end with a cap. That way I can tell how much the coax is leaking. At least it is a start. I think if it were easy, the first thing I'd try would be to replace the coaxial cable with something better shielded and do a receive test to see what happens with what you have. If the coax you already have has marginal shielding, changing the box to a metal one likely won't matter, as there are plenty of places along the run of cable where signals can leak back in. Once the cable has been changed, adding a sleeve-type choke at the antenna end would likely be my next step. This will choke off any currents coming back along the length of the coax from making their way from the outside of the shield and onto the inside of the shield at the antenna end and on their way back down the (now properly shielded new) coax to your receiver. Once that's done, if you needed more isolation, I'd replace the box with a metal one. If the sleeve-type choke works well enough, use the plastic box you have. A sleeve-type choke is a series of ferrite cores, sized to slide snugly over the coaxial cable. These are typically a series of ferrite cores stacked up maybe a foot or more long at medium wave. You need enough cores to get a high impedance to the RF at the frequency of interest. There are commercial chokes available, or you can make up your own with purchased cores (Amidon comes to mind, and they'll help you pick out the right cores), and seal the outside. I usually make these up separate from the actual coax run to the antenna. That way you can remove them and move them around. I put a connector at each end and place them in series with the cable run at the antenna end. Some folks use toroid cores and wind the coax through the core to make a choke. I don't like these as the inter-turn capacity negates some of the isolation effects. But for testing, if you have a core handy, at least you could see what the partial effect would be. If you have a signal generator or some source of RF at medium wave, you can do a pretty good test for cable leakage by just laying it out on the ground straight, applying RF to one end, and a dummy load to the other, and moving a radio with a ferrite rod antenna along the cable to see if yo have any hot spots. You don't need a dummy load of any power handling capacity, as the RF levels for testing like this, or terminating the coax for a receiver-connected leakage test are very low level. You could make yourself up a dummy load just with a metal box with a coax connector and a carbon resistor inside (equal to the cable's characteristic impedance) that would work for testing. But, low cost commercial units made up inside a connector body are pretty cheap, likely cheaper than the parts to make one up. Rick Kunath Thanks again. 73, Patrick Patrick Martin KAVT Reception Manager ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Chuck Hutton wrote: For short distances, go to Home Depot and get the (usually) gray plastic conduit that is used to run outdoor wiring. Then bury your coax without worrying about it being direct burial or not. Just doing a quick Google on CATV hardline pricing... It looks like .500 PE jacketed and flooded aluminum CATV hardline is going for about $0.65 per foot. (This is cheaper than what questionable quality quad-shield direct burial stuff I've Googled.) It's probably cheaper than burying some PVC pipe and pulling non-flooded cable through it. Without the flooding compound between the jacket and the shield, you can't control condensation and water ingress, and you'll have that in an underground installation as the non-flooded cable breathes with temperature changes. Although with the PVC at least you can fish new cable in at any time without digging up the yard. I'd still pull in flooded cable if you went the PVC pipe route. Flooding compound is a sticky goo that prevents water from getting into the cable even with a jacket cut and prevents water movement. The down side with the CATV hardline is that you need a jacket removal tool, coring tool, and center conductor cleaning tool. (Cable Prep is my favorite brand.) And these are specific to any cable size, so tools for .500 won't work on .750, etc. But once you have them,they last a long time, and aren't expensive. The good thing about .500 cable is that not many CATV systems still use it, so you can pretty well scrounge connectors, splices, adapters, and reuse them and get cut-offs, ends of rolls, and tear outs cheap from your local cable system's cable scrap yard. And since there is only a thin copper coating over the aluminum center conductor of aluminum hardline, the aluminum stuff isn't exactly a hot commodity with copper recyclers yet. Jacketed and flooded aluminum hardline is a lot easier to handle than rolled PVC, but not quite as easy as jointed PVC, though you'll eventually have leaks with jointed PVC as the ground shifts. I think if I were there, I'd want to do a quick test with an antenna-end sleeve-type choke (leaving your plastic box and existing matching transformer as is) and see what happens with the existing cable before I got to doing anything else. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: I fiqure I am going to need the metal box anyway, so why not start there. It will be interesting to note, if the s meter readings go down by attaching the cap on the end of the coax anyway. Yes, that will tell the tale. Until you get that (the coax) RF tight, nothing else will matter. The choke idea sounds a bit involved, so I would do that as a last resort. The metal box first, then the coax, To test the coax with the cap to terminate it, what kind of s meter readings would be exceptable? Anything? I'd say extremely low readings, if any at all. As to chokes, Radio Shack has some ferrite clamp-on chokes available. They have some that open in half and you wind the coax through it, but coax generally can't be bent that tight and the chokes are a ferrite mix that works better at HF. Plus the inter-turn coupling affects the ultimate ability of these to choke at MW. There are some you might try, part number: 273-105. You'd need 3 or 4 of these. You have to modify the plastic holder by cutting off the ends of the holder so that when you place them on the cable, end-to-end, the ferrite touches the next choke in line. With the plastic still on the ends of the holder, the ferrite is too far apart, and you wind up with less choking effect. Ferrite material designed for medium wave is better, but these might be worth a try if you need to see if they'd help. As to the ferrite toroids for choking, these just slide over the coax, and you tape them in place, one touching the next, in a big stack. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: and then getting a piece of Quad RG6 and running it out the door to the antenna is easy to test. I can go right up the band frequency by frequency and check gw reception and see if there is any difference. Then if there is and my old coax is that leaky I can then decide which avevue I need to go to replace it. Right now, I still don't know if it will make any difference to change all of this. Yep, that's what I'd do. See what you can do with the coax first. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Craig Healy wrote: One other thing I want to try is to roll out some chicken wire over the CAT5 to see if it shields the wire from pickup. The capacitance to ground, plus the inherent loss may just help. Maybe just the 50' closest to the truck. It will be very easy to do an A/B test. Set out the CAT5, do a bandscan with it terminated. Then roll out 50' of chicken wire over the nearest 50' and do another bandscan. Compare notes. If it helps, then do another 50'. It may function just as a series of chokes on the wire itself, using the lossy ground for attenuation. Chicken wire is cheap, so.. That certainly would be a very interesting test... Did you know that you can get shielded CAT5 cable? You need special RJ-45 connectors for the stuff because they have to have a grounding tab on them, but the stuff is available on reels and can be easily crimped to shielded RJ-45 connectors. At least with balanced line you don't have to worry about chokes on the wire itself, though they still might be needed on the shield of shielded CAT5 or twinax. On unshielded balanced transmission lines it's all about line balance to prevent common mode pickup. (Normal mode for desired signals on a balanced transmission line is differential mode.) Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] AC twin lead or speaker wire for lead in.
A few quick questions... As to the quality of the coax, did you strip away the outer insulation and take a look at the shield? What was the braid coverage on the shield, at least 98%? Was the shield tinned? Was there *any* of the dielectric visible through the shield? If there was a foil shield, was there just one single ground messenger wire? This is generally poor quality stuff. If there was a foil shield, in addition to the braided shield, was this bonded to the dielectric? I.e was it glued on, or was it the cheap folded type that you can peel off along a seam? If it wasn't bonded to the dielectric, this is poor quality shielding, and often allows ingress, especially upon any movement of the coax. How exactly were the connectors put on. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: I would think if the center connector of good coax had quad shield, you should hardly get any signal with the braid grounded. Keep in mind that there are really three conductive surfaces on any piece of single-shield coaxial cable. One is the outer surface of the center conductor. The other two are the inner and outer surfaces respectively of the shield. The inner and outer surface of the shield are two separate conductors as far as high frequency RF is concerned. As long as there is sufficient shield coverage, there will be negligible leakage of the signals on the outside of the shield into the inner surface of the shield and into the receiver. Virtually none with hardline. This separation of surfaces between the inner and outer surface of coaxial cable can be compromised by poor or improper connectors, poorly installed connectors, poorly shielded receivers, poorly shielded terminations at the antenna (though this last can be improved using common-mode choking on the coaxial cable at the antenna end. I think the RG6 I have is cheapie stuff. It is RG6 that can be buried, but in looking at it, the braid is not 100%. That's the first thing you'll notice about cheap coax. There is foil, but I have no idea how good it all is. The foil is likely not bonded to the dielectric. Take a piece apart and see if it (the foil seam) can be opened up, sort of along a folded over joint in the foil. If so, it's junk. The shield allows ingress and egress along the joint and the joint opens up even wider making things worse with handling and bending, also temperature variation. (I want to use stronger terms for the poor quality of cable manufactured like this, but can't on a family list.) There is good RG-6 available, including direct burial cable. This would have 98% tinned shield coverage, a foil shield bonded to a polyfoam dielectric, copper plated steel center conductor, as well as flooding compound between the jacket and the shield braid, all surrounded by an abrasion resistant insulating jacket. So going to quad shield will probably solve my problems. If I had to bet on it, I'd think so. Do keep in mind that most quad-shield coaxial cable is designed as head end cable and is not going to last long outdoors buried. You might want to keep this in mind when you look at cable types. The other thing is that quad-shield cable does not use standard connectors. You'll want to get the proper cable prep cutting tool, and need a supply of the proper crimp on connectors, along with the proper crimping tool. If you attempt to use what tools you have for your RG-6, you are wasting your time and cash on the quad-shield cable. As I described above, you *have* to have the connectors installed on the cable correctly to get the isolation you want between the inner surface of the shield and the outer surface of the shield. Without that isolation you have your current situation of strong ingress via common-mode currents, and the ingress will happen again. should not be getting CBU at S9! Correct. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: I'll bet most of the coax that DXers are using is the same grade that I am using. I wonder what the difference would be if we all switched to Quad RG6? The answer to that would depend on how much coax-based signal ingress there is on a given installation. If there is ingress pickup in a direction the antenna has a null, then it might make a worthwhile difference. Would we notice that much of a difference? I am wondering changing to the Quad RG6, what the Eastern beverage will react like? As I mentioned earlier, when taking the R8 out to the antenna and running the beverage directly in, a couple years back during the day, I noticed nothing different than running it through the coax in the house. The question would be, what was the ingress situation then? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: So most Quad RG6 is not made for burying. You could always bury it in a protective tube. I've seen garden hose used. But that's just as big a hassle to install as hardline. Your worry will be jacket failure and water ingress. Hardline would work, but very expensive and stiff as a board to use. Not fun. It has been years since I delt with any hardline. The armored direct-burial aluminum stuff isn't too bad to work with. Especially in smaller diameters (.500 or less) that would be great for medium wave. Likely it's a lot cheaper than Andrew Heliax with a copper shield these days. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] AC twin lead or speaker wire for lead in.
Patrick Martin wrote: Since I use plastic boxes for my matching transformers, I only fitted those with banana jaxs, so I use banana plugs on the end of the coax. That would be hard to terminate those. That's why you have ingress. Using banana jacks on the coax does not isolate the inner and outer surfaces of the coaxial cable shield. Either you need to put the matching transformers inside a metal box, with a coax jack mounted to the box, and the antenna input through small holes in the box with the transformer inside the box, this will create the isolated condition on the shield surfaces, or else add a really high impedance choke-type balun sleeve over the antenna end of the coax. The balun sleeve won't work as well as a shielded metal box. The sleeve choke and metal box would work better together than either one alone. I have a regular coax fitting on the receiver end screwed into a shilded SO239 to the back of the receiver. This end is good. By the way, isn't the matching transformer supposed to isolate the antenna from the coax anyway? Nope. It will perform impedance and balanced to unbalanced transformation, but without the shielded box, it won't isolate the inner and outer coax shield surfaces. A sleeve-type choke balun places a high impedance on the outer surface of the shield of the coax, making it hard for the currents on the rest of the coax shield from making the transition to the inner surface. So does a stray signal on the coax really make any difference with a load on it? Yes. The outer surface of the shield becomes a part of the antenna. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments
Patrick Martin wrote: There might be a difference, but it might be so small not to notice it. When I get some Quad RG6, I can do an A/B test. I guess I should put a regular coax fitting on the plastic boxes. It would be easier as the short wires the banana plugs are on I am sure have pick up. A coax fitting on a plastic box won't do the trick. You'll still have ingress. The box would have to be metal. If you can't do a metal box, try a sleeve-type choke balun in addition to the existing matching transformer. Don't know about direct burial quad. It isn't usually used for that purpose. If we needed that kind of shielding, we'd always bury hardline. Might be some out there though. I don't know what the pricing differential would be of copper quad-shield coax vs. direct burial aluminum small hardline these days. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] coax loss
Patrick Martin wrote: Thanks Chris. I have always been a nit-picker when it comes to my antennas and coax. I try to squeeze every 1 millionth DB out of them. I guess I go overboard as some have said. It seems I am always out there trying to make improvements on everything. Probably 99% of the time, there is no difference. I generally test any suspect cables with an Anritsu time-domain reflectometer, but most folks won't have access to a piece of test equipment this expensive. I also have one of these: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/products.php?prodid=MFJ-269 and find it a very handy piece of test gear to have. Whether you'd get enough use out of it to justify purchasing one of these or just be better off putting the cash into new coax you'd have to decide. An ohm meter will tell you only one part of the picture, i.e. ohmic losses in the center conductor and shield. And as was mentioned up the thread, since you are testing using DC, you don't get the same skin-effect as you would using an RF test signal. You can't measure dielectric losses, overall loss at a particular frequency, impedance, or velocity factor. But it sure would tell you if you had serious corrosion and very high resistive losses. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Radiotelephone Operator's Permit
Forgot to mention, if the 2003 number is right, you'd also fall within the 5 year renewal grace period for commercial licenses. Again, you have to find out why there was a cancellation or failure to convert to a lifetime license. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] WNJC-1360
Les Rayburn wrote: I also agree that it will be nice to have exact times for the QRSS portion of the test. But can't guarantee that it will be possible for some tests. Even the upcoming KXTO test, for example...at present, I do not know the exact times that the QRSS portions of the test. My plan is to run a dedicated receiver (I have two) to the QRSS effort, and just let Argo run. I've set up the computer to do screen grabs and save them as .JPEG files. Then they can be reviewed each morning during low power test period. This is old hat to those of us who chase NDB's and/or do LF work. That's how I'll likely proceed on the next test, i.e. two receivers and two computers doing screen grabs. I suspect that short notice tests will continue to be more and more the norm. Details about specific content and timing will continue to be difficult to provide, though not for lack of trying. That is why real time tools such as the Starchat #MWDX will be important. A local DXer (local to the test) can easily alert everyone when QRSS tones start...and then everyone can switch over their settings. Is there anyone local to the KXTO test? Any idea as to why the non-standard QRSS dot length of 5 seconds was selected for these tests? It might be a lot easier for listeners that are new to QRSS if a standard dot length such as 3 seconds, 10 seconds, or 30 seconds were used. This would allow for the preset mode settings to be used optimally without much adjustment needed. the 3 second timing might be OK. What do others think? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] WNJC-1360
Chris Black wrote: But my point was: If I were going to test traditional modulation with something exotic like slow code (true QRSS or otherwise), then I would not bury it within the regular data, but segment it in some way so that the recipient would know to alter his receiving technique. I'm with you Chris in the idea that there should be a definite time for the QRSS in the test if any is to be included in future tests. I was able to hear all of the test tones, sweeps, dual-tones, CW, etc, so I would have been easily able to notice the carrier from the QRSS had there been any transmitted. I was using the NDB setting on Spectran to see the tones as I listened to them audibly. In the case of someone who couldn't hear any of the other tones and wanted to try for the QRSS carriers, knowing exactly when the test would begin would be a help. We did know th exact offsets, so pre-setting Spectran would have been easy, though I didn't see any of the QRSS tones during the time I was monitoring the test. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] WNJC-1360
Brett Saylor wrote: I didn't see the QRSS during the times I checked; the code showed up +/-1 kHz from the carrier on a spectral display, I only listened for the first hour of the test, and did not see any QRSS tones at all. The sawtooth, sweeps, dual-tone pulses, and conventional CW were easily audible. All of the sweep tones cut through the on-channel slop and displayed remarkably well on Spectran, as did the dual-tone pulses. For sweep tones and other type audio tones, it looks like Spectran will be a helpful tool, even without QRSS. At no time during the time period I was listening did I hear any of the expected QRSS tones on either sideband. Based on the strength of the conventional CW tones, I should have seen these easily at the stated +/- 2.5 KHz offset from the main carrier. Maybe these were transmitted later on? Rick Kunath Almont, MI ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] KXTO QRSS
Pete Taylor wrote: Some of us can't tell QRSS from Shinola so if someone could explain what it means to me as I attempt to tune the station in without the benefit of a spectrum analyzer, that would be great. I believe I read that the call letters would be sent via QRSS over a three minute period. Does this mean an audible het will be produced at 1547.5 and 1552.5 or is this something that can only be seen on a scope/screen? Yes, a keyed CW-type signal at +/- 2.5 KHz from the carrier frequency will be produced. You can hear the 2.5 KHz audio using AM detection, or better yet use the CW mode on the radio and a narrow CW filter to tune in either of the signals created by the modulating tone (select the carrier above or below the main carrier based on the best copy) as you would a CW signal. The speed of CW in QRSS is too slow to easily copy by ear. Using a freeware audio spectrum analyzer program like Spectran or Argo running on a PC and with the receiver set to CW mode with a narrow filter tuned to one of the carriers created by the modulation tone is the best way to decode these signals. You can dig a lot farther down into the noise that way. Rick Kunath Thanks. Pete Taylor Tacoma, WA 12225w 4719n ICF2010 + Kiwa air core loop DX398; Palomar loop ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Problem With Kiwa Loop
Charles A Taylor wrote: I've heard about DeoxIT. All reports say it's OK. From Tom's report, it seems that his problem resides in tuning capacitors. I don't see that DeoxIT will harm the capacitors while cleaning the contacts of the rotating plates. Tom, you might try some of that. Just that alcohol is less expensive, and available from hardware stores. It's dirty/noisy potentiometers that are likely the problem. Probably either the lubricant has dried out and alcohol might re-liquefy it, but better to use some DeoxIT, as this will re-lube and clean them. There are no tuning capacitors in a Kiwa loop. All tuning is done at the loop-head using varactor diodes. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] CFB (Compact Florescent Blubs)
On Sunday 29 April 2007 10:02:17 pm Patrick Martin wrote: Well if I could buy a noise free bulb, that would be fine. I mean NO NOISE, not any. I don't want anything more that is a noise maker in my house. At least for me, I absolutely hate the color and flicker of fluorescent lighting. I have to tolerate it some places at work, but I have almost no fluorescent lighting here at home. Even if they are quiet, I don't like the look. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] 390A wrist
Patrick Martin wrote: Yes, the skrits are not as tight, as my R8 or even the SPR4, but in some cases that is better. I find some of the really tight filters to be rougher in DXing in AM as you get the signal, but understanding the audio is another issue. I have both the Collins mechanical and the crystal filters installed in my 7030+ (2 pairs) in addition to the stock wide and narrow filters, and find that switching between the pairs that are close in value sometimes makes quite a difference in intelligibility. Mine read 3.4 and 3.6, and 4.5 and 5 Khz respectively. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] #MWDX Instructions Needed
Les Rayburn wrote: I'm a long time, though infrequent user of the Medium Wave Chat room on Starchat, #mwdx. Recently, we started using an Instant Messaging client called GAIM at work, and I'd like to use this program to access the #MWDX chat room as well. GAIM will work so much better than any web based chat applet. I can only speak to the Linux version, but the Windows version should be similar. You need to add an IRC account for starchat. This is done via the add account setup screen. Once you have that added, it is possible to add the #MWDX IRC channel into the buddy list, and it is then clickable to join the channel. This is done via the add Chat feature. If you need registered nick auto response, this is done with a buddy pounce. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] (OT) High Speed internet update
Russ Edmunds wrote: *** Alas, you won't be ab;e to get much better than that from dial up, and there's nothing I'm aware of in between. ISDN Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] (OT) High Speed internet update
Patrick Martin wrote: We have Verizon Wireless for cel phone and ATT here. I use Verizon for my cel phone now. I have not called Verizon or ATT to see if they offer internet service. Maybe I should give that a shot. I've used Verizon before, and ATT/Cingular as well as Nextel also. I run a wide area public safety backhaul network over 2g and 3g wireless here as a backup to my microwave backbone and I've had the chance to test most of the vendor's offerings. Keep in mind that (unless you are a corporate user spending millions with them) wireless access is anything but unlimited, no matter what the plan says (just like satellite). It won't be that hard to run against invisible caps if you do any appreciable amount of usage other than simple text-based email. One other more important thing is that wireless access is pull-based. This means that apps that work because they need a real IP (dynamic or static) won't work on 3g. 3g does not have what you would refer to as a real IP present out on the Internet, so you have to initiate any connection from your end and any app that needs to initiate a send from it's end won't work (lots do.) I actually have servers in place to simulate that inside the VLAN we run for our backup network and I have virtual IP addresses available, but it's not affordable to the typical single user. Be aware of the limitations before you go that route if you decide to, and you'll be OK, but don't expect to have the same level of stuff just works as you do with a real IP from dial-up, DSL, or cable access (satellite is double-natted and has it's own issues.) Pay attention to what apps you need to work, verify that they will, and have monitoring software running to avoid running into the invisible caps, and you might be happy. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] (OT) High Speed internet update
Patrick Martin wrote: I need to check to make sure the phoneline connections aren't slowing things down too. Yep. Un-needed loading coils on the line will do that, as will unterminated runs to elsewhere both in home and out in the telco POTS plant, Paralleled phones in the home can sometimes slow down speeds, as can certain telco line protectors and surge suppressors. The paralleled phone issue can be eliminated by feeding the phones from the phone output of the modem, as this is disconnected during a dial-up call. This also eliminates the possibility of a disconnection when someone picks up a phone in the home. And all modems are not created equal either. Lots of cheaper modems will fail to re-train upwards after a downward speed shift. Some get into a spiral of death to slow speeds with time. Winmodems in general are poor performers. The best dial-up or leased-line modem in the known universe is the U.S. Robotics Courier. I have lots of them on dial-up access and leased line service and there is nothing I have found that will beat them for training up after a slowdown or hanging at a high rate under trying line conditions. I get better speeds from a Courier handling a connection on a leased line halfway around the world than I do with one of the Winmodems I have here on a local call. Another good performer is the U.S. Robotics Sportster (real and not win-modem model), the full controller-based model. Look for Linux compatibility on the box and you'll know it's a full controller-based modem. The Sportster is no Courier though. The Couriers show up pretty cheap sometimes, and any of them can be flashed to the latest firmware revision. The other hint to speeding up dial-up is to locally cache DNS lookups and locally cache web page elements (and OS and other application updates). This has the effect of delivering unchanged content on previously visited pages at high speeds, while fetching over dial-up only those elements that have changed since the last page view. it can make a world of difference on a dial-up connection. Lastly, the reported dial-up connection speed is only the speed at the initial connect. It is not the current speed. Most modem makers bias this to a high value to make the user think he is getting a good connection. Shortly these train downward and the reported speed is no longer valid. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] transferring recordings from cassettes to digital media
CHARLES HUTTON wrote: - with 32 kb MP3, each cassette (assumed mono) will need 14.4 MB so all 25 cassettes will need 360 MB and therefore fit onto a single CD easily. You could double the rate to 64 kb and still fit everything on 1 CD if you want more than DX quality. - if you want to make a music CD, you can normally fit 80 minutes on a CD. Just to make things easier, let's say you make a CD per cassette to keep from having to split stuff across CD's. So you're talking about 25 CD's. - if you want to make a CD full of wav files (but as a data CD not a music CD), let's say you pick 11.025 kHz sampling at 16 bits. That's 79.38 MB per cassette so you could fit 10 cassettes on a normal CD. And there is always the DVD data disk option with 6 times the capacity of an 80-minute CD. They're almost as universally playable as a CD. CDs are pretty ubiquitous though. USB drives will lose data, I can assure you, so make sure to have other permanent backups available if you go that route. Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Bought an iRiver IFP-795T
Charles A Taylor wrote: I inadvertently deleted the MP3 player .exe from my PC and don't want to re-install the whole she-bang Windows XP. Just extract the missing file from the appropriate .cab (Microsoft cabinet) files on your original install disk. If you are one of the folks saddled without an install disk and have recovery partition, you may still be able to recover the file. Alternatively, grab the file from another machine and install it on yours. I take it that you were in the file system and deleted something by mistake? What MP3player? Windows Media Player? You can grab an install of this from Microsoft's site and reinstall it. Alternatively, Winamp will play these and other files also, but you should really repair the missing M$ file too. Is there a source for inexpensive MP3 player files? I don't understand what you are looking for here? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
Re: [IRCA] Noisy Cable TV - Part III
Craig Healy wrote: Now, now. I'm not openly advocating any such thing. Merely passing along an amusing anecdote as to how one chap approached it. (bigwideevilgrin) There is always the possibility of damage to neighbor's electronic equipment should someone actually contemplate this. Coupling devices and fuses will eventually fail on the CATV plant, but this certainly would cause some real damage to the plant. It would, of course, be easily traceable to the causer's area and tap simply by visually inspecting the damage to the system. Not that they'd likely suspect the real cause of the damage. I think you've approached this correctly by writing and documenting all this. Having the local government in the loop is smart. The FCC Part 15 regs will have some bearing, as will the original cable authorization contract. It may be hard, but if you can find a copy of that agreement there may be language in there on interference problem resolution. You certainly could hold their feet to the fire with it. I think I recommended looking at the franchise a while back. Definitely do this. Also, have you called the power company yet? It is still possible that the noise may be conducted by the CATV system, but caused elsewhere. Either way, the power company's noise locater will have the gear to do the job. It is most unlikely that your average installer or tech would. Have you had a conversation with your local CATV Plant Manager yet? Rick Kunath ___ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://arizona.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
