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This is a very simple homepage with some interests. It has not been made with viewers in mind but just a simple idea that works like a favorites folder for my own use. All plumbing parts eg: Copper tubing, joins, screws etc are sorced from my local Bunnings hard ware and Jaycar electronics. Solid core coax used for the loop antenna was sourced from a amateur radio member. Get to know your local "amateur radio clubs" as they are a good source of parts at a low cost and this helps their on going costs.
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Added 09 Aug 2023.
A oldie but a goodie is the Kenwood TS520S HF transceiver. Somewhere around 45 years old. Still full power and very stable. I know it has had repairs in the last 10 years. It's nice to have the packing, manual and box that it originally came in. Recently I have aquired an Icom IC718 HF transceiver. Very good receive and full power out on the dummy load.
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Added 26 Feb 2023. Bought a mini transceiver UsDX on ebay 17 Oct 21. It can run on a mobile phone charger or phone battery pack. It can also run on 12 volts. Connected a battery pack to the radio for portable use. It is a interesting little radio and maybe could be used as a portable radio for bush walking. Covers four amateur radio bands. 80metre to 20metre band. Comes in 4 or 5 different colors
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Added 07 June 2022. Recently I have been trying to recover radio programming data off an old 20gig hard drive. The hard drive wasn't bootable anymore. My thought was to load another hard drive up with win2000 and then copy all files from the old hard drive to recover a bootable radio programming setup. No luck trying to load win98, win2000 or even winxp, until today when I went about it a different way altogether. So today I loaded up a kali linux operating system onto the system hard drive. Then I loaded win xp onto that hard drive. It formatted the hard drive again and loaded correctly. So now I know I can load XP ok. Next job is to do this same procedure on another hard drive and load win 2000. The old radio programming 20gig hard drive is now readable as a D drive and most of its programs are able to be setup on the C drive. I do however want to know why this works. This procedure was used well over 10 years ago to correct a disfuctional hard drive.
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Added 22 May 2022. I was just browsing the facebook marketplace listings. Came across a IC-M710 marine HF radio. I had been looking out for one of these or something similiar for years. It's not your normal HF radio that is used for Amateur radio but it can be used for this purpose. The trick here will be teach the radio how to transmit on all parts of HF, not just on the marine bands. It has a memory of 160 channnels. There is still a lot of data about this radio on internet. I used bluemax https://bluemax49ers.com/ for the programming cable. It was hard to get but these people make and test them correctly. Yeah it cost a bit more than China but at least you know it will work when you get it. My prefered programming computer is a Panasonic CF-19 toughbook. This has the correct 9 pin RS232 socket on the back of it. I run it on windows 98 but I have noticed it will also run on windows 7. Found this (USB DOS Boot + Serial Programming Cable + IC-M710 OPC-552 BMX DOS) on ebay but I did buy it direct from there bluemax49ers.com homepage. The software is EX1726.exe https://filelisting.com/radio-programming-software-collection-icom-ic-m710.zip-686-4de230fb68281617a1cf6654b23cbbfc185d4086.html
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Added 04 June 2020. This antenna I regard as version 3. It's made out of solid core coax cable so as to be rigid enough to use as a loop. As it is now, I am able to tune 80meters to 20 meters easily. The variable capacitor is a three gang. I have a switch on top of the box to switch one, two or three gangs in parallel. NOTE: when tuning a variable capacitor in this fashion where it creates high voltages, try and Isolate your hand from the capacitor. I hot melted a glue stick to the tuning knob to prevent any changes in capacitance from my skin. This antenna has been designed and built to fit into a back pack. It all comes apart in less than a minute and can be reassembled in the same time. Pvc pipe is three pieces with joiners that are not glued. Tuner is clipped only to the pvc. Cable just rolls up. |
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Added 25 May 2020. Tested this spider web magnetic loop from the unit balcony. It was tested by the maker at his house from within his radio room. When testing he was able to make a contact from his location north of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia to the southern state of Victoria. To the border of Victoria alone it is well over 1200klms distance. The inner triange works like a loop on a magnetic antenna. Part of the centre triangle is inside the conduit and connects to the rf cable in the middle. https://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/frank_radio_antenna_SM0VPO.htm
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folded_loop_antenna.pdf
Published on Sep 16, 2017 Here a link to another video of the antenna that shows the measurements. I got the plans for this antenna from https://www.qrz.com in the search put in AG6IF. https://www.qrz.com/lookup/AG6IF Under the Bio tab scroll down about halfway till you see a picture of the antenna. I have been playing with a folded full wave loop design, the author calls it a 3DFL, 3 dimensional folded loop. Here is a 2m version made from copper tubing. Soldering the joints together produce a good result and much more sturdy. We have a Bunnings hardware warehouse close by that is really good for bits. Thanks to them for the copper tubing and attachments. slimjim_du1anv.pdf The slim jim antenna was my second build. Once again I used a gas torch and solder to make secure joins. Spacers/supports are just pvc conduit. The space on one side is also covered by pvc conduit.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ_wN6S2Rnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxvkpM0ZA0M
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https://github.com/f4exb/sdrangel/releases This program is awesome. Took some time to work out how to use it and there is still more to learn. I now use this program to transmit with my HackRf One SDR radio that is shown higher up the page. Research this on youtube totorials (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt5h1BA7_SA) to work it out. A member has one of these that he will eventually build into a codan 7727 flying doctor radio. He says he can get the amp section to work on the output of the HackRf One. Imagine putting out 100 watts with a SDR radio.
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As you can see, the hackrf one is capable of using transmit through the SDRangle program. There are a few tutorials on SDRangle with different type of SDR radios. It's well worth the effort to give you an insight to a rather hard to learn program at first glance.
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FOR TRACKING RADIO SIGNALS IN FM MODE. Componets consist of some retangle aluminum, the 555 ic circuit and 9v battery. K1TTT Technical Reference Doppler Direction Finder David Robbins, K1TTT (An article originally written for the Berkshire County Radio Association News, Aug 1993.) This is a derivation from the Handi-Finder project from the May 1993 issue of QST. I didn't happen to have the IC they called for, but did have a 555. I also preferred to reverse bias the off diode instead of letting it just float. In the circuit shown almost none of the values are critical, the only thing that is required in fact is the 555 IC timer. Construction is not real critical either,but I do recommend putting the whole thing in a metal box and keeping the leads from the antennas to the diodes short, preferably using coax. The antennas should be spaced 1/4 to 1/2 wavelength apart for decent operation. Be sure to use an FM receiver, this will not work with an AM or SSB receiver... Although it can DF an AM signal. This circuit operates by rapidly switching from one antenna to the other. This creates a phase shift that FM receivers can turn into a tone. When both antennas are the same distance from the transmitter there is no phase shift so the tone disappears. WARNING! Do not transmit through this circuit. It might be able to handle low power on an HT, but more than a watt or so may blow the diodes. Also, the SWR that the radio sees may be radically different than 50 Ohms! so your radio may not like it either. |
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Parts List:
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http://vaedrah.angelfire.com/a_component_universe.htm
http://ok1ike.c-a-v.com/soubory/200anten.htm
https://teslaresearch.jimdofree.com/