Quadrantids - 2013

First and one of the three most powerful meteor showers of 2013 year.  Starts at December 28 2012, with peak at night of January 3, 2013. 

Velocity: 41 km/s

ZHR = 120 meteors/hour (may vary 60-200)

Radiant  coordinates: RA = 230.0  Dec: 49.0

Check here, Quadrantids will show up coming days.

Meteor showers calendar from TAU astronomy club.

SSA Jultesten 144 + 432MHz

Participated Jultesten today. No contacts on 432 MHZ and several SSB contacts made on 144MHz. So far it is the same result as last year, hi hi!
This year I used 6 el ultralight DK7ZB Yagi on 2 m boom, since my old SAT yagi is broken. It works fine on 70cm also so there is an opportunity to work on SSB and SAT frequencies. I have another 2m alu pipe and will try to stack 2x6el yagis, as soon as I find good support mast..

HAM SAT to flash morse code

On Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) the Japanese students who built FITSAT-1 are planning to activate the satellite's LED optical array and flash a message in Morse Code to Earth. The Morse message may be visible with the unaided eye. (Project web-site)

Wouxun KG-UV6D - First impression

Since my 2 meters handy Rexon RL-102 was too old and not in good condition, I decided to buy something new, like VHF/UHF handheld with DTMF and CTCSS. After reading the reviews of radios, I choosed Wouxun latest model KG-UV6D. This radio was praised for good voice quality of the speaker and attractive price. Well.. it was very easy to find a sellers of this radio at InterRadio, but quite difficult to buy it because of long queue!

Android Bluetooth Oscilloscope

ProjectProto's oscilloscope. Great project! Schematic, Project source codes for Android and dsPIC available on their website. I'd love to build one for myself :) Many features could be added to make a real oscilloscope from this (triggerring, data storage, etc) Of course, bandwidth will be limited to 1MHz, but this is enough for audio signals... Or build Android-based multimeter.

   

InterRadio Exhibition (Hannover) part II

YAGIs

InterRadio Exhibition (Hannover) part I

In the beginning of September my clubmates proposed to go to the annual amateur radio exhibition in Hanover, buy some spare parts for radios and to taste lokal beer (hi! hi!). I missed exhibition in Fridriskhafen in the last couple of years, so I gladly agreed and started to make a shopping list.. We started our journey on Friday morning last week and in the afternoon we were there.

James Bond's 9V QRP Transceiver

Jeff (K6JCA) made his own version of transceiver for secret agent. As he said: "OK, perhaps it's not quite as elegant as a "Q" creation, but hey, I can see Sean Connery pulling this little gizmo out of his pocket for some quick QRP action whenever there's a lull between seducing women and saving the world."

With 9V battery the power out is about 300 milliwatts on 40 meters. Or 900 mW with a 12V battery.

ISS flight engineer speaks with students

Expedition #32 Flight Engineer Joe Acaba speaks with high school students participating in a summer program called Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars, or WISH, using the station's ham radio. The students, selected from across the country, are attending briefings and engaging in competitive hands-on engineering activities related to space exploration and research.

UT/SA7BOA

18MHz

Poqet PC - The QRPer's field computing dream

"Small, battery-powered "palm top" computer that runs the DOS operating system and has an RS-232 serial port and non-volatile SRAM cards for disk storage. These little computers are absolutely perfect for use out in the field with battery power (like during Field Day) and in portable operating events: contest logging, serial terminal for control of rigs, note-taking, data gathering, etc.

Powered by 2 "AA" bateries, the Poqet PC has a flip-up 80 char x 25 line LCD display and a pretty usable keyboard. The 1 megabyte removable PCMCIA SRAM cards can also plug into your full-blown laptop in order to transfer files between the computers, and the built-in software (editor, calculator, scheduler, address book and terminal emulator) allows you to use this 8088 XT-compatible computer for many purposes around the radio shack."

I have one for sale so if you're interesting in buying it - just let me know. Good condition, no mods, no warranty.

Open season 2012

Visit to the nearest place available for winter operations was very short. Strong wind and snow convinced me to postpone tests of Vertical for 20-17 meters until the next time.

Nevertheless, I heard a lot of stations on 20 meters. Antenna was veery simple, 1/4 Vertical for 20m, steel guard used as a counterpoise. With 20W I worked several EU stations and even caught two memorial ctations: EK85GM and EM1000USK.