[Swlfest] I am somewhat busy with radio listening

["Eric A. Cottrell" <eac@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Last fall was perhaps the low point when I "sold out" and got XM.  I got 
it for baseball and BBC World Service.  When I took a trip to La Belle 
Province, it was nice listening to BBC through the wilds of Vermont. It 
stopped working two miles north of the border.  A voice came on and said 
that my XM subscription was not valid in Canada. :) Only kidding.

I broke bread with the Montreal crew, went to a nearby Railroad museum, 
and went up to Quebec City.  The radio highlight of the trip was 
attending a Fleamarket and finding a Universal M-8000 for C$40.  I 
thought it was a simple dedicated RTTY decoder.  It was modified, likely 
used by a paging company for a monitor, and missing the top cover.  I 
realized after doing some internet searching that I got a very good deal 
although it does not do some of the recent HF Digital modes.  This 
raised my interest in HF again.  I fired up my FT100D, finally joined 
WUN, and even submitted a log.

Around thanksgiving I got a used receiver that had my interest for 
awhile.  The AOR AR5000 / Avcom SDU-42 / Opto DC440 is really nice.  The 
AR5000 lacks passband tuning and other things you need for HF so the HF 
performance is fair.  I really got the radio for VHF/UHF stuff and it 
does a good job.  A spectrum display unit makes searching VHF/UHF bands 
a bit easier.  I was able to figure out a number of frequencies on the 
VHF air band by watching a segment of spectrum and tuning to various 
spikes that appear.  I can also see the IBOC sidebands on my local FM 
stations.  I thought IBOC only took one adjacent channel but the display 
shows it takes both!  I see a cluster of SW broadcasters, like an 
island, around 6 MHz.

Recently I found a "No Mod" method of receiving DRM with the AOR AR5000. 
    It took three or four years after helping out with DRM at the fest 
but I finally downloaded the DRM and Dream software.  The "No Mod" 
method is not the best but I picked up RNW from Bonaire very good.  I 
can not hear 9800 from RCI but I seem to remember that I had problems 
with RCI on higher frequencies in the evenings.

For a couple of years I wondered what the digital signal at the top of 
the 80M ham band was.  I found out it is DRM from the DW European 
service.  Mystery solved!  I can get ocassional bits of audio.

I started out with only a Discone antenna last fall and found it does 
somewhat work for HF.  Unfortunely I did not throw up a dipole or long 
wire.  I did put up a vertical in the back yard and used Hamstick mobile 
antennas.  It did not seem to work much better than the discone,  I 
decided to try a short vertical antenna through a toroid matching 
transformer.  It did not work very well.  I found out last night my 
feedline was open!  No wonder the hamsticks and short vertical did not 
work.  So I am going to put in new feedline in the cold and wind today. 
  Maybe I can get the DRM from DW or RCI better with the new setup.

Over the last few years the Fest has covered Software Defined Radios 
(SDRs) somewhat.  A potential subject for a talk or demo next year is 
GNUradio and the USRP that is on it's way to me.  USRP and GNUradio are 
hardware and a toolkit to do some interesting things with SDR.
The fellow I bought the AR5000 from got another SDR radio, The SDR14. 
He uses it with a Icom R8500 and computer as a spectrum 
monitor/recorder.  The setup can record 150 KHz of spectrum.  The file 
can be played back later and any signals in the spectrum demodulated. 
The USRP can record up to 6 MHz of spectrum which eats up the hard drive 
fast!

As you can see I am still interested in Digital Communications and 
sometimes it takes years for me to do things. :)  I want to learn more 
about using DSPs for signal demodulation.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the fest.  It is a good thing I 
have a new slightly bigger car so I can bring more stuff. :)

73 Eric
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