Category Archives: Ham Radio

It’s Field Day weekend 2017: find a local event, have fun!

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If you live in North America and have an interest in becoming a ham radio operator, this is the weekend to check out what amateur radio is all about, and meet local radio enthusiasts.  

It’s Field Day!

What is Field Day?  I’ll quote from the ARRL, who sponsors the event:

“ARRL Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

Field Day is a picnic, a camp out, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN!

It is a time where many aspects of Amateur Radio come together to highlight our many roles. While some will treat it as a contest, other groups use the opportunity to practice their emergency response capabilities. It is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate Amateur Radio to the organizations that Amateur Radio might serve in an emergency, as well as the general public. For many clubs, ARRL Field Day is one of the highlights of their annual calendar.

The contest part is simply to contact as many other stations as possible and to learn to operate our radio gear in abnormal situations and less than optimal conditions.”

GOTAMany Field Day sites have a GOTA (Get On The Air) station where non-licensed individuals are welcome to play radio. It’s a fantastic way to try your hand at transmitting with a little guidance and encouragement from the more experienced. Indeed, even if there is no GOTA station, you will often be invited to try out the mic.

You’ll find that ham radio operators are very welcoming on Field Day–after all, spreading the word about the fun of amateur radio is what it’s all about. Indeed, I’ve shown up unannounced to a number of Field Days over the years; once I even got some serious radio time with the Charlotteville Amateur Radio Club while on vacation in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

This year, I’m joining the Québec Amateur Radio Club (Club Radio Amateur de Québec), for the second year in a row, and I’m looking forward to it very much!

Keep in mind that there are many shortwave listeners among the amateur radio community; indeed, many hams became interested in the hobby through SWLing.

The ARRL has made it quite easy to find registered Field Day locations in your region. Click here to find a local Field Day event near you–and have a great Field Day!

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Receiving Jupiter with the SDRplay RSP1

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I’ve been fascinated with radio astronomy since my university days. In the 1980s and 90s almost any radio astronomy experiment equated to forking out some serious money to purchase a wideband receiver (serious money to a student, at least). With the advent of SDRs, though, radio astronomy has become affordable for everyone.

Many thanks to RTL-SDR.com for publishing the following video and post about monitoring Jupiter radio bursts:

Over on YouTube user MaskitolSAE has uploaded a video showing him receiving some noise bursts from Jupiter with his SDRplay RSP1. The planet Jupiter is known to emit bursts of noise via natural ‘radio lasers’ powered partly by the planets interaction with the electrically conductive gases emitted by Io, one of the the planets moons. When Jupiter is high in the sky and the Earth passes through one of these radio lasers the noise bursts can be received on Earth quite easily with an appropriate antenna

In his video MaskitolSAE shows the 10 MHz of waterfall and audio from some Jupiter noise bursts received with his SDRplay RSP1 at 22119 kHz. According to the YouTube description, it appears that he is using the UTR-2 radio telescope which is a large Ukrainian radio telescope installation that consists of an array of 2040 dipoles. A professional radio telescope installation is not required to receive the Jupiter bursts (a backyard dipole tuned to ~20 MHz will work), but the professional radio telescope does get some really nice strong bursts as seen in the video.

Click here to view on YouTube.

Click here to read at RTL-SDR.com.

As Carl mentions above, you do not need a professional radio telescope to receive Jupiter noise bursts, a dipole will do.

In fact, the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) has a dedicated Jupiter receiver–a simple SDR kit called the Radio JOVE Receiver which is promoted by NASA. While PARI has the resources to install any number of antennas, PARI uses two simple dipoles which are mounted only a few feet off the ground as their radio telescope. I doubt their investment in the antennas exceeded $50. It works brilliantly.

The Radio JOVE receiver at PARI

I had planned to purchase and build a JOVE receiver (and, for fun, still may!), but it would be much easier to simply use the SDRplay RSP I already have in my shack. What a great project this fall.

Post readers: Please comment if you’ve used an SDR or JOVE kit to receive Jupiter bursts!

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Video: Lightbulb vs Radio Beacon by Thomas Cholakov (N1SPY)

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ivan Cholakov (NO2CW), who writes:

My 11 year old son Tommy (N1SPY) completed a project where he compared a 1W lightbulb to a .25 W radio beacon that he put together and bet that the radio beacon can be heard around the world. I asked him to document his activities as he went along. The project took a couple of months but is now complete and we stitched together a video of his activities.

Click here to view on YouTube.

Wow–Tommy, you’ve done an amazing job here!

I especially like how you’ve taken time to explain the principles behind the various steps of the process. Brilliant job!

Tommy, your future videos are always welcome here. Keep up the good work and we’d love to hear how many new countries you’ve racked up on your WSPR system!

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Interesting Article on Connection Between Amateur Radio and Radio Professionals

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I thought I would pass along this article from Radio World concerning the connection between Amateur Radio and Broadcast professionals. (And please, no flames for not being strictly SWLing related!)

Here a taste of the article, while the full piece may be found here:

http://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/0002/strong-ties-bind-amateurs-and-broadcasters/339846

Many people who work in broadcast radio got their start as amateur radio operators — hams — and remain active in the hobby.

At iHeartMedia alone, “we have 157 people on our ham radio list,” said Charles Wooten, director of engineering and IT at iHeartMedia Panama City, Fla. An amateur radio operator himself since the age of 12 (call sign NF4A), Wooten maintains that list. “Ninety percent of them are engineers, but we also have DJs, program directors and operations directors.” At least four of the company’s regional engineering VPs are hams.The fact that so many of iHeart’s hams are engineers makes sense. Many of the skills that a ham learns to get on air are the same needed by a technical broadcast professional.

Enjoy, Robert AK3Q

Robert Gulley, AK3Q, is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Robert also blogs at All Things Radio.

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NASA’s ionospheric experiment tonight and remembering The Woodpecker Project

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The gas mixtures from NASA’s ionospheric experiment cause parts of the night sky to glow blue and green. (Photo: NASA)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes:

It might be interesting if you invited SWLing Post readers today see how NASA’s ionospheric experiment tonight (shortly after 9:00PM ET) affects RF propagation along the east coast:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nasa-will-make-colorful-clouds-near-sunset-tonight-180963652/

I searched online to find any reference to this long series of NASA experiments affecting RF propagation, and found this 1980 paper:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810005401.pdf

…which contains this paragraph:

Ionospheric Modifications

The objectives motivating various experiments based on either decreasing or increasing the ambient plasma density by means of a chemical release include: (a) obtaining measurements of the rate of refilling after creation of a plasma depletion “hole” as a means of studying ambient ionization processes, (b) studying the magnetic field aligned propagation of VLF waves by creating a propagation duct, (c) simulating the formation and movement of the natural depletion “bubbles” which occur over the magnetic equator, (d) investigations of reaction rates, recombination coefficients, airglow production, etc., and (e) creating the conditions for inducing selected plasma instabilities to produce ionospheric irregularities and spread-F conditions. The science objectives in these experiments have a direct bearing on communication problems. Other forms of ionospheric modification are directed toward studying ionospheric/magnetospheric coupling and testing plasma theories.

So it might be fun to crowdsource from the SWL community to see if we can detect any propagation anomalies Tuesday night during this brief experiment. It’s unfortunate there’s not more time to coordinate different listeners monitoring different assigned frequencies. This reminds me of participating in ANARC’s “Woodpecker Project” in 1985 with 95 other SWL’s in 18 countries to determine the interference effects on HF broadcast from the Soviet Union’s use of Over-The-Horizon (OTH) radar in the HF bands.

I wonder how many SWL’ing Post readers participated in The Woodpecker Project and still have the nice “No Woodpeckers” tee shirt they earned for submitting their findings, which were combined into a final report that condemned the Soviets for causing interference on the HF bands.

Thanks for the tip, Ed! According to the linked article, the experiment will take place this evening, “soon after nine o’clock eastern time” (or 01:00 UTC).

This would be a great time to do an SDR wideband spectrum recording since you could possibly see any propagation effects on the waterfall display and play the event over multiple times. I’ve no clue if this experiment would yield any discernable results on HF, but it would be fun trying to detect it nonetheless.

Please comment if you plan to check out the experiment and/or if you were a participant in the Woodpecker Project!

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2017 Hamvention photos: Saturday Flea Market

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While looking through photos I had backed up on my laptop, I discovered a set I took at the Hamvention Flea Market on Saturday morning (May 20, 2017). I’ve gotten tremendous positive feedback from the photos I posted of Hamvention Setup, the Friday Flea Market and Inside Exhibits, so I thought I’d post these as well.

Below, you’ll find 84 additional flea market photos. Click on the thumbnail to expand each photo. I’ve tried to include price tags when possible. I’m sure some of these items are also featured in my Friday flea market photo album. Enjoy:

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