Amateur Radio news from Italy

IW5EDI Simone – Ham-Radio

About LMR Coaxial Cables

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A little over 60 years ago, a company called Times Microwave Systems (TMS) was born in Wallingford Connecticut.  They made all kinds of wires and coaxial cables for many communications companies and the military.

First I want to make it clear that I do not work for or get paid by TMS for this article or any endorsement. I believe this coax to be the best for the money. I will never again use any other type of coax except TMS LMR type coax.  I use LMR-400 for all of my antennas, and LMR-240 for short inside jumpers between devices.  In the past I have used RG-8, RG-8X, Beldon 9913, and RG-214 coax throughout my 45 years in radio. I have seen how long different coax types last, and the kinds of losses they have. I have noticed how even the better Belden cables can leak and cause TVI and get into stereos, phones, clock radios, the bathroom pipes….etc. I have seen how they handle broadband antennas with regards to SWR. Continue reading→

Heil PR-781 Microphone

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This is one of those mics that only comes around once in a blue moon.  Because of it’s quality and price, I thought it deserved a mention on my website.  Read on and see what makes this mic so special.

When Icom came out with their new IC-7800 elite ham radio, they asked Heil to make them a mic that would really show off the high end audio quality of their new big expensive radio.  Heil first made the PR-780. and it was good.  Then Heil went a step further and made the PR-781.  The 781 is a slightly improvement on the 780. Continue reading→

Communication Speakers

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Have you searched and searched for a good speaker for your ham radio?

That perfect speaker that would let you hear voices through the noise and static without hiss?  A speaker that isn’t fatiguing to your head after listening for a while to weak signals? If you are like me, then you answered yes.

There are several speakers on the market designed for communications. A lot of us long time operators use a good set of headphones to hear those weak signals, or to just enjoy the clean crisp audio of the strong signals.  Headphones are probably the best for this purpose, but they can get annoying after wearing them for a while. I was using a small but good quality bookshelf speaker designed for lower powered stereo systems. It sounds pretty good, but it’s still not what I want.

Continue reading→

The Grid Yagi

Posted in Antenna, Articles 1 Comment

The Grid Yagi (or Grid Quad) is a high performance yagi antenna that can be built with readily obtainable inexpensive materials. Described here is a 6 element 2 meter version with a boom length of about 1 wavelength.

The boom is made of 11?2 inch pvc pipe, although any suitable material can be used, such as steel, aluminum, fiberglass, or wood. The elements are cut from 2 inch by 4 inch galvanized welded wire fencing, with a wire diameter of 0.078 inch, which is what #14 steel wire becomes when it is galvanized. Continue reading→

ISS Amateur Radio Shack via Google Maps

Posted in Articles, Ham Radio 2.0 1 Comment

ISS walk around via Google Maps

Today, while I was playing with google map, i ended up inside the International Space Station.
I immediately realized thay all the ISS modules have been made available in 360° view, so I decided to look for the ISS amateur radio transceiver, from where astronauts use to talk to schools via the ARISS program.

After some minutes, I spotted the location of the ISS radio shack, that is composed simply by a Kenwood TM- D700A transceiver, and is located in the Zvezda Module of the ISS.

ISS-ham-radio

ISS nespoli ham radio

Try yourself

If you want to virtually walk inside the ISS, just follow the link to the Google Maps  ISS Radio Schack

The Kenwood TM-D700A is a dual bander that allows APRS, GPS and SSTV transmission with 50W RF Output

The ISS configuration map will help you on orientation through the labyrinth

Quickie Vertical

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Quickie Vertical

Hear I am sitting in front of the rig listening to everyone working CQ World Wide, and I don’t really have time for this, but I hear a few interesting stations on 20 meters and try to call them. Trying to bust the pile up with 100 watts and my hustler dipole is going to be difficult on this band, so I tune up on 15 meters and there is action, and I have a good wire beam, so I tune up and down the band and can’t find a clear frequency. Then I hear some one say that 10 meters is open. So I tune up there, and there is a world of DX coming in. I choose a few interesting ones to call, but can’t be heard. I should have expected that, as my antenna for this band leaves much to be desired. It is a vertical above my Hustler dipole, but it has no effective ground plane and SWR no better than 3:1 at its best frequency. With no time to assemble a Quad, I start thinking about a better vertical.

Continue reading→

2.4 GHz Cubical Quad Antenna

Posted in Antenna, HamRadio 2 Comments

2.4 GHz Cubical Quad Antenna – Introduction

The Cubic Quad antenna is a commonly homemade antenna in the range of about 150 odd MHz. Our little project was to design one of these for use in the 2.4GHz range for 802.11 wireless LANs. The reason these are seldomly used for 2.4GHz is the size.

The picture below is a 4 element cubic quad for the 147MHz range.  Large isn’t it.

The one we are going to build for 2.4GHz will only be 6cm long!

Continue reading→

My LoTW Certificate expired – It did it again!

Posted in Ham Radio Software, HamRadio Leave a comment

Today I’ve been able finally to make some new QSOs on the air after a short period of QRX.
At the end of the day I decided to upload new QSOs to Lotw fom my RumLog (Mac OSX logbook by DL2RUM), but as soon I clicked on the menu command to “LoTW Out for the selected QSOs” I got the “TQSL Error” message:

TQSL ERROR

I immediately remembered that this happened to me some years ago (3 years ago)

Continue reading→