Time for reading QST
Award – UCI Road World Championship – Tuscany 2013
2013 UCI Road World Championships Award
The ARI Tuscany Regional Committee (ARI CRT) – sponsor this award during the week of the
2013 UCI Road World Championships – that will be held in Flonrece, in Tuscany from 22nd to 29th September 2013.
The Award is issued for confirmed two-way radio contacts with Tuscan stations (I5### or I#5###) in
fixed or portable station, from 00:00 UTC on 22nd Sept 2013 at 23:59 UTC till 29th sept 2013,
Tuscan stations are invited to make call to “CQ Cycling Road World Championships Award” or “CQ CRWCA”
To obtain the diploma you will need to achieve the following scores :
- 90 points – for Italian stations ;
- 50 points – for European stations ;
- 30 points – for DX stations .
Stations rewarding points:
- 5 points – IQ5## ( Radio Clubs ) and IA5 or I#5###/IA5 (IOTA EU-028);
- 1 point – any station in the call area 5.
Download the Award Rules
Stay tuned and keep in touch with the stations operating from the Cycling tracks !
I will take part as IW5EDI and as IQ5FI (club station -5 points )
https://www.iw5edi.com/ham-radio/1310/1310
https://www.iw5edi.com/ham-radio/1308/1308
QSL Query : App for Google Glass
David Young, AE5DY announced QSL Query the first Google Glass application associated with the hobby of amateur radio. It is basically used to look up FCC call sign information, primarily for use in filling out QSL cards.
Currently, the information returned by QSL Query includes the name, address, and license class of the person associated with the submitted call sign.
Google Glass is a “wearable computer” based on an optical head-mounted display
Google Glass displays information in a smartphone-like format, and user can communicate with the Internet via voice commands.
Google Glass diffusion is very limited due to the high cost but certainly, this is another demonstration of how Amateur Radio’s experimentation is always up to date with new technologies and communications media.
For more information visiti AE5DY webpage deidcated to QSL Query
RTL-SDR on Google Nexus 7
This summer I was looking for a cheap Android Tablet in order to replace a dead TomTom Go730 GPS navigator, that suddenly decided to dead and being close to go in holiday I decided to invest money into a more versatile device that could be used as a gps navigator but even in other ways.
The final choice went to the Google Nexus 7 (first series) and to SygicApp as navitator App. Holidays are ended and i can say has been a good choice.
But that’s not the main topic of this post, as you can read from the title….
Well, to be honest, the idea to purchase an Android Tablet came in my mind some months ago, playing with the RTL SDR dongles on the PC. You can read some more posts on this blog about RTL SDR
SDR Touch
On the Android markets, moreover as you know there are many Ham Radio Apps, that somentime those apps are not present on the Apple App Store.
Being an happy Apple iPhone 5 owner, I was curious to test the SDR Apps that for their particular nature, will never be present on a IOS device. Infact the app that I bought inte Google Play store, SDR Touch 1.6 need ad additional custom driver app to be executed before, that allow the app to interface RTL SDR dongles. (Cannot immagine Apple to approve similar apps in their app store…)
App is not free by the way, but the few euros spent will convince Martin Marinov the app developer, to implement new features.
From the Space: Message in a Bottle de IR0ISS
A fascinating story about the first experience of the Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano with Amateur Radio.
Last week Luca Parmitano, had his first experience with a ham radio transceiver inside the ISS, and during a break, he was attracted by curiosity to turn on the radio and called “CQ Earth de IR0ISS”!
Here you are just a short excerpt of his recent story:
I set the radio to the ‘random’ contacts frequency, and without knowing what to expect, I put on the headphones. Physically, the International Space Station was still many kilometres away from the coastlines of Europe, but our horizon stretches out beneath us for thousands of kilometres and the various European ground stations could already see us. My ears were immediately overwhelmed by a cacophony of unidentifiable sounds and noises, voices, screeching and white noise. Then suddenly, a voice surfaced above the other sounds; it was a young man, in my mind barely more than a boy. He was calling the ISS American radio call sign (NA1SS) and repeating his own call sign. I was taken aback by the emotion that rose in me as I tried to reply to the call, using the Italian call sign (IR0ISS). But my excitement was nothing compared to the sheer astonishment and disbelief I heard in that voice, thousands of kilometres away. Speaking English with a beautiful Portuguese accent, the radio operator on the other side of the signal only managed to say a few words – “I don’t know what to say… This is a dream come true for me!†– before our conversation was interrupted and buried by swarms of other calls.
Read the whole story here at ESA Blog
Ham Radio Deluxe 5
Ham Radio Deluxe 5
Ham Radio Deluxe, a software suite for ham radio operators, become quickly popular among the amateur radio community thanks to the powerfullness of it’s features.
Born mainly as a radio-control tool with the CAT commands interface, it has been joined by a complete log-book tool, and a complete multimode decoding/encoding system named Digital Master 780, and many other accessories like rotor control, mapping tools and interfaces to many ham-gadgets and tools.
HRD permitted to many hams to open their windows to the digital modes, in particular to PSK31 and RTTY. DM780 is in any case an excellent CW decoder as well, and can operate in many other modes, like olivia, packtor, packet, SSTV and many many ham radio digital modes.
Originally developped by Simon Brown HB9DRV, GD4ELI and distributed as a freeware, source code has been sold to HRDSoftware LLC  that developed latest versions and release the new commercial version 6.
Since HRD Software LLC announced to dismiss the file hosting of the free version of Ham-Radio-Deluxe 5.x, I’ve decided to host these files for your and mine convenience. Latest available free Ham Radio Deluxe build is the 5.24.38
Download Ham Radio Deluxe 5
Scanning Osnabrueck
I’m in Osnabrueck north germany and playing with my RtlSdr dongle scanning VHF
SDR on your Android Galaxy S3
RTLSDR on a Saturn Galaxy SIII
IW5EIJ Leonardo, yesterday night showed me a nice App running on Android, named SDR Touch.
Connecting the Samsung Galaxy S3 to the RTLSDR dongle will turn your smartphone into a nice wide band receiver.
Leonardo is however experiencing an unwanted and unexpected phone vibration during reception. Could not gave him any hint since, I don’t onw a Galaxy S3 and neither an Android device.
In any case this is a very cool solution, to have always your software defined radio receiver along to you.
Looking to see a similar app even on my iPhone.
If you need to know more about RTL SDR Radio you can read my other posts about RTLSDR, if you are looking for Amateur Radio Android Software you can have a look in the google play store.