Kempton Park & RTTY

All, I hope everyone enjoyed Tony's intersting talk last night on restoring broadcast recievers. I will be keeping an eye out for potential receivers.

This email is just to keep you up to date with our planned events and activites.

This Sunday (27th) the club will be running a stall at the Kempton Park Rally. http://www.g4cdy.co.uk/

This is indoors (So you won't get wet if it rains) and is our closest event.

If you plan to attend do pay us a visit, we will have lots of components and other intersting items for sale at competitive prices. Of course buying from SHARES you will be supporting the club.


We have decided to re-start a club net (Hurrah I hear you say). The net will be slightly different as we will be using RTTY (No bothersome speaking involved).

Details of the net are as follows -

Frequency - 144.500 Mhz

Time 17:30GMT (6:30pm) Sunday evenings.

Mode will be AFSK 45.45 baud – Mark tone = 2125 Hz Space tone 2295 Hz.

First date for the net will be Sunday the 27^th September. The net will run for an initial month to gauge interest. Content of the transmissions will include propagation forecasts and club events in addition to any other subjects club members wish to discuss.

Don't let the RTTY part put you off. Its very simple to install RTTY on your PC and get going on receive by connecting the audio output from your tranceiver to the soundcard of your PC. MMTTY which is a very easy to use RTTY program can be downloaded for free at - http://mmhamsoft.amateur-radio.ca/files/programs/MMTTY166G.exe

The MM website is at - http://mmhamsoft.amateur-radio.ca/mmtty/

Once you have recive working information for a very simple interface for TX can be found at - http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc/interface.html

Once you have this working you will find it can also be used to monitor or work DX on HF.. have a listen on 20M around 14.085 MHz 73 and hope to see you Sunday

Rex - G8UBJ & Tony - G7DGW

--------------------------oOo-------------------------------------------

SHARES radio club meet at the Coach House, Church Hill Road, Surbiton on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month at 8:00pm - 9:30pm

We are a short walk from Surbiton mainline station.

Here is a map showing our loaction -

Next SHARES meeting - Wednesday the 23rd September

All,
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday the 23rd September.

This meeting Tony G7DGW will be giving a presentation -

RESTORING VALVE BROACAST RECEIVERS

From now on to keep everyone up to date and make it easier for potential new club members I will include directions and dates for future club meeting on each post of the blog.

SHARES radio club meet at the Coach House, Church Hill Road, Surbiton on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month at 8:00pm - 9:30pm

We are a short walk from Surbiton mainline station.

Here is a map showing our loaction -

A day out

Our day out on the 27th June was a big success.

We now have a G5RV and long wire antennas installed at the site so in future we will have less work to set up.

The day gave us a good opportunity to fully survey the site and we have found a good place to operate from which is away from the road. And of course our survey included a visit to the local pub which met with the team's approval.

As Tony already observed, the site is very quiet from an electrical point of view (although not as quiet as Phil's FT-101 would have us believe :-)

Thank you to all who participated and I hope you have now all recovered (especially the antenna gang).

Next visit in addition to the current equipment, we need to take -

• A rubbish sack
• More catering (BBQ?) and press the kettle James brought into service!
• insect repellent (I have some spray stuff from Australia that works)

73 M0SHA

VLF and PCBs

Following Wednesdays meeting here are some web links to some of the topics James discussed.
 
Many VLF Sounds and the BBB-4 E-field Receiver  
 
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/mcgreevy/
http://www.auroralchorus.com/

Nasa Space Physics Ionoshpere Radio Experiments  http://theinspireproject.org/

An Improved Gyrator Tuned VLF Receiver   
http://www.aavso.org/observing/programs/solar/gyrator.shtml

A Minimal Gyrator II VLF Receiver   
http://www.aavso.org/observing/programs/solar/minimalVLF.shtml


See Storms Live!     
http://www.blitzortung.org/DF/Webpages/index.php


Hear Storms Live!     
http://abelian.org/vlf/


Audio Spectrum Analysis Software
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/gram.html


Making PCB's with a Laser Printer and Clothes Iron

http://www.dr-lex.be/hardware/tonertransfer.html
http://www.fullnet.com/~tomg/gooteepc.htm
I have used pages carefully removed from vogue or other semi glossy magazines with good results.
 
73's
James

-------------------------------------oOo------------------------------------

And from Mark - G1NYP -

For those playing with vlf i found SPECLAB to b a great program has loads of preset filters including a v good one for removal of mains hum which is a serious problem on a e field rx

its a free download without some form of 50 hz removal i have found even when away in the outback of surrey that pesky mains fills the headphones

regards

Mark

G1NYP

http://freenet-homepage.de/dl4yhf/spectra1.html

Meeting - 27th May

Our next club meeting will be this Wednesday the 27th May.

Come and join us to exchange ideas, have a coffee and some buscuits.

There will be a discussion and demonstration of VLF...

Here is my review and some pictures of the Wouxun Hand held demonstrated at the last meeting - Wouxun

It looks like solar cycle 24 has started at last, the weekly ARRL propagation repoted 2 new sun spots rotating into view. Conditions on 20M have been very good over the last few days.

73 and see you all Wednesday. Tony & Rex

Kempton Park

All,
Our next meeting is this Wednesday the 22nd April. We will be holding a short quiz with the usual refreshments...  A big thank you to all those who made it to Kempton Park for the rally on Sunday. Our stall was a great success with lots of visitors Thanks to Tony for persuading so many of them to part with their money!  

We seem to have settled on the 2M frequency of 144.500Mhz for club use so give a call and maybe you can scare up some SHARES DX 

We look forward to seeing all those who can make it this Wednesday. 

73 Rex & Tony

Data Modes Evening

The next club meeting of SHARES will be on Wednesday the 8th April. 

We will be running a demonstration of data modes on the HF bands (RTTY and PSK31) so this is a good opportunity to see what is required to work these modes and discuss the theory and practicalities of operation.

RTTY mode is now quite old and started in the days when people were using mechanical teleprinters Yes they were as heavy as they looked!). There is no error correction on this mode but like morse it tends to get through most of the time. Of course we now use computers instead of teleprinters..

For more about RTTY have a look at -

RTTY

PSK31 is more recent and is phase shift keying. It was designed as a modern replacement to RTTY and occupies a bandwidth of just 31Hz. Its growing in popularity...

For more about PSK31 have a look at -

PSK31

We have booked a table for the Kempton Radio Fairs rally on the 19th April so we can discuss our preparations for that and of couse there will be tea and biscuits and maybe a raffle.

73 Rex and Tony