Stormy weather
jim_kr1s <jkearman@...>
Everyone enjoying the geomagnetic storms? A good chance to charge the batteries, make those patch cables you've been needing, and get reacquainted with the family.
Longwave was down last night too, with only bits of audio. Whatever interference is on 207 kHz was also down, letting me hear some audio on that frequency. It probably was Deutschlandfunk, but even the normally strong Europe 1 on 183 was in the noise. The weather in Florida was fine last night, about 70F and clear, so I took the radio and Hoop Loop for a walk. The intent was to see whether getting out of the building reduced noise or improved signal strengths. Not a good night for testing, but it's possible to walk and DX while carrying the PL-380 and the loop, and all the neighbors were in bed by 11, so I wasn't hauled off in a straitjacket.
Despite not logging any new ones last night, I am laying claim to being the first to turn the PL-380 into a regenerative receiver. Tried a larger inductance on the matching transformer yesterday, to see if it would perk up the 150-280 kHz range. I already knew that coil wouldn't resonate at 530 kHz, but wanted to see how much it affected R. Enciclopedia, which is still booming in despite conditions. The ladies were still strong -- for about 2 seconds. Then the "pinging" the chip does to find resonance on the coil sent the induced voltage high enough to drive the low-noise amplifier into instability. It warbled nicely on 530, and on Reloj on 570. I've long wondered what it would take to make the chip do that, and now I know! Voltages that high on the LNA input probably aren't helpful, so I terminated the experiment and went back to LW, where the amp is still perfectly stable.
Until this storm passes, I'll be reading a book just received, by Hargreaves, "The High-latitude Ionosphere and its Effects on Radio Propagation." This Cambridge text lists at USD115.00, but must be remaindered, as new copies are showing up for less than USD3.00 in various places. The first 5 chapters or so are an extensive and not highly mathematical overview of the ionosphere and the geomagnetic field. The higher latitudes are where TA and TP signals go on their way to us. We can't control propagation, but at least we can understand it.
My counts for April are MW: 408 stations, 28 states, 1 province, 23 countries, 5 continents.
LW: 28 stations, 3 states, 0 provinces, 10 countries, 3 continents (forgot NA counts, the other day!)
PL-380 and23-inch Hoop Loop.
73,
Jim, KR1S
http://kr1s.kearman.com/
Longwave was down last night too, with only bits of audio. Whatever interference is on 207 kHz was also down, letting me hear some audio on that frequency. It probably was Deutschlandfunk, but even the normally strong Europe 1 on 183 was in the noise. The weather in Florida was fine last night, about 70F and clear, so I took the radio and Hoop Loop for a walk. The intent was to see whether getting out of the building reduced noise or improved signal strengths. Not a good night for testing, but it's possible to walk and DX while carrying the PL-380 and the loop, and all the neighbors were in bed by 11, so I wasn't hauled off in a straitjacket.
Despite not logging any new ones last night, I am laying claim to being the first to turn the PL-380 into a regenerative receiver. Tried a larger inductance on the matching transformer yesterday, to see if it would perk up the 150-280 kHz range. I already knew that coil wouldn't resonate at 530 kHz, but wanted to see how much it affected R. Enciclopedia, which is still booming in despite conditions. The ladies were still strong -- for about 2 seconds. Then the "pinging" the chip does to find resonance on the coil sent the induced voltage high enough to drive the low-noise amplifier into instability. It warbled nicely on 530, and on Reloj on 570. I've long wondered what it would take to make the chip do that, and now I know! Voltages that high on the LNA input probably aren't helpful, so I terminated the experiment and went back to LW, where the amp is still perfectly stable.
Until this storm passes, I'll be reading a book just received, by Hargreaves, "The High-latitude Ionosphere and its Effects on Radio Propagation." This Cambridge text lists at USD115.00, but must be remaindered, as new copies are showing up for less than USD3.00 in various places. The first 5 chapters or so are an extensive and not highly mathematical overview of the ionosphere and the geomagnetic field. The higher latitudes are where TA and TP signals go on their way to us. We can't control propagation, but at least we can understand it.
My counts for April are MW: 408 stations, 28 states, 1 province, 23 countries, 5 continents.
LW: 28 stations, 3 states, 0 provinces, 10 countries, 3 continents (forgot NA counts, the other day!)
PL-380 and23-inch Hoop Loop.
73,
Jim, KR1S
http://kr1s.kearman.com/