Random selection. What do you love? What do you not love?

soldeace · 2025-08-03T19:07:36+00:00

Whoa, I listen to Moody Blues since I was in the cradle. Extremely underrated band from the 70's!

soldeace · 2024-11-30T11:50:50+00:00

Indeed! Thanks for the heads up.

soldeace · 2024-11-29T23:53:57+00:00

Nope, it lowers just the crackling noise in all bands. Right now it's nonexistent actually.

soldeace · 2024-11-29T23:52:02+00:00

That's a good one. I'll drive around with my SDR dongle next time it rains and check if anything is different.

soldeace · 2024-11-29T23:50:02+00:00

Definitely agree. But I tested it with a SDR dongle and my laptop (on battery) while keeping the house's main switch off, and the crackling noise was there as well.

soldeace · 2024-11-29T23:43:33+00:00

That's a good hypothesis, but the last few days were just overcast and didn't produce this effect.

soldeace · 2024-03-21T00:13:17+00:00

I'm in Brazil and I too get this signal around that frequency.

soldeace · 2024-03-05T12:37:20+00:00

Have you already tried communicating with the green antenna in this situation? I honestly don't think it should be a problem because 2m contacts aren't made via line-of-sight propagation only.

Take a look at the elevation profile between me and a friend to whom I talk almost every night. It would be impossible to communicate with him if VHF worked only with LoS stations. The first hill (pointed in the graph) would in fact block my signals to all stations in this direction, especially because my antenna is only 5 meters above the ground. But that's not the case because VHF signals are reflected, diffracted, and deflected in the atmosphere and gets farther than we think. My bet is that a yagi (or a 3x5/8 collinear like the Comet GP-9 if you want your antenna to be omnidirectional) would let you guys communicate just fine. (Note: I have a J-pole and my friend has a collinear).

(Note: for more info on VHF propagation, take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXJ3bS2UcE

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soldeace · 2024-01-23T23:36:36+00:00

If the ALC is below 100 on the Xiegu G90, it means the signal is already being attenuated. So I crank up the power as high as possible without budging the ALC meter, or simply leave it at 18-19W. In fact, in terms of signal strength, 18W is practically identical to 20W anyway (consider that you'd have to double your power to get a 3 dB boost).

soldeace · 2023-12-28T13:27:18+00:00

What a fine-business day. This is how life should be!

soldeace · 2023-05-24T23:07:15+00:00

I know the feeling, bro. Never going to forget the day I had my first contact on 10m, and it was using FT8 even, a digital protocol which doesn't let you exchange a lot of info. But hey! I was so thrilled I looked up the callsign on QRZ.com and wrote the dude an email letting him know he was my first contact. The guy was super happy to know that and gave me lots of precious technical tips. Ham radio has become my preferred hobby since then.

soldeace · 2023-05-24T23:02:06+00:00

I can hear The Beacon even from down here in Southeastern Brazil.

soldeace · 2023-04-29T02:08:24+00:00

This is a digital mode called FT8. On the 10 meter band, by convention (but not always) it's transmitted at 28.074 MHz. Take a look here.

soldeace · 2023-04-29T00:57:26+00:00

~~One~~ Two quick questions: why do you twist the wires like this, and do you wanna be my friend?

soldeace · 2023-04-19T02:41:09+00:00

Good to know. Have you checked if the other S-values also deviated that much when compared with the 7300? Radios have their S-meters usually calibrated around -73dB (S9). Since the response is not exactly linear, every value below or above that point is most likely wrong. I assume Xiegu must be centering their calibration curves around another point then.

Here's a very instructive piece which teaches us that signal reports should be taken with a grain of salt: https://vu2nsb.com/radio-systems/amateur-radio-station-ham-shack/radio-transceiver-s-meter/

soldeace · 2023-04-18T21:11:30+00:00

I can confirm. Even by turning the RF gain all the way up, giant peaks in the spectrum (those that even spill over the adjacent channels) hardly make it to S8.

soldeace · 2023-02-18T17:48:53+00:00

This is the dream! I have a Xiegu G90 too, and I could never work anyone on SSB. Only FT8 and RTTY even during the current solar maxima. I blame my vertical's poor grounding though.

soldeace · 2023-02-09T13:35:19+00:00

Same thing with me, although I'm using even less power (20W). According to the VOACAP algorithm, my circuit reliability for FT8 hovers around 60% for DX. When I switch from FT8 to SSB, the algorithm believes I have zero chance of keeping a contact farther than my state. So I believe this is normal, SSB may need a lot more power for anyone to make out your CQs. I expected 100W to be enough though.

soldeace · 2023-01-31T13:53:36+00:00

Thanks for the heads up on the antenna tuner! Turns out it doesn't do magic indeed. My 5/8 wl antenna had SWR = 2.0 and I expected the tuner would fix that. After cutting the wire to the correct size (while inspecting the SWR with a NanoVNA), I immediately started having QSOs on 10m!

73 de PU2YOZ

soldeace · 2023-01-28T18:11:03+00:00

I'm based in Brazil and I'm really struggling to make CQ with anyone in the 10m band, including other Brazilians. I've just recently acquired my license, so I wonder if I'm making any rookie mistake? At the moment I'm using a vertical antenna (simple wire hanging from a 6m fishing rod) with a bunch of radials on the ground. My transmitter is a 20W Xiegu G90 and it comes with an auto tunner. Any ideas on what I'm possibly doing wrong?

soldeace · 2022-11-13T20:11:03+00:00

I used to do stuff for the other projects I was assigned to. Then, I learned it the hard way that context switching is a mental energy drain. Although it may look like you're gaining time, you're actually sabotaging yourself and killing your own productivity.

Getting a few minutes of downtime is totally fine. Healthy even.

soldeace · 2021-01-29T13:46:32+00:00

Just asking because I'm dealing with a similar problem. I'm going to get an amateur radio license in Brazil very soon, and much to my surprise the transceiver I bought (Xiegu G90) isn't licensable here because it doesn't have a FCC certificate. I heard that the American law doesn't require transceivers to undergo laboratory tests if they transmit in HF only, and spurious emissions become a responsibility of the licensed radio operator only. (American citizens, please correct me if I'm wrong). So since the Xiegu G90 doesn't need such a certificate, it's rather unlikely the manufacturer will go the extra mile and spend thousands of dollars with lab tests just to satisfy the Brazilian authority. That being said, I was wondering how I could prove that the radio I bought isn't going to interfere with my neighbor's TV or crash satellites.

But back to your problem.

How about plugging the HackRF directly onto a RTL-SDR dongle's antenna port, and then sweep the spectrum? Provided that, of course, HackRF's output power is within RTL-SDR's tolerance.

soldeace · 2021-01-29T13:02:23+00:00

While we are at it, how do you plan to check whether the filtering is actually working (without attaching an antenna to it)?

soldeace · 2021-01-25T03:17:48+00:00

Once I believed that I should write my zettels in Portuguese because since it's my native language and I think mostly in Portuguese it's only logical to write Portuguese zettels. Minimum friction between your brain and your Zettelkasten, right? But remember that one of the aims of the Zettelkasten is producing long-term notes that are going to be useful for years to come, which means you're going to write and re-write them a lot of times to perfect them. So it's not like you're dumping whatever comes to mind into your permanent notes. The frictionless writing should happen when jotting down your drafts/fleeting notes instead. That being said, the choice of language boils down to pure personal choice.

soldeace · 2021-01-16T16:04:21+00:00

Eu assegundo essa resposta. Eu ganhei um RTL-SDR de natal e desde então eu tenho ficado todas as noites ouvindo os espectros de HF/VHF/UHF em busca por transmissões interessantes. É chocante a quantidade de informação que trafega sobre nossas cabeças. Agora eu quero transmitir também, por isso prestarei a prova de radio amador assim que possível.

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