Recent content by VO1ONE

I'd assume with terrestrial 23cm a preamp is primarily going to be there to overcome long lossy coax runs although depending on the vintage of your receiver you'll have varying degrees of success with the difference between the noise figure of the preamp and the receiver. Just for putzing...

I didn't say anything about an audience ;) Anyway, if I had more real estate, I'd love to see what I'd be able to pick up with a 20' dish or something. I was seriously considering building an L-band antenna to try and pick up WorldSpace's AfriStar satellite (at 21 degrees East), which in...

Are they rotating between languages? Sounded like Russian or Ukrainian late last night. I also noticed that their webpage has buttons for Russian and Ukrainian as well.

TV DXing doesn't only refer to OTA. I'd consider any television reception beyond the intended broadcast area to be TV DXing. In this case, it would be the reception of the fringe areas of satellite beams and/or sidelobes. Extreme cases would be that guy in Brazil who went to great lengths to...

It could. I have a 50kV distribution line running down the street beside me that radiates all kinds of crud all the way up to 440 MHz depending on the weather. The insulators are over half a century old and should probably be replaced. When it's doing its thing, the noise moves the meter up...

Was with W8WKY this year. If you worked us on CW, you were talking to me :) I did do some voice too here and there. Been at VO1AA in the past for FD.

Ham for 21 years here. Two uncles and a great uncle all have their tickets but I was the first in my immediate family to get mine. I had seen my one uncle's radios before when my cousin took me into the shack. He didn't know much about them either but we turned one on and picked up some...

I listen sometimes. Seems like a lot of the domestic stuff is religious, extremely right wing/conspiracy theorists, or paranormal. A lot of good news from overseas in English, though. There aren't as many broadcasts directed towards North America in English anymore, but there's still plenty...

All satellites and uplinkers are required by the FCC (and possibly the ITU) to transmit ID. I'd assume the reason your spectrum analyzer is only showing a few sats is because the internal cross-reference between the ID and the satellite names is out of date. Although I don't personally own a...

If somehow Digital Data Stream Identification could be implemented to instantly positively ID satellites, that would be great! With the small form factor and a cheap 7" LCD TV, if you have DDSI along with the spectrum analyzer, this could double as a great, inexpensive install tool :)

Ahhh .. in that case I'm happy I woke up at 3AM to order mine as soon as the promo was effective ;)

Couldn't take it any longer so I called. They're in and they're shipping out today! :) Upgraded my shipping to 3 day for $3 .. I won't be stressing over this the whole weekend now! :)

LOL I've been watching for that little green light next to Satellite AV's name to come on to see if Brian will post an update as to whether it cleared customs today as expected or not. Now, the question is if it doesn't, is it possible for customs to clear cargo over the weekend or do they keep...

Switches do last longer than DC jacks, but it's not a deal breaker for me. If I want to cut the power to make sure there's no voltage on the coax to blow out my switches when I'm testing and making adjustments, I'll just flip the switch on the surge protector.

Yes, there are three classes of amateur radio licenses in the US: Technician, General and Extra. Technician is the first, and 2 meters is the most popular band for those operating privileges. Techs do now have privileges on HF, but can only use voice on 10 meters, which is just above the CB...