My Week in Radio
- Great to see everyone at the breakfast, especially Luke’s loose couplers.
- POTA after the breakfast at Marsh Creek with Vic, KC3TYX
- 20m was the place to be, but 2 of us operating, so we had to take shifts with our own radios.
- Prime Day Shopping
- microcord
- TYT HT for 10w crossband repeater
- I’m using it now as the repeater
- Less tethered to the outside antenna
- Top of the radio/sma is 50C after repeating for an hour on power
- TinySA
- Raspberry Pi Zero W kits
- APRSDroid: phone & radio
- email gateway
- POTA spotting
Notes from Others
- solarham.com
- Reading Ham Fest coming up
- VE session at Stateline Radio Club
Questions
- KC3WWC: What’s cool about APRS?
- APRS weather station
- PWS monitor app to find weather stations near me
- Other gateway frequencies?
- Check with CCAR/ARES/RACES nets for their uses.
- KC3WWC: In Galenium detector,
how does one know when the cat whisker is right?
- Joe, W3GMS
- put on headphones
- move spring arm with stiff wire (cat whisker)
- touch it to the galenium
- move around to find the hot spot where it’s louder
- germanium diode conducts at very low voltages, so easy
- loose couplers don’t work so well in a crystal set, since it’s lossy
- spark era - 1913
- before galenium, there was a tube with metal filings, a “coherer”.
- activate a buzzer
- tap that would fall and reset the coherer
- after galenium, then audion tube
- imperative to have a very big antenna to capture as much signal as possible.
- drive diode into forward current
- Heathkit made a collectible kit
- tightly coupled
- voltage increase in the second coil
- higher Q, so could be made more selective
- Luke, KC3SCY, counted 20 different stations one night
- Chuck, NA3CW
- fox-hole radio: rusty razor blade, lead pencil, coil, safety pin, oatmeal box, wire
- galena: ore of lead sulfide
- immerse the galena in base of lead solder
- grope around quietly to find magic spot where it works best
- same thing with foxhole radio
- uses oxide for detecting, not stainless
- galena has 0.4V drop, like germanium diode
- Ron, WA3VEE
- has a marconi cat whiskey receiver
- 0.4V can be converted to dBm, and it’s a pretty large signal required
- predates any amplification
- Joe, W3GMS
- WA3VEE: What is the most important measure of solar activity we need to consider?