On 1885 Tonight

[Bill, KD0HG]

Got the dipole repaired today...Will be listening / CQ ing on 1885 much of this evening.

bill 1700 MSTWednesday

[WD8BIL]

It's busy here now Bill. I'll be listening for you on and off this evening.

[K9ACT]

It's busy here now Bill. I'll be listening for you on and off this evening.

We need to expand our horizons.

There was a QSO on 85 that I could not copy and one on 80 with a couple of windbags that seemed to have to key down before the other person stopped talking.

I moved down to 70 and ran the robot for 30 mins without a bite.

This is a promo for SDR and the panadapter window.  If you sit staring at your speaker, parked on 85 or anywhere else for that matter, you have no way of knowing what else is going on.

With my $50 soft rock I can see every QSO from 1830 to 1900.  When I new carrier pops up, I jump over to see what's up.  If he is calling CQ, I pounce, if not, I go back to calling CQ.

I can't believe the love affairs with old boat anchor receivers.  They are fun to look at and play with maybe but SDR and panadapter is today's real receiver.

js

[flintstone mop]

Heeey Jack let's not forget anything above 1900 too!
Everybody gets stuck around 1880 something.
And yes, the Panadapter shows how busy it can get. It's nice to shift the I.F. around and BW and to make the QSO sound like Hi-Fi\

Fred

[k4kyv]

A dead-air slopbucket group has been showing up just above 1885 lately. They are aware when there is AM activity, making a point to mention that they must be bothering the AM'ers a lot more than the AM'ers are bothering them. I put it in the category of a dead-air group because sometimes they go for 5-10 minutes without anyone saying anything, broken by occasional one or two-word comments, then another 5-10 minutes of silence.  But as soon as AM activity starts up on '85, the whole gang suddenly becomes active.

Another AM group meets regularly on 1880 in the evening, but it usually expands to too large a roundtable to suit me.  I have been slipping up to 1886 or 87 to leave a bit more breathing room.  5 kHz is not enough separation between two AM QSO's.

AM activity can be heard most evenings on 1985 or thereabouts.

[N0WVA]

A dead-air slopbucket group has been showing up just above 1885 lately. They are aware when there is AM activity, making a point to mention that they must be bothering the AM'ers a lot more than the AM'ers are bothering them. I put it in the category of a dead-air group because sometimes they go for 5-10 minutes without anyone saying anything, broken by occasional one or two-word comments, then another 5-10 minutes of silence.  But as soon as AM activity starts up on '85, the whole gang suddenly becomes active.

Another AM group meets regularly on 1880 in the evening, but it usually expands to too large a roundtable to suit me.  I have been slipping up to 1886 or 87 to leave a bit more breathing room.  5 kHz is not enough separation between two AM QSO's.

AM activity can be heard most evenings on 1985 or thereabouts.

Makes you wonder what they are doing in between the "uhhh's" and "yepps". Reminds me of the party line when I was a kid. The kid down the creek would be on the phone with his buddy, both  watching TV and most of it was dead air time.....You might think I was listening in or something.

[K5UJ]

I heard those guys on 1888 tonight.  Jack, what's a Panadapter?  Was that made by Lakeshore Industries?  What's the filament voltage? 

[KF1Z]

I bought 4 softrocks for $48.

I wonder which model you bought?

[K9ACT]

I have been slipping up to 1886 or 87 to leave a bit more breathing room.  5 kHz is not enough separation between two AM QSO's.

That puts you smack dab in the middle of the buckets with no possibility of filtering them out.

I spent another half hour after 9 with the robot on 75 with no joy.  You were just signing off when I gave up.  I was "watching" your QSO.

js

[K9ACT]

I heard those guys on 1888 tonight.  Jack, what's a Panadapter?  Was that made by Lakeshore Industries?  What's the filament voltage?  

That seems to be the name of the panoramic view of the current SDR receivers.  I know little about the namesake other than that only a collector of radio memorabilia could find it useful.

For those who have never seen this, I have attached a screen shot of your signal from last night.  This is the view in PwSDR using a $50 Soft Rock.  Why anyone would want to stare at the speaker of a buzzardly old boat anchor when they could look at this with even a $15 Softrock is one of the mysteries of ham radio.

N.B.  It is also obvious looking at this what Don has in mind when suggesting that AM stations 5kc apart are QRMing each other.  Translate:  they are as rude as slop buckets.

js

[wa2dtw]

Some of the older receivers won't select out QSO's 5kc away.  I know that my SX28 won't.  We should decide on either 1880 or 1885 as a calling frequency and stick with it.  Or else-  a 7 or 8 kc separation should work much better.
As for the slopbuckets, they will get the message.   We have more staying power than they do.
73
Steve WA2DTW

[flintstone mop]

Last night was VERY busy. And Bill, HG, you were doing very nice into Western Pa but the highway was very busy. I couldn't get my K9AY loop to focus on the direction of your signal. The busyness was from ops closer to me, I guess.
We had a nice QSO with AL W1UX and K4KYV, Don. I even had a 120hz noise on my carrier. Don thought it was a PS in his RX, But I quickly unkeyed and saw a little carrier disappear. So it was the typical brain dead activity of a fellow Ham.

The Panadapter on the Soft rock and Flex is pretty nice. I can tailor my RX and TX bandwidth so I always hear armchair copy and I'm not sssssssssss and hhhhhhhhhh ing a close by QSO. Still have to abide by 6-10 kc separation, though.

Keep sleeping Mr Sun, we're having fun on the low bands.

Fred

[Bill, KD0HG]

Hi Don and all:

One of the QSY issues here and elsewhere is antenna bandwidth on 160.

I use a full-sized fan dipole with the ends spread 3 feet, and it covers only 50 to 75 KHz with a safe VSWR for full power operation. I don't want to use a tuner in the shack and run high power into a long mismatched feedline.  My antenna is resonant around 1850, 1915 is at the high edge. 1985 KHz is out of the question unless I shorten it up a few feet.

I did have a good AM QSO with K5UJ in Illinois last evening on 1890 KHz, I just don't hear a lot of the PW SSB activity around 1885 from the east coast that you guys do. Any tall ship running QRO AM does the job here.

Conditions on 160 are exceptional, it sounds and works like 75 this winter. Even solid copy on a lot of 50 KW AM BCB from out east almost every evening.

Got a full house for Thanksgiving dinner and the Denver Donkeys play football this evening, so won't likely be on tonight.

[K9ACT]

We had a nice QSO with AL W1UX and K4KYV, Don.

Does this imply that I heard the Mop last night and didn't know it?

What is the big secret about your call sign?

Posting regularly to a ham group without a call sign seems a bit strange.

But then there was that guy who only wants to talk to his friends so ... what do I know?

js

[k4kyv]

I even had a 120hz noise on my carrier. Don thought it was a PS in his RX, But I quickly unkeyed and saw a little carrier disappear. So it was the typical brain dead activity of a fellow Ham.

The problem was in my receiver.  One of the 40 mfd sections of the filter cap in the 75A-4 apparently opened.

That was a brand new replacement cap that I installed just 2-3 years ago, supposedly built by another manufacturer to original specifications, using manufacturing equipment they acquired from the Mallory factory.

I think I'll repair it for now by diverting the section that serves as a decoupling cap for the product detector over to the main filtering section, and wire in a smaller cap  with pigtail leads to take care of the decoupling function.

Probably would have done better if I had used an old electrolytic from the junkbox, salvaged from some piece of parted out equipment.  I  recall paying over $40 for that exact  replacement 3-section cap, and thought it would last for ever since its voltage rating is 100 volts higher than the original.

[flintstone mop]

We had a nice QSO with AL W1UX and K4KYV, Don.

Does this imply that I heard the Mop last night and didn't know it?

What is the big secret about your call sign?

Posting regularly to a ham group without a call sign seems a bit strange.

But then there was that guy who only wants to talk to his friends so ... what do I know?

js

it's flintstone MOP Jack
I try to get on and I'm trying to do it more often. It's the family duties and after 10P my mind is mush and I dont want to deal with crowded band condx.
Were you a secret listener....you shudda jumped in.

Fred

[K9ACT]

it's flintstone MOP Jack
I try to get on and I'm trying to do it more often. It's the family duties and after 10P my mind is mush and I dont want to deal with crowded band condx.
Were you a secret listener....you shudda jumped in.
[/quote]

First of all there was that slop bucket knocking out half of the AM transmissions so it was sort of unplesant but I was keeping my eye on youse guys while calling CQ on 1875.  I did hear Don mention "Fred" but of course, unless he said "back to you Flintstone Mop", how would I know that he was talking to you.

You still evaded telling us your call sign.  The secret seems to be your identity.
js

[KF1Z]

I took about a minute to find it out here and QRZ.

Why he didn't mention it, I don't know. We'll leave that to him to answer....

But, he said  "MOP"

So I assumed that to be the suffix....

Go to his profile, it says where he lives....

Go to QRZ, type in the town's zip code....

Look for "MOP".

[flintstone mop]

I took about a minute to find it out here and QRZ.

Why he didn't mention it, I don't know. We'll leave that to him to answer....

But, he said  "MOP"

So I assumed that to be the suffix....

Go to his profile, it says where he lives....

Go to QRZ, type in the town's zip code....

Look for "MOP".

The mystery is solved.......KC4MOP MOP radio.....MOPMAN, etc etc

Fred

[flintstone mop]

Update for 1885 tonight and even 3880 SAT 9PM.
The party must have been earlier. Very weak sigs.
Don, K4KYV sounds like he moved to the tip of S. America.

Fred

[W3SLK]

I didn't have any trouble tonight talking with Phil K2PG while he was down in West Creek, NJ. The band was relatively quiet and conditions were nice. No sloppbucket activity to drag you down.

[k4kyv]

Last night (Saturday PM) Rob K5UJ and I had about a 2˝-hour marathon one-on-one on 1885.  A couple of times there were some QSB dips but most of the time arm-chair copy. At one point someone dropped jamming noises on frequency and about 2 minutes later a slopbucket QSO tried to start up couple of kHz above our carrier frequency, but Rob and I each enjoyed perfect copy and simply ignored the garbage.  The usual 1880 kHz AM group was also in progress, with little or no mutual interference as far as I could tell.  I did finally move up about a kHz higher to increase separation and switched in my 3400~ brick-wall lowpass audio filter, to increase the probability that both AM QSO's would continue to peacefully coexist.

What is great about the synchronous detector is the degree of transparency it gives to incidental noise and QRM, kind of like when you carry on a conversation at a sidewalk café with street traffic noise in the background.  The noise is there, but you can tune it out by ear and listen to the other person's voice, understanding him or her perfectly.

The way this works is that with a conventional envelope detector like the standard diode circuit, every element of noise and interference within the receiver passband intermodulates with every element of the desired signal, including both of the sidebands and the carrier. Thus the noise/QRM could be described as opaque since it blots out portions or all of the desired signal as well as competing with it.  But with the synch detector, the synchronised BFO demodulates the two sidebands while the AM station's transmitted carrier merely serves as a reference for the BFO to lock onto.  The noise and QRM beat with the local BFO so the noise is still there, but the noise and QRM do not intermodulate with the sidebands of the desired signal, allowing the sideband information to come out of the coherent detection process unaltered.  Therefore the interference still competes with the desired signal but without destroying it, so it becomes a matter of focusing one's attention on the desired signal information while ignoring the noise, kinda like listening to a person talk to you at the café while a bus is passing by in the street.

[K9ACT]

Last night (Saturday PM) Rob K5UJ and I had about a 2˝-hour marathon one-on-one on 1885.

I was dying to get a dipole/vertical comparison from you but having spent the previous 2 hours with Rob and ECK, I thought I had better stay away and fired up on 1875.  You were lucky there were only 2 of you.  The three of us made 2 transmissions ea in 2 hours.

I re-made my dipole with copper wire which preliminary tests seem like a 10 db improvement.  You are about the only one hearing my vertical better than the dipole so it will be interesting to see if this still holds.

Big problem with the copper is that it is much heavier than the steel fence wire and without risking pulling down the trees, I can only get it up about 30 feet.  The steel would go to 45 with much less tension.

js

[K5UJ]

Last night (Saturday PM) Rob K5UJ and I had about a 2˝-hour marathon one-on-one on 1885.

I was dying to get a dipole/vertical comparison from you but having spent the previous 2 hours with Rob and ECK, I thought I had better stay away and fired up on 1875.  You were lucky there were only 2 of you.  The three of us made 2 transmissions ea in 2 hours.

I re-made my dipole with copper wire which preliminary tests seem like a 10 db improvement.  You are about the only one hearing my vertical better than the dipole so it will be interesting to see if this still holds.

Big problem with the copper is that it is much heavier than the steel fence wire and without risking pulling down the trees, I can only get it up about 30 feet.  The steel would go to 45 with much less tension.

WB9ECK and I tend to get long winded in our afternoon visits   

Don, I have to get one of those Sherwood sync detectors to go with my 75A3 one of these days.  I just hope Rob keeps making them.  One of the problems with little ham equipment manufacturers is that they sometimes pop up and make a really useful and cool product but suddenly disappear and if their gear is any good it never shows up on the used market.  I read the Sherwood review in ER and it sounds like a must have.

The yaesu rig has what is claimed to be an AM sync. detector but it isn't any good.   It only works well with a very strong signal, but if you have a very strong signal you don't really need it. 

This morning I had 20 dB over 9 noise on 75.   I went out hunting and the culprit seems to be one or more problems on power poles on a street about 3 blocks east of my QTH.  I'll call that in tomorrow and see what happens.

Jack, yes the copper wire is pretty heavy for long spans.  I use the soft no. 12 stranded insulated house wiring here but my longest spans are only about 40 feet because I have a feedpoint support to maintain a minimal average dipole height.  I would never use that wire for something like an 80 m. dipole with only the ends supported.  Besides the weight and tension, it will stretch.  If you have a span over 50 feet I would use hard drawn copper wire.  I think you can get it from Wireman,
RadioWorks, Cablexperts...the usual suspects.   I had some but used it all up earlier this week helping a friend make a 130 foot dipole down in Indianapolis. 

73

Rob

[K9ACT]

Jack, yes the copper wire is pretty heavy for long spans.... Besides the weight and tension, it will stretch.  If you have a span over 50 feet I would use hard drawn copper wire.  I think you can get it from Wireman,
RadioWorks, Cablexperts...the usual suspects. 

Well, the price was right and I couldn't resist the convenience of the Local ACE next to the food store where Marilyn was shopping. $19 for a nearly full 500 ft reel.

I don't think stretch is much of an issue because that is what they do to soft copper to make it hard drawn.

I will just wait of few weeks and trim it if necesary.

js