Radio and rails...

One of my interests, of which there are far too many for me to ever get anything done, is VLF. I regularly receive the broadcasts from SAQ and having a bit of time after the Christmas holidays and before having to get to grips with the garden ready for spring I downloaded Opera v1.6.5 by EA5HVK of VARA etc. fame. It can be found via https://rosmodem.wordpress.com/ I didn't (yet) find a lot of information but there has been a bit of chatter on the VLF email groups of late and the software basically needed very little setting up - however I am receive only yet so time will tell. Anyway, it installed under Wine on one of the Linux boxes and only offered me the internal soundcard for audio, which is what I needed anyway. The only antenna I have which is suitable for VLF reception is the YouLoop in the loft. This works well with the Airspy HF+ Discovery and SDR++ on the Mac for reception of SAQ and the plethora of 'interesting' signals down there. So I questioned that Opera would work if I simply piped the audio from SDR++ into the Linux PC - it works with…

The first new (to me) toy of 2026 is a Yaesu G5400B Az/El rotator and controller. This is another thing I have been looking for and this came at a reasonable price. Not yet tested as it needs cables which are made to measure... I've no idea even where to mount it! I can see it ending up on a short mast somewhere up the garden with a couple of Yagi antennas on for 2m and 70cm for satellite work. EME has always been a dream and this has potential and for me EME is more something I want to do but not do all the time. Plus it's hard! So, above is is the two parts of the rotator itself, azimuth on the left and elevation on the right. And the controller is shown below. The unit is 240V powered and once I get some cable I will test it.

Today saw the Christmas 2025 broadcast from SAQ. I set up three receivers to see if any could pick the signal up. These were as follows: YouLoop 1 (loft), Airspy HF+ Discovery, Mac SDR++ YouLoop 2 (loft), Heros VLF converter, SDRPLay RSP2, Linux SDRconnect PA0RDT miniwhip (loft) plus associated preamp, Behringer UMC204HD, Linux VLF-RX tools During the event the VLF-RX code refused to start because, I think anyway ALSA mixer had claimed all the interfaces - the error was that the interface was busy. I was running YouTube on that PC for the live stream. There was no copy, not even a trace of the signal via the RSP2, but the Airspy setup worked fine. Signal strength was well down on last time but still readable visually and audibly although the report I submitted was QSA 2 and QRK 3. The screenshot above shows the reception plus the difference between the LNA being off (lower half) and on. The YouTube video of the event can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSGQ0zR188Q

Bought myself a small treat for the coming year... makes a change from the tiny freebie calendars I get sent. https://tubemapper.com/

I have been pondering leaving a screen attached to the Winterhill box and ahve now acquired a screen from a retired PC. It is destined to be hung on the wall but I also wanted a keyboard and mouse for the box. I have a spare RF keyboard and mouse but they tend to always be in the way. So I found this on Amazon, cheap enough to try and discard if no good: It is tiny and works fine. It would never replace a 'proper' keyboard most of the time but for this purpose it is ideal. I am not sure how long it will last as it does seem a bit fragile, in particular the power switch on the top does not seem to be of any quality. But time will tell. I can see this being useful elsewhere around the place. It looks to have most of the keys I would ever need including the Windows key (if one must!) plus backslash and that reverse aprostrophe that is sometimes missing. It misses that Pound and Euro but never mind.