Radio and rails...

Another new mode for me, well, only receiving in this case. I had always been interested in SSTV but that many decades ago there were no PCs and I never did get round to building anything when the BBC Micro came along. Anyway, I was dialling across 20m the other day and came across a very strong SSTV signal which brought back memories of the mode. So I installed qsstv - which needed a few extra bits installing but it all complied up with no errors. To my surprise, as soon as I ran it last night with the rig on 14.230 it decoded and showed SSTV images after just a few seconds! I thought it was a self test at first, but no it was live. A useful feature is it stores images automatically. So now I need to make some images up and have a go at calling CQ SSTV...

...well actually aluminium. I finally cut down an old 'fm' radio dipole to 2m and quietly ran yet another run of WF103 into the loft. So the Trio TR-9130 I got a few weeks ago finally has an aerial. SWR is not bad at 1.2 or so on the VNA. It's mounted horizontally as I got the transceiver in the hope of one day finding some 2m SSB... well it's been 3 hours, nothing yet! Impatient! Anyway it worked fine for the local RSGB News this morning, and to hear someone asking if 145.5 was in use but with no callsign... This also means I finally have a use for the KW520 SWR/power meter. However, it would not register any power on the 20W setting on the 140-525MHz range but did on the 1.8-200MHz range (both of course cover 2m). I took the lid off, discovered it would be rather difficult to get at the switches to check them so put it back together. Of course it now works fine. Perhaps the initial swearing at it actually worked. The Trio causes some QRM on the speakers of one of our PCs - actually in the room below the dipole. But…

It's amazing what a single wall-wart can do. I have some X10 controllers around the place controlling the outside lights and the dimmers in our family room. For ages now, one outside light refused to co-operate. I changed my scripts to fire several on or off commands to this light which worked for a time but then nothing. All the other lights seemed ok. Then the family room lights would either come on or go off at random, but only occasionally. I went round the house with the ICR2 on MW and open squelch and there was a hash coming from one indoor camera but not the other. It also came out of many of the 13A sockets around the house. By now I was convinced I'd have multiple noise sources, potentially all of our wall-warts. Anyway, it got to the stage that the X10 controller running from the house server could no longer reliably control any lights so I got another controller and ran that from the radio PC upstairs. That, at least got most lights back to normal operation, all except the one that had seemingly given up completely. I finally made time to investigate more properly and…

50MHz seems alive just now, and after one incomplete JT65 QSO I finally managed to complete a call with a station in the Slovak Republic at 1,600km or so and then with a station about 3km away! My first, and second ever 6m QSOs.

Up to now I have been wondering if my 6m loft dipole even works, but today I left wstjx running on 50.276 and received 3 decodes. I called CQ too and had a reply but we could not complete unfortunately. Still, it at least proves the antenna does actually work.