Listening
I haven't yet been on the air with my new ham radio license. I picked up an old Icom IC-R71A HF receiver from the classifieds on eham, and rigged up a 50 foot longwire antenna in my backyard. Receive-only antennas are a lot more forgiving than transmit antennas, so this works pretty well. I've picked up low power (<10 watt) stations from all over the Eastern US and Canada, as far west as Chicago, and listened to higher powered hams from as far away as Israel.
I've been doing lots of CW (Morse code) listening on the 80m, 40m, and 20m bands. Much of it is sent faster than I can copy. I've been practicing on the computer at 12 wpm and can copy 90% or better at that rate. But real transmissions on the HF band are often plagued by static bursts, fades, and interference from nearby signals, making my accuracy even lower in real life.
I even have a Morse code key, and built a little audio oscillator from a 555 timer. Pretty crude, but it's enough to practice with.
My current plan is to get a low power transmitter kit and build it in the next few months. Several kits are available for as low as $25. These are usually driven by a crystal oscillator, and so limit you to one frequency per crystal, and are CW only. The kits don't usually include any hardware, just the electronic components, a bare circuit board and a schematic. So this is ultra low-tech.
I measured my backyard and I think I can fit a 40m dipole (total length: 20m) along the back. I think rigging this up correctly will be as challenging as building the transmitter.
Jim on 07.22.06 @ 01:18 PM ET [link]