RECEIVERS
INFORMATION
LINKS
Message from yvesvdd at Saturday, 12-Mar-11 20:37:12 GMT
Thanks to Dick ZS6RO to share this tuner on a very exotic location - South Africa!
This is our first tuner on the African continent.
Enjoy!
This is our first tuner on the African continent.
Enjoy!
Message from de9man at Sunday, 13-Mar-11 01:44:06 GMT
Dear ZS6RO, Hi,
I was looking since a long time for any Radio Receiver in the African Continent to locate the Radio Signals of BBC, DW and R. Netherland etc as well as Ham-Signal too. Thank You very much for your Participation with us as GT-Member. Thanx again and Good bye with best Regards.
Yours Sincerely Sudi (de9man) from Germany
I was looking since a long time for any Radio Receiver in the African Continent to locate the Radio Signals of BBC, DW and R. Netherland etc as well as Ham-Signal too. Thank You very much for your Participation with us as GT-Member. Thanx again and Good bye with best Regards.
Yours Sincerely Sudi (de9man) from Germany
Message from zs6ro at Sunday, 13-Mar-11 07:47:14 GMT
Its a pleasure de9man .. When DX-Tuners was running, I had my Node up and running for a few years and was a lot of fun ... I'm now continuing the fun *Smile ...
73, Dick ZS6RO
73, Dick ZS6RO
Message from zs6ro at Monday, 14-Mar-11 12:16:16 GMT
I've just finished reading through The Johannesburg Node log-file. Seems like a number of listeners remember this Node from the DX-Tuner days.
This Johannesburg Node is installed in exactly the same location, same receiver(PCR-1000), same antenna. Its possible that the 'better overall reception than before' noticed by some, my be contributed by external conditions, rather than anything I may have done to the installation.
My Internet connection is an ADSL line (copper landline) about 1km from the telephone exchange (switch). My maximum download speed may be up to 512kb/s and maximum upload speed may be up to 256kb/s, but is usually much less - kinda slow to the rest of the World's data networks.
I am a Radio Ham (ZS6RO) and have been running a HF/VHF/UHF Packet/Pactor-1,2,3 Radio BBS and a DX-Cluster for many years (+20 years). I also have a Weather webpage showing my local weather. This is all homebrew using a PIC. It can be received on APRS. The weather webpage is http://www.zs6ro.co.za:8080/weather ...
If anyone has critiscm, good or bad, please let me know and I will try and improve things here.
73, Dick ZS6RO
This Johannesburg Node is installed in exactly the same location, same receiver(PCR-1000), same antenna. Its possible that the 'better overall reception than before' noticed by some, my be contributed by external conditions, rather than anything I may have done to the installation.
My Internet connection is an ADSL line (copper landline) about 1km from the telephone exchange (switch). My maximum download speed may be up to 512kb/s and maximum upload speed may be up to 256kb/s, but is usually much less - kinda slow to the rest of the World's data networks.
I am a Radio Ham (ZS6RO) and have been running a HF/VHF/UHF Packet/Pactor-1,2,3 Radio BBS and a DX-Cluster for many years (+20 years). I also have a Weather webpage showing my local weather. This is all homebrew using a PIC. It can be received on APRS. The weather webpage is http://www.zs6ro.co.za:8080/weather ...
If anyone has critiscm, good or bad, please let me know and I will try and improve things here.
73, Dick ZS6RO
Message from Calico at Monday, 14-Mar-11 17:26:52 GMT
Hi Dick,
First of all thanks for sharing your local reception with us all !
Visited your Main Page (as well as the WX link), wish we had your lovely temperatures at the moment!
What would you say is the best frequency response of your antenna?
I tried some beacons on 14 100 k/c CW a bit earlier but couldn't receive for example ZS6DN (combination of AGC On, ATTN on/off)
It's a beacon I'd like to hear as I don't often hear if from my QTH
Would it be too risky to presume that since you are a ham, we may get to have access to your antenna for ham-bands too ? :-)
Thanks again for your radio and ham-spirit!
73,
Tim (Dorset, UK)
First of all thanks for sharing your local reception with us all !
Visited your Main Page (as well as the WX link), wish we had your lovely temperatures at the moment!
What would you say is the best frequency response of your antenna?
I tried some beacons on 14 100 k/c CW a bit earlier but couldn't receive for example ZS6DN (combination of AGC On, ATTN on/off)
It's a beacon I'd like to hear as I don't often hear if from my QTH
Would it be too risky to presume that since you are a ham, we may get to have access to your antenna for ham-bands too ? :-)
Thanks again for your radio and ham-spirit!
73,
Tim (Dorset, UK)
Message from zs6ro at Tuesday, 15-Mar-11 14:23:14 GMT
As I mentioned on this thread earlier Calico (Tim), its a pleasure - of course, first it was a challenge to get it up and running, then its a pleasure listening to what others like listening to -- *Grin ...
Regarding the 'lovely temperatures' that we are experiencing here, I hope you didn't think that 86 deg C was 'normal' !! .. If you were on the WX webpage of mine, you would have noticed some spikes on the various graphs displayed there. These were caused (I think) by me fiddling around near the circuitry while getting the GlobalTuner bit sorted out - sorry if you thought we were 'cooking' here !!! *BIG Grin ... Usually temperatures outside average in the region of 27 deg C during the midday .. At the moment 14:00 UTC) its raining with thunder and lightning and 18 deg C - usual at this time of the year ...
The antenna is a bit of a hotch-potch and I would take a guess (hopefully somewhat 'educated'!), that its best response is in the region of the upper MW to the low HF section ... The biggest problem usually is the height - ideal heights cannot be realised easily in the suburbs - so the 'direction' the antenna takes is mostly 'up' into the sky ...
14 MHz and ZS6DN is very much a problem here - ZS6DN and I are too close and just too far for ground-wave results ... Also I've found that even using my 3-element yagi, I get very poor results on 14MHz to the UK - lower parts of Europe are usually better - Germany and further south - of course, 21 MHz is better to the UK when the band is open ... Don't forget that if you were able to hear ZS6DN's beacon, the 3 second audio-stream delay would throw the GPS timing out of the window for any form of syn'cing - but you would have realised that *Smile ..
Since putting up this Node and studying the GlobalTuner's software (on my SuSe Linux box), I have been thinking of taking the results of the log file, looking for the frequency changes and when they occur, and creating a Perl script to say for example when the frequency is switching above 100 MHz, is to make a relay change (via the parallel-port) and switch antennas to a more suitable type .. By that method it could be possible to have an optimum antenna connected to the radio ... Of course, if successful, I could try switching more appropiate antennas in at other band regions .. Wonder if anyone has a more elegant approach ... The log-file was thought of because its the only one I could see that showed the actions of a user at any given time .. Of course, if Ivo reads this, he may already have a more simple means of doing this task ???
73, Dick ZS6RO
Regarding the 'lovely temperatures' that we are experiencing here, I hope you didn't think that 86 deg C was 'normal' !! .. If you were on the WX webpage of mine, you would have noticed some spikes on the various graphs displayed there. These were caused (I think) by me fiddling around near the circuitry while getting the GlobalTuner bit sorted out - sorry if you thought we were 'cooking' here !!! *BIG Grin ... Usually temperatures outside average in the region of 27 deg C during the midday .. At the moment 14:00 UTC) its raining with thunder and lightning and 18 deg C - usual at this time of the year ...
The antenna is a bit of a hotch-potch and I would take a guess (hopefully somewhat 'educated'!), that its best response is in the region of the upper MW to the low HF section ... The biggest problem usually is the height - ideal heights cannot be realised easily in the suburbs - so the 'direction' the antenna takes is mostly 'up' into the sky ...
14 MHz and ZS6DN is very much a problem here - ZS6DN and I are too close and just too far for ground-wave results ... Also I've found that even using my 3-element yagi, I get very poor results on 14MHz to the UK - lower parts of Europe are usually better - Germany and further south - of course, 21 MHz is better to the UK when the band is open ... Don't forget that if you were able to hear ZS6DN's beacon, the 3 second audio-stream delay would throw the GPS timing out of the window for any form of syn'cing - but you would have realised that *Smile ..
Since putting up this Node and studying the GlobalTuner's software (on my SuSe Linux box), I have been thinking of taking the results of the log file, looking for the frequency changes and when they occur, and creating a Perl script to say for example when the frequency is switching above 100 MHz, is to make a relay change (via the parallel-port) and switch antennas to a more suitable type .. By that method it could be possible to have an optimum antenna connected to the radio ... Of course, if successful, I could try switching more appropiate antennas in at other band regions .. Wonder if anyone has a more elegant approach ... The log-file was thought of because its the only one I could see that showed the actions of a user at any given time .. Of course, if Ivo reads this, he may already have a more simple means of doing this task ???
73, Dick ZS6RO
Message from Calico at Tuesday, 15-Mar-11 21:22:11 GMT
Hiya Dick,
Regarding WX, yep, was just kidding. Been to Cape Town and seen how the weather can be when it's grumpy... But, to see on CNN tonight's WX report in S.Africa of temperatures of 30 C, that's not so bad :)
Regarding Antenna, yes, residential area...heights allowed...planning permissions...minefield...
And it seems that with this random wire, you may be in ZS6DN's skip zone...
In the light of these, maybe a wire loop antenna could give both good bandwidth, and ground independence regarding height? In the middle of a town here in the UK, but a pennant flag loop has saved my skin at least regarding RX for low band dxing. Wellbrook's ALA-100 springs to mind as well :)
Having said that, if you have some sort of tower/mast for your Yagi, you may have more suspension choices?
Regarding antenna switching, apart from switching from HF to V/U antennas, another option could be to use a diplexer e.g. Comet's CF-360?
73,
Tim (Dorset, UK)
Regarding WX, yep, was just kidding. Been to Cape Town and seen how the weather can be when it's grumpy... But, to see on CNN tonight's WX report in S.Africa of temperatures of 30 C, that's not so bad :)
Regarding Antenna, yes, residential area...heights allowed...planning permissions...minefield...
And it seems that with this random wire, you may be in ZS6DN's skip zone...
In the light of these, maybe a wire loop antenna could give both good bandwidth, and ground independence regarding height? In the middle of a town here in the UK, but a pennant flag loop has saved my skin at least regarding RX for low band dxing. Wellbrook's ALA-100 springs to mind as well :)
Having said that, if you have some sort of tower/mast for your Yagi, you may have more suspension choices?
Regarding antenna switching, apart from switching from HF to V/U antennas, another option could be to use a diplexer e.g. Comet's CF-360?
73,
Tim (Dorset, UK)
Message from RX-Hogger at Wednesday, 16-Mar-11 01:28:40 GMT
Hi Dick ZS6RO, thanks very much for reactivating your receiver node in South Africa! I really missed it.
Currently reception is good in the upper mediumwave band, and in several HF bands as well depending on time of day/night, reception overall from my first impressions appears to be improved compared to the reception back in 2007.
Tim mentioned the Wellbrook active magnetic loop antenna, a nice tip, this antenna picks up less local or atmospheric noise, or static on many bands, thus enabling a better copy of weak signals, it offers full coverage from longwave upwards up to even above 50 MHz depending on the design. I'm looking forward to tuning through the mediumwave and HF bands, to log DX stations remotely in your highly interesting receiver location in South Africa. Especially mediumwave reception is exceptionally good in South Africa, many distant stations are received with only minor QRM (not that many mediumwave stations are on air in Africa).
73, AMFMLIST (Björn)
Database editor http://www.amlist.org/ - http://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php
Currently reception is good in the upper mediumwave band, and in several HF bands as well depending on time of day/night, reception overall from my first impressions appears to be improved compared to the reception back in 2007.
Tim mentioned the Wellbrook active magnetic loop antenna, a nice tip, this antenna picks up less local or atmospheric noise, or static on many bands, thus enabling a better copy of weak signals, it offers full coverage from longwave upwards up to even above 50 MHz depending on the design. I'm looking forward to tuning through the mediumwave and HF bands, to log DX stations remotely in your highly interesting receiver location in South Africa. Especially mediumwave reception is exceptionally good in South Africa, many distant stations are received with only minor QRM (not that many mediumwave stations are on air in Africa).
73, AMFMLIST (Björn)
Database editor http://www.amlist.org/ - http://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php
Message from zs6ro at Thursday, 17-Mar-11 07:07:52 GMT
Tim, no problem - just pulling your leg *Smile .. Cape Town, down south and Johannesburg have opposite weather patterns - Winter in Cape Town brings rain .. Summer rains are the norm in Johannesburg - In winter, Johannesburg grass lawns go yellow (hibernation) !! .. Antennas are always a bugbear - I'm using my mast stays for antennas (all insulated etc) and works well as end-fed and for ham-use, an ATU between the feedline and antenna .. Mast holds 3-element tri-bander and a few VHF/UHF yagi's on the side ...
Used to have a horizontal loop in Cape Town when I lived there and that would transmit nicely into Port Elizabeth up the east coast - used that antenna for RTTY BBS in the 70's - any other antenna was transmitting right over them ...
Had a look at the Wellsbrook antenna - looks good but a bit pricey .. Our currency exchange rates are terrible - been terrible for a number years ... Will have to homebrew ... Had a look at various loops on the Net, might try one sometime and compare on my receiver - might be the answer ...
Funny you mentioned diplexors - I was thinking of the same thing, then 'switching' as such, would be automatic ... I use one tri-plexor for 145/430/1296 using a IC-910H and works quite well .. have a diplexor for VHF/UHF as well and of course the relevant antennas ...
73, Dick ZS6RO
Used to have a horizontal loop in Cape Town when I lived there and that would transmit nicely into Port Elizabeth up the east coast - used that antenna for RTTY BBS in the 70's - any other antenna was transmitting right over them ...
Had a look at the Wellsbrook antenna - looks good but a bit pricey .. Our currency exchange rates are terrible - been terrible for a number years ... Will have to homebrew ... Had a look at various loops on the Net, might try one sometime and compare on my receiver - might be the answer ...
Funny you mentioned diplexors - I was thinking of the same thing, then 'switching' as such, would be automatic ... I use one tri-plexor for 145/430/1296 using a IC-910H and works quite well .. have a diplexor for VHF/UHF as well and of course the relevant antennas ...
73, Dick ZS6RO
Message from zs6ro at Thursday, 17-Mar-11 07:27:02 GMT
AMFMLIST (Björn), glad you are enjoying the Node again - I see you 'doing your thing' each evening (around our local midnight and later) and its great ... You appear to have a better memory than I have, as I can't remember what the quality of reception was back in 2007, but I'll take your word, plus its good to hear you say that its 'better' now and not degraded *Smile ...
Yes, MW in South Africa can be good for DX as there aren't that many local MW stations which block out weaker stations ... There is a radio distribution station (Sentech - Meyerton), about 50km south of me which broadcasts various MW and SW transmitters in different directions but luckily I'm just far enough away not to be 'affected' by them ...
Usually the HF Ham bands go out quite quickly at night but now and again one can pick up some DX when there is an opening .. And the local Hams seem to rather watch TV or go to bed than go and chat on 80/40 metres or even VHF/UHF *Grin ...
As a matter of interest, the airplane channels are kinda of weak (coax cable feedline losses too high), so listening there can be a bit disappointing at the moment - I hope to improve the high-end some time soon ...
73, Dick ZS6RO
Yes, MW in South Africa can be good for DX as there aren't that many local MW stations which block out weaker stations ... There is a radio distribution station (Sentech - Meyerton), about 50km south of me which broadcasts various MW and SW transmitters in different directions but luckily I'm just far enough away not to be 'affected' by them ...
Usually the HF Ham bands go out quite quickly at night but now and again one can pick up some DX when there is an opening .. And the local Hams seem to rather watch TV or go to bed than go and chat on 80/40 metres or even VHF/UHF *Grin ...
As a matter of interest, the airplane channels are kinda of weak (coax cable feedline losses too high), so listening there can be a bit disappointing at the moment - I hope to improve the high-end some time soon ...
73, Dick ZS6RO
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