Tracking Down Radio Frequency Noise Source, With Help From Mother Nature

Amateur radio operators and shortwave listeners have a common enemy: QRM, which is ham-speak for radio frequency interference caused by man-made sources. Indiscriminate, often broadband in nature, and annoying as hell, QRM spews forth from all kinds of sources, and can be difficult to locate and fix.

But [Emilio Ruiz], an operator from Mexico, got a little help from Mother Nature recently in his quest to lower his noise floor. Having suffered from a really annoying blast of RFI across wide swaths of the radio spectrum for months, a summer thunderstorm delivered a blessing in disguise: a power outage. Hooking his rig up to a battery — all good operators are ready to switch to battery power at a moment’s notice — he was greeted by blessed relief from all that noise. Whatever had caused the problem was obviously now offline.

Rather than waste the quiet time on searching down the culprit, [Emilio] worked the bands until the power returned, and with it the noise. He killed the main breaker in the house and found that the noise abated, leading him on a search of the premises with a portable shortwave receiver. The culprit? Unsurprisingly, it was a cheap laptop power supply. [Emilio] found that the switch-mode brick was spewing RFI over a 200-meter radius; a dissection revealed that the “ferrite beads” intended to suppress RFI emissions were in fact just molded plastic fakes, and that the cord they supposedly protected was completely unshielded.

We applaud [Emilio]’s sleuthing for the inspiration it gives to hunt down our own noise-floor raising sources. It kind of reminds us of a similar effort by [Josh (KI6NAZ)] a while back.

Repeater ISS actief én gewerkt!

Sinds kort is in het International Space Station een transponder actief waarmee je in FM flinke afstanden kunt overbruggen. Kijk maar eens op Amsat voor info hieromtrent.

Op maandag 21 september begon er weer een cyclus met zichtbare overkomsten van het ISS en Thijs, PE1RLN besloot om de gok te wagen om na APRS ook een gewoon QSO te voeren. En met succes! Om 22.30 uur kwam het ISS over en al snel was er communicatie te horen. Thijs gaf een CQ en een Duits tegenstation kwam retour en maakte zo het QSO compleet.

Helaas was de verbinding kort en was Thijs verrast door de snelheid dus heeft hij geen callsign genoteerd…

Op 22 september werd het experiment herhaald bij een lage overgang. Door de afstand waren andere stations sterker en was een verbinding niet mogelijk. Maar anderhalf uur later kwam het ISS recht boven Hulsberg en werd er een eerste compleet QSO gemaakt! Luister hier naar het fragment van een nagenoeg kristalheldere verbinding:

Audio

Super cool natuurlijk en nu is bij Thijs het hek van de dam…

Luister mee op 437.800 MHz +/- doppler van maximaal 15kc. Of op de ingang op 145.990 MHz.

 

 

Op de foto de QRPeater die de richtantenne bedient

ISS Ham Radio Repeater

There is a long history of spacecraft carrying ham radio gear, as the Space Shuttle, Mir, and the ISS have all had hams aboard with gear capable of talking to the Earth. However, this month, the ISS started operating an FM repeater that isn’t too dissimilar from a terrestrial repeater. You can see [TechMinds] video on the repeater, below.

The repeater has a 2 meter uplink and a 70 centimeter downlink. While you can use a garden variety dual-band ham transceiver to use the repeater, you’ll probably need a special antenna along with special operating techniques.

 

One of the problems you’ll find is that ISS moves fast enough that you will observe doppler shift in the frequencies. The video reproduces a table of frequencies you may have to move through to receive the shifting signal.

You can probably hear the ISS with a good pass with no special equipment, but [TechMinds] wasn’t able to close an actual contact in the video. But [K0LWC] got really close using a pretty standard radio setup, as you can see in the second video.

The ISS has been on the air with digital repeaters and conventional FM radio for some time. The antenna you need doesn’t have to be a huge disk. We’ve seen it done with a handheld beam antenna and a handheld radio.

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Tutorial For Setting Up Raspberry Pi For Ham Radio Use

There was a time when a ham radio set up sported many dials and switches and probably quite a few boxes as well. Computers have changed all that. Some transceivers now have just a few buttons or are even totally computer-controlled. Where a ham, at one time, might have a TeleType machine, a slow-scan TV monitor, and a fax printer for receiving satellite images, now that can all be on a single computer which can even be a Raspberry Pi. [F4GOH] has a post that takes you from the fundamentals to installing everything from an SDR to many common ham programs for digital modes, APRS, SSTV, and more. You can download the seven-part tutorial as separate PDF files, too.

Even if you aren’t a ham, you might find some of the software interesting. OpenWebRX lets you listen to your software defined radio on the road. You can use other software to pick up weather satellite data.

 

If you are a seasoned Linux user, you won’t need some of the early material. But you will find some good notes on how to use the ham-specific software and get a good overview of what is possible.

Ham radio has changed a great deal. If you think of it as people with noisy large radios, you might be surprised. The hobby is big enough that you’ll find everything from people talking on tiny radios around the world using a hybrid of radio and Internet connectivity, to people bouncing signals off the moon or using ham radio satellites.

[Dan Maloney] has talked about how to get started in ham radio for under $50. Then again, you might need another $50 for the Raspberry Pi. Of course, there are plenty of opportunities to hack the gear.