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A collection of thoughts, and my notes about experiments and ideas, technical or otherwise, connected to Amateur Radio, Satellite working and monitoring and other electronics.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Grabber : "Thor's Hammer" at OZ9QV : updates

During a holiday (and being there for other reasons) in Denmark I have made an update to the "Thor's Hammer" QRSS grabber. More will happen later at another visit.

The grabber can, as usual be found at :
Thor's Hammer

The grabber now works on two bands, a more stable receiver (old TRX with defective TX) has been installed for 10 MHz and the viewable frequency range reduced. Still using an older low powered PC

10 MHz Grabber :
RX range : 10139.880 - 10140.120 kHz
SpectrumLab set for display of 3 stripes of consecutive periods
Antenna : indoor dipole

500kHz Grabber :
RX range : 502.700 - 505.500 kHz - some noticeable frequency drift, but acceptable
SpectrumLab set for 3 strips as above
Antenna : indoor multi turn tuned loop

The 500kHz RX seems to have some problems with receiving WSPR, only once or twice the WSPR signals from PA0A and PA0O have been received.
The signal from (I think) G3XIZ was visible, but no decodes.

All in all I am fine with the improvements, but more is needed. I would like to add more bands, e.g 80m, 40 and 20m, possibly 136kHz but things do take time to get running, and new antennas will be necessary.

I may experiment with a wide band active loop antenna (H-probe) or an E-probe (short active whip).

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