This collection of posts was originally created as a personal notebook for documenting things I had built and experimented with. Over time, it went through a metamorphosis, evolving from a private notebook into a more public-facing blog.
Jos vuosi 2025 pitäisi tiivistää yhteen sanaan, se olisi monimuotoinen. Tai ehkä kaoottinen, mutta hyvällä tavalla. Perinteinen radioamatööritoiminta jäi osittain tauolle, kun oman AM-aseman rakentaminen ja sen pyörittäminen vei ison siivun ajasta. Samalla tuli hypättyä täysin uuteen…
From a single summer night impulse, a shortwave station was born that brought the legendary 6120 kHz frequency back to life, a frequency many had already forgotten. When amateur radio equipment transformed into a shortwave broadcast station…
The radio year 2024 was full of activity. From my personal perspective, however, the most significant moments were somewhat unexpected. They were not primarily about building or technical experimentation, although the remote station has certainly been carefully…
I have a small remote controlled weather cam installed to balcony. Few days ago it was reported a quite bright "fireball" was seen on the east sky. I checked the recordings from my cam and found out…
A short story about metamorphosis from SWL DX'er to a HAM Radio Amateur. After I got bitten by the SDR Bug back in -12 I updated and upgraded my SDR equipment every year. Normally this meant that…
My remote location is a little challenging what comes to the long-wire antennas, especially if the antenna needs to be string in straight line from the feed point. At the moment I have one long-wire antenna, a…
I got my HAM license 25.01.2021, this is also the 100th Anniversary of the Finnish Radio Amateur League (SRAL) and I got my 1000th QSO (FT8, SSTV, JS8Call). I'd say this has been very interesting and educational…
Saturday, 21st of August 2021 town of Nizhny Novgorod celebrated it's 800th anniversary. In honor of this event, SURA station sent several SSTV images using their huge transmitter site. SURA is similar system as USA based HAARP.
It is summer and Sporadic E (Es) is again visiting us. At the moment I have a maintenance going on on my remote site so only a Discone is available for FM listening, so no directional FM…
Due to Covid-19 I have not been able to update my systems. Summer -21 is the first real update time to my system since 2019 and I've been very busy to both fully re-build all my SDR…
After I got my HAM license I registered to QRZ and got my OnLine Logbook from their service. You can find me from the QRZ by using my call OH1MAC. Below are the latest 15 QSO's I…
2020 Perseid meteor shower was easy for me to monitor as I just finished both the antenna installations and software installations at my remote site. 3-element FM Yagi antenna pointing 230 degrees from my KP01tn location (towards…
Yesterday I wrote a post about my latest try to level down the interference caused by computers, power supplies and other peripherals using simple Faraday's cage. The UPS is huge noise generator - or it should I…
While waiting my trip to my remote site I started to plan a new RF shielding and interference protection. After all I'm going to replace 99% of the computer HW I have at my remote site and…
As we all know now, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, commonly known as the "Corona virus" is spreading around the world. As a member of the HAM community and the full supporter of the HAM spirit I feel obligated…
Not every day I am able to do DX'ng, so I usually let my system on 24h just to receive something. Good idle DX receptions are digital modes (FT4, FT8, JS8Call and so on...) and SSTV. Between…
On the other day I was listening SSTV (yes, this is about SSTV :-) - again) transmissions and heard familiar sound that should not be there, a Windows USB disconnect-connect-disconnect-connect ... ... ... My analysis is that…
While SSTV DX'ng I heard a very familiar melody while listening the transmissions. First I thought I heard wrong, but when this happened again I was sure this was intentional - and I was able to record…
I got so excited about SSTV that sometimes when I do not use my system to other DX'ng I have it on 24/7 and tuned to 14230KHz and let RX-SSTV to automatically decode and save received SSTV…
I've been reading about SSTV some time now, but never tried to receive it as the most common bands have been very silent every time I have had time to tune in. Today was different and I…
I just learned, that no more Hi-Resolution pictures are sent from the Russian weather satellite METEOR-M N2-2 using 137MHz frequency as it was struck by a micro-meteorite on Dec 18 2019, causing it to lose control and…
" VVV VVV VVV DE SAQ SAQ SAQ … CQ DE SAQ SAQ SAQ = THIS IS GRIMETON RADIO/SAQ IN A TRANSMISSION USING THE ALEXANDERSON 200 KW ALTERNATOR ON 17.2 KHZ . WE WISH YOU ALL A…
Back in August I read about MLA-30 a (very) cheap active loop antenna that was said to be at least a good one, if not even as good as the more expensive "original" loops. I wanted to…
On July 5 2019 the Russian Meteor M N2-2 weather satellite was successfully launched into orbit. Unlike NOAA satellites Meteor uses LRPT to transmit pictures down. Main difference between APT and LRPT is that APT is fully analog…
Well, not that minor after all. I decided to do a full re-installation to my antennas, locate them to a different place and also add some new ones too. Now the new idea was to remove everything…
One of the first thing ever I did with a computer and a radio was to try to receive APT weather satellite telemetry and data. As I'm creating brand new system I wanted to test how my…
One problem in my system is that I need to power it using cheap switched-mode power adapters. They are - well, cheap, universal, small, easy to get - and a huge source of wideband HF interference. The…
I had a plan to create all new remote Rig already during 2018, but due to some problems to get parts to it (the main computer) this has now been moved to be "The Project - 2019".
Summer 2018 I read about UHF-Satcom pirates. RTL-SDR.COM explains: "The UHF-Satcom band is anywhere between 243 - 270 MHz and contains fairly strong signals from many several US satellites that can be received with a simple antenna.
After SpyServer was published my hobby took a huge leap as now I was able to stream the IQ data directly from the remote antenna to my local shack using just kbits of internet bandwidth instead several…
It seems that I have recorded some videos about my early test with the system back in 2015. This time it was about SYNOP, those funny sounding HF transmissions that sounds like a morse code after some…
Have you ever wondered about how thunder looks like in receiver - it is something like this. This was recorded Friday, 13.Jul 2018 5:30pm in Finland, grid KP01tn. Radio was tuned to VLF frequency of 72,3Khz (AM).
I needed to create a simple antenna selector as possible. I was fine with the idea if the selector itself leaks some of the signal, or has a bad impedance - I just wanted to be able…
While waiting the Lattepanda Delta to arrive I decided to do a similar "Spring cleaning" to my home system as I did to the main remote site earlier this year. I like so much to tinker with…
I had to re-recycle the Dell Laptop PC that I used for the main remote site and decided to replace it with a Lattepanda Delta SbC. Because I ordered the Lattepanda Delta via Kickstarter I knew it…
This was done to see if it is a good idea to have only active MiniWhip for HF and VLF band and recycle the parts from HamItUp converter based implementation to another project. Based on the test…
Good grounding is essential for good reception, especially when using active MiniWhip antennas for HF and VLF. In my system there are two grounding points, located opposite sides of the building. One is installed horizontal about 50cm…
Decent reception of WeFax transmitted from Germany via HF using 7880Khz. Used for this: MiniWhip Active antenna, NooElec RTL-Dongle with Direct Sample Mod, SDR# and MultiPSK.
Summer 2015 I was finally able to take all my knowledge, my systems and my ideas to the main remote site (my parents house far away from the city interference) and build a remote site with as…
2015 I found site called http://rtl-sdr.com that had very interesting article about how to receive telemetry from airplanes and display real time location of planes with a easy to use software and computer. It took me one…
For this extension of my systems I built a dual radio enclosure that is powered by RaspberryPi 2b. It is used for both, ADS-B data feed to Flightradar24 and listening to the radio communications between the air…
2014 was mainly a 'Time of Tinkering'. I built several different combinations from RTL-SDR dongles, LNA's, computers and controllers to learn how well these dongles, antennas, LNA's and RaspberryPi's can work together - main idea was still…
January 2014 I read about Active Whip antennas, a MiniWhip that could be used to receive HF stations without having to install long wire antennas - something that was not possible in my current home location. Some…
The first time I think I was doing something that can be called a 'SDR' was when I read about receiving NOAA APT weather transmissions with self made wx receiver kit - the kit came with a…
This Old Lady was the one that woke my DX brain cells <3 I think she is still somewhere in the attic enjoying her retirement years.
Aaaaand here we go! 1st of February 2019 Google informed that they will shut down Google+ I managed to get all my stories and posts from the G+ site to Wordpress -blog - So Long, and Thanks…