Global Tuners

GlobalTuners is a web site that provides free access to radio receivers around the world. After creating a free account with log-in, you can access a receiver and listen to a frequency of your choice. Since the receivers are being shared by others, you must follow the web site's protocol of requesting permission to change a frequency, if others are listening to the current frequency. A chat window is provided to facilitate communication among concurrent listeners.

Thanks to W4BXI and W1TXT for the info about this site.

Remote Station Control

Here is a 12 minute video of how Randy K7AGE is using his laptop PC on the road to control his rig at home, operating on several modes and bands. Thanks to W4BXI and W1TXT for the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whe9nV9InnQ

Montgomery Hamfest

Date: Saturday, November 8, 2008
Time: 9:00 A.M. Until 3:00 P.M.
Location: Garrett Coliseum, 1555 Federal Drive, just West of Coliseum Blvd. in North Montgomery, AL
For more information, click here.
Bell Ringers planning to attend are invited to contact WA5MLF to share attendance plans within our group and coordinate an eyeball QSO.

Solar Cycle 24

This morning one of our members mentioned the SOLARCYCLE24 web site for a source of information about the progress of the new cycle. The appearance of sunspot #1005 seemed to bring some nice short-range propagation on 40 m yesterday, but its fading seemed to relegate us to the usual 200 mile minimum for our morning QSO today.

Vintage Amateur Radio Stations

Visit this web site for recordings of 1920's era rigs. Photos of VE3BBN's spark-gap transmitter are included. Thanks to Brian N4DKD for letting us know about this site.

Receiver Saver -- Updated Circuit

I've made two modifications to the circuit that is described in a posting on 6/10/08. Click on the revised schematic below for an enlarged view.



By changing the values of R1, R2, and C1 as noted, the transition from transmit mode (receiver grounded) to receive mode (receiver connected through to its antenna) takes about 1 second. A smaller value of C1 can be used for a shorter time delay. The transition from receive mode to transmit mode is still very quick, IF the transceiver control lead provides a low resistance to ground on transmit, thereby discharging C1.

This circuit change enables an operator using full break-in CW to use the circuit on a spotting receiver without having the circuit's relay chattering in time with each CW character transmitted. Since the status indicator LED has its own switching transistor Q2, it now transitions from red to green a fraction of a second after the relay switches from transmit to receive state. The values of R3 and R4 could possibly be adjusted to change this behavior.

Diode D8 was added to prevent the powered-off circuit from presenting a resistance-to-ground of about 1 megohm or less (R1 in series with base-emitter junction of Q1) to the transceiver control circuit. In one user's application this circuit was connected to the control lead from a transceiver to a linear amplifier. The amplifier apparently interpreted the resistance-to-ground of the receiver saver circuit as a transmit control command from the transceiver. The addition of D8 presents a much higher resistance-to-ground on the control lead that should prevent false keying of the linear amplifier.

Enhanced ARRL Document Services

Thanks to Tim WA4PTZ for calling attention to the new option for obtaining copies of past QST articles. ARRL members can now access online copies of articles from December 1915 through December 2004 via the ARRL web site. Articles from other publications, as well as QST, can be ordered as paper copies or on CD-ROM. The search feature continues to provide a convenient way of finding those past articles.