RTL dongle HDSDR and an IC706

I hadn’t realized just how easy it is to use an RTL dongle with HDSDR to provide a panadaptor until I happened upon an article on RTL-SDR.com showing just that.

As I've already tapped into the IF of my old IC706 I thought I'd give it a go. Actually I found the HDSDR website more useful that the RTL-SDR site in explaining how this is done. It's straight forward. You do need to download Omni-rig for the CAT control of your rig.

HERE'S A VIDEO.

Not sure it works as well as Powersdr-if and my homebrew sdr.

HERE'S A VIDEO OF THAT

 Find out more here

 http://g8tti.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/how-i-tapped-into-first-if-and.html

Marconi Two Metre Contest

I've left it to late in life to ever be a CW man but when there's activity in the CW segment of Two I do like to listen. So the Marconi Contest this year was one such opportunity and it happened that it coincided with some good tropo. Here's a couple of screen shots.

CW signals on Two during the Marconi contest 2015

Here's the best I heard


OM3W JN99CH

Distance between IO81WM & JN99CH is 1456.61 km

Here's the Hepburn map for the 8/11/2015

The tropo forecast map from http://www.dxinfocentre.com/