Kiwi SNR with the High-Z Amp

I am still testing. For now: SNR is much better compared to the old coupling with the 1:48.

The big benefit I see is the reception in the VLF area. That was nearly deaf before. I had to attenuate the signal by guesstimated 10db (still waiting for my SMA-attenuator to arrive. 

The amp is not designed to be used on a 22m wire but works really well for my use case :)

1st time POTA activation

I went out with DG7PX and DO4HAA for a POTA activation. 

Park reference: DA-0138 nr Hamburg

See the german article here: https://draussenfunker.de/aktivitaeten/

We made a video (which is in german):

 KiwiSDR: Popup message if not logged in

I want to have my listeners to log in to my Kiwi and I have a message in the top bar that says "Please log in with your callsign"

However, 50% don't. Now I have this popup message (Thanks Niko, DG7PX)

Howto:

• open Admin interface
• go to "Webpage"
• find "additional HTML" and paste the following line (adjust to your needs)

 

<script language="javascript"> 

if (readCookie('ident') == '') { alert('please log in with callsign or nickname')} 

</script>

That forces an informational popup if the "callsign" field is empty.

 

 Tag Cloud for the Kiwi

I made kind of a tag cloud for the KiwiSDR. It shows two things:

• The most tuned-to frequencies
• The top users

Watch it in action here: http://dg7lan.mooo.com:8075

Find it on GitHub: 

https://github.com/doccodyblue/kiwicloud

New statistics from the Kiwi

Some new statistics from the HF Kiwi

Now gathering SNR and spectrograph from the Kiwi into a RRD database.

This is pretty neat and can be seen live here: http://dg7lan.mooo.com:8075

Find the whole SDR setup here: SDR Setup

Changed the OpenWebRX for a KiWiSDR now! :)

 

Got my brand new KiwiSDR up and running now. 

The OpenWebRX was really cool but doesn't handle multiuser operation very well. Even with 2 HF boards attached I always had issues when more than one user connected.

Find the Kiwi here: http://dg7lan.mooo.com:8073 or on http://rx.kiwisdr.com among all the others.

For now I can tell, that thing is great. But I can't tell how it performs reception wise. 

Have fun trying yourself!

Andy

A new antenna for the home shack - HyEndFed

I still have limited space for antennas. But I needed a replacement for the magnetic loop antenna.

Using FT8 to check the Antenna

On our last portable activity we used a HyEndFed antenna with impressive results. So I decided to buy one that fits into the garden. It is the 40-20-10m band version for 200w PEP.

The antenna is now mounted 5m above ground. Of cause that's way too low but it's the only way to install it here. The installation is easy. The SWR was ok out of the box. I shortened the wire a little and thats it. You see the results down below. SWR is good enough for now. I know it could be tune better if one takes a little more time for that. I had to shorten the wire before the coil a little and keep it a little longer after the coil to get the SWR right on 40m. 

In any event, the antenna works really good for only 12m lenght. I love it. 

How do these endfed antennas work? Have a look at the following links  - They explain it really well.

https://pa3hho.wordpress.com/end-fed-antennes/multiany-band-end-fed-english/

https://buildthings.wordpress.com/ham-radio-end-fed-antenna-80m-40m-20-m-15m-10m-164-matching-network-balun/

And this is where I bought mine from. I sure would buy it again since it's nicely built and looks rock solid. https://www.hyendcompany.nl/

10m SWR - could use a little tweaking but works fine already

12m SWR - The antenna is not made for 12m but works with the internal tuner

15m - not working

17m - not working

20m - working well enough

30m - not working :(

40m - working - I cut a little too short

80m - not working

160m - tunenable but not efficient 

Portable St Peter Ording Beach [JO44HG]

Hi guys!

The fibrepole on the Radiojeep :)

One time per year we go to St Peter Ording beach. This time we had the chance to play with a whole bunch of equipment. We had the ICOM 7300 and the FT-817 running. Martin, DL8LBY, did a bunch of Qs with QRP power and the MP-1 Antenna which actually works surprisingly well in beachy environment. 

I had plenty of time to configure N1MM logger and optimize settings for the upcoming contest. We made CW and RTTY contacts to a couple of DXs (even Japan and Indonesia).

The antenna for the ICOM was a 9m piece of wire, tied to the Spiderbeam fibrepole. At the feedpoint there was the SCG 2000 automatic tuner.

Unfortunately the bandconditions were very poor and so we shut down at 23h local time, brought down the antenna in pitch black and muddy environment.

The MP-1 portable antenna

Next year we'll try some QRO instead of QRP to math the band conditions ;)

73 and thanks for all the QSOs!