bpnjensen wrote:
On Mar 22, 2:55 am, wrote:
Gregg wrote:
I've always been curious of this and like Bob said "Post and don't
worry about it" - something like that. ;-)

How often - how many hours a week you actually have your receivers on
AND monitoring?

I keep mine on 24/7 mostly out of habit. A few years ago I used it to
monitor 29352kHz over a period of several months for signs of the old
amateur satellite RS-15. I wrote a perl script which could control the
rig from a command line, and cron jobs to switch the rig to the beacon
frequency a couple of minutes before expected AOS. It wasn't fully
automated (I'd generate a batch of cron jobs once a week or two, it
didn't seem worth the time to automate that part) but it enabled me to
use the receiver for other things in between passes.

More recently I've monitored Russian cluster beacons over periods of
several hours, but I've only the one working computer at the moment, and
I use it for "real" work, so radio projects are in abeyance until I can
be bothered to get a second PC to use as a data logger. :-)

These days the receiver is mostly on the BBC sports/news channel, ICAO
frequencies, or ham CW frequencies.

Do any of you guys keep a specific receiver on all the time when you
have left the house or sleeping with your recorder going in hopes of
a
catch or am I the only retarded one?bowing head

SWLing is way cool. People who listen to ipods all day are losers. :-)

With this last point, I agree, although it depends largely on the
quality of music on the IPOD. If it's pop pap, truly. Classical or
jazz or other quality music deserves no small amount of respect, as do
those who enjoy or make it.

As to amount of radio use, my home receivers are only on if I am in
the room listening. I have considered using a recorder, but I do not
have the radio attached to a PC and I am not sure how many stations
would accept a cassette of a program for a QSL anymore (it sure would
be handy for foreign language broadcasts).

Bruce

I QSL anyone with a valid report.

On Mar 23, 6:37*am, dave wrote:
bpnjensen wrote:
On Mar 22, 2:55 am, *wrote:
Gregg wrote:
I've always been curious of this and like Bob said "Post and don't
worry about it" - something like that. ;-)

How often - how many hours a week you actually have your receivers on
AND monitoring?

I keep mine on 24/7 mostly out of habit. A few years ago I used it to
monitor 29352kHz over a period of several months for signs of the old
amateur satellite RS-15. I wrote a perl script which could control the
rig from a command line, and cron jobs to switch the rig to the beacon
frequency a couple of minutes before expected AOS. It wasn't fully
automated (I'd generate a batch of cron jobs once a week or two, it
didn't seem worth the time to automate that part) but it enabled me to
use the receiver for other things in between passes.

More recently I've monitored Russian cluster beacons over periods of
several hours, but I've only the one working computer at the moment, and
I use it for "real" work, so radio projects are in abeyance until I can
be bothered to get a second PC to use as a data logger. :-)

These days the receiver is mostly on the BBC sports/news channel, ICAO
frequencies, or ham CW frequencies.

Do any of you guys keep a specific receiver on all the time when you
have left the house or sleeping with your recorder going in hopes of
a
catch or am I the only retarded one?bowing head

SWLing is way cool. People who listen to ipods all day are losers. :-)

With this last point, I agree, although it depends largely on the
quality of music on the IPOD. *If it's pop pap, truly. *Classical or
jazz or other quality music deserves no small amount of respect, as do
those who enjoy or make it.

As to amount of radio use, my home receivers are only on if I am in
the room listening. *I have considered using a recorder, but I do not
have the radio attached to a PC and I am not sure how many stations
would accept a cassette of a program for a QSL anymore (it sure would
be handy for foreign language broadcasts).

Bruce

I QSL anyone with a valid report.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're a good man. I appreciate that.

On 3/23/2010 8:25 AM, Gregg wrote:
On Mar 22, 2:36 pm, wrote:
On 3/21/2010 7:01 PM, Gregg wrote:





I've always been curious of this and like Bob said "Post and don't
worry about it" - something like that. ;-)

How often - how many hours a week you actually have your receivers on
AND monitoring?

I ask because since I've had my Hammarlund HQ 129X/ Heathkit Q
Multiplier and the add on freq counter back - I have ran it basically
non stop with the exception of two days while I was gone.

Do any of you guys keep a specific receiver on all the time when you
have left the house or sleeping with your recorder going in hopes of
a
catch or am I the only retarded one?bowing head

Gregg.

OMG. when i'm home, old work-horse TT RX-350, in the shack, is on
constantly with the computers back there. (my "den/shack/whatever hobby
room"). other receivers there are on and off with use. also 2 scanners
at the same time. when i'm not home, everything off and grounded. in the
car, hand-held scanner, and a 440 or a 6700gr running. depends on the
length of the trip. on-the-road and out of the country, a well used
DX 390 goes in the luggage. third one, great portable over seas, and
if it disappears, it cheap to replace. BTW, if i have friends, or a
young lady over, every thing is off, and closed up. when people see
the antennas, they already think i'm a little off, no reason to give
any more info. the E1-XM in the kitchen and the old AR3030, in the
bedroom are on when i'm in the mood. you know how it is, i'm one of
those "radio people". and nobody, but other "radio people", get to
see my collection.

Drifter...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hey, I forgot to ask. You don't have an array of antennas outside that
you can't hide so she doesn't know you're a 'tad off'? ;-) Outside
antennas are a dead give away!

Well, if you think about it, were all a tad off, when it comes to this
hobby. and, yep, just like receivers, i got way too many antennas. got-
2- Wellbrooke loops, 1-SA7000 for the really high bands, 1- inverted L
180', 1- inverted V Alpha-Delta DX-Ultra, 1- Par EF-SWL end fed (this
is a super ant.), 2- long wire e/w n/s, 1 BOG 650', and last but not
least, 2 Discone for the 3 scanners. and, in the box, 1- RF Systems DX
ONE PRO MK 2. soon as i can pick up 30 to 40 foot of tower, it goes
up about 100 foot from the house. the pro 2 must be far from any noise.
yep, i'm a bit off when it comes to shortwave. now don't get me started
on my receiver collection.

Drifter...

On Mar 23, 11:30*am, Drifter wrote:
On 3/23/2010 8:25 AM, Gregg wrote:





On Mar 22, 2:36 pm, *wrote:
On 3/21/2010 7:01 PM, Gregg wrote:

I've always been curious of this and like Bob said "Post and don't
worry about it" - something like that. ;-)

How often - how many hours a week you actually have your receivers on
AND monitoring?

I ask because since I've had my Hammarlund HQ 129X/ Heathkit Q
Multiplier and the add on freq counter back - I have ran it basically
non stop with the exception of two days while I was gone.

Do any of you guys keep a specific receiver on all the time when you
have left the house or sleeping with your recorder going in hopes of
a
catch or am I the only retarded one?bowing head

Gregg.

* * *OMG. when i'm home, old work-horse TT RX-350, in the shack, is on
constantly with the computers back there. (my "den/shack/whatever hobby
room"). other receivers there are on and off with use. also 2 scanners
at the same time. when i'm not home, everything off and grounded. in the
car, hand-held scanner, and a 440 or a 6700gr running. depends on the
length of the trip. on-the-road and out of the country, a well used
DX 390 goes in the luggage. third one, great portable over seas, and
if it disappears, it cheap to replace. BTW, if i have friends, or a
young lady over, every thing is off, and closed up. when people see
the antennas, they already think i'm a little off, no reason to give
any more info. the E1-XM in the kitchen and the old AR3030, in the
bedroom are on when i'm in the mood. you know how it is, i'm one of
those "radio people". and nobody, but other "radio people", get to
see my collection.

Drifter...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hey, I forgot to ask. You don't have an array of antennas outside that
you can't hide so she doesn't know you're a 'tad off'? ;-) Outside
antennas are a dead give away!

Well, if you think about it, were all a tad off, when it comes to this
hobby. and, yep, just like receivers, i got way too many antennas. got-
2- Wellbrooke loops, 1-SA7000 for the really high bands, 1- inverted L
180', 1- inverted V Alpha-Delta DX-Ultra, 1- Par EF-SWL end fed (this
is a super ant.), 2- long wire e/w n/s, 1 BOG 650', and last but not
least, 2 Discone for the 3 scanners. and, in the box, 1- RF Systems DX
ONE PRO MK 2. soon as i can pick up 30 to 40 foot of tower, it goes
up about 100 foot from the house. the pro 2 must be far from any noise.
yep, i'm a bit off when it comes to shortwave. now don't get me started
on my receiver collection.

Drifter...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're killing me.:-D You've got it bad!

In article ,
Gregg wrote:

How often - how many hours a week you actually have your receivers on
AND monitoring?

Every night, all night, 8 hours.

Thanks to everyone for their responses.

If I wanted to start with installing a balun between antenna and
feedline is this a situation where price does matter? Universal Radio
has The RF Systems Magnetic Longwire Balun (MLB)for $80USD and this one
listed on on Ebay http://tinyurl.com/yf3v2lz is $20 (9:1 Longwire,
Balun, Unun,Adapter, Shortwave) Not trying to be cheap, but just to "see
if it works" $80 is expensive and $20 is reasonable.

Also, must the balun be installed outside to work? The more I have
outside the better chance it will be detected by the "Condo Police".

Bob
Bucks County, PA

Remove "MYHAT" for email response

On Mar 26, 11:43*am, BobS wrote:
Thanks to everyone for their responses.

If I wanted to start with installing a balun between antenna and
feedline is this a situation where price does matter? Universal Radio
has The RF Systems Magnetic Longwire Balun (MLB)for $80USD and this one
listed on on Ebayhttp://tinyurl.com/yf3v2lzis $20 (9:1 Longwire,
Balun, Unun,Adapter, Shortwave) Not trying to be cheap, but just to "see
if it works" $80 is expensive and $20 is reasonable.

Also, must the balun be installed outside to work? The more I have
outside the better chance it will be detected by the "Condo Police".

Bob
Bucks County, PA

Remove "MYHAT" for email response

In can be inside, but better outside, and/or as far from the noise
source as possible. Ground it if you can, but if you can't, not the
end of the world. Paint it the color of the building; it will look
like the electric company put it there. I'd try the cheap one first.
You can make your own with good quality parts worth about $10, so the
extra cost is probably not a big factor in performance.

Good luck - noise is a tough thing to quash sometimes.

Bruce

BobS wrote:
Thanks to everyone for their responses.

If I wanted to start with installing a balun between antenna and
feedline is this a situation where price does matter? Universal Radio
has The RF Systems Magnetic Longwire Balun (MLB)for $80USD and this one
listed on on Ebay http://tinyurl.com/yf3v2lz is $20 (9:1 Longwire,
Balun, Unun,Adapter, Shortwave) Not trying to be cheap, but just to "see
if it works" $80 is expensive and $20 is reasonable.

Also, must the balun be installed outside to work? The more I have
outside the better chance it will be detected by the "Condo Police".

Bob
Bucks County, PA

Remove "MYHAT" for email response



I'm not familiar with the seller, but for your purposes, the lower cost
one should work well. He's reduced his costs by using off the shelf PVC
pipe parts.

I'd put the impedance matching transformer as far as possible from noise
sources. If the best you can do is the window sill, well that's the
best you can do.

Something to consider is thin coax like RG-174 is a bit less obvious.
If you could shoot a run of that to a tree, you could hide the balun
among the branches.

Doubling the distance from noise will reduce the noise signal by a
factor of 4.

In my case I have my swl antenna 225 feet in back of my house and I send
the coax through underground pipes I had installed. It comes out at my
storage shed. I did it for the noise, but it's quite stealthy.

My only regret is I didn't run heliax so I could use it for transmitting.