Last nights pirate receptinand recording woes!
 

Last night, 2005 01 22EST, was a blast.
My 2nd(and 3rd,4rth, and 5th) pirate reception.
I am mainly into utility monitoring.
Was a different experience.
I am rewiring my radio setup, added a 2nd R2000
and replaced my antenna/feedling and improved the
ground.
Last night was great, except, while recording
WEAK radio, my PC locked up. Happens once or twice a
year. So I LOST everything from 23:00Z on. CoolEdit
froze, but gave no error message unitl I went to
stop and save.
#$#%^&@ PC!
From now on I will record received stations on
my PC AND a VHS HiFi with WWV (5 or 10 as is best)
in the left with target audio in the right.
I really don't know why I didn't think of this
last night.
I thought I might pass on this hard learned leason.
I bought the VHS at a local Goodwill and it only needed
a very good cleaning.
I have a cheap "computer" camare that produces "real"
NTSC video so the VCR will stay locked. Some VHS decks
work fine without a video source, some require one.
And some will let you interrupt the audio chain while
leaving the "off air" video intact.

Terry

I hate to reply to my own post, but for those VHS
VCRs that require video, I just remembered a URL that
I found while searching for something else.
members.aol.com/WA1ION/vcrdx.pdf
Details how to record HF on a VHF deck.
Didn't look too promising to me, but his solution
to keep the VCR happy was to feed 60Hz into the video
input.
I haven't tried this so I can say if it will work.NTSC is 30Hz,
(OK 29.97Hz) but this might be worth a try.
Terry