SWLing Post Message Board

the T2FD "all band" antenna was a military secret till around 1950 when informations about this aperiodic "all band" antenna started to spread Important quote for us SWLs: "smaller antennas will still give adequate receive-only performance down to about half of their lowest...

I just have a cheap little 5-ele portable LPDA and with that, my experience with aiming at geostationary satellites was - unlike a 10GHz sat TV dish - a matter of "general direction" as in "not North" and "just make sure it didn't fall off the tower". :) Receiving those...

old military satellites are currently being actively used by some unintended entities Not sure when this started but AFAIK this has been going on since at least the 90s, with cheap VHF transceivers modified for the 250MHz sat band. It's usually Brazilian but I've heard even German pirates on one of...

Can't wait to make and try one of those! (Will take a while tho.)

Mmm 30dB, 2.2dB noise, sounds very tempting. I should try that when I get to make the small version of the SULA!

I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to minimize losses within the antenna elements and if that's even possible? For example, I was using PE or PVC insulated stranded wire with a velocity factor of maybe 0.7 or something. Somewhere I picked up the idea that this slowdown in the dielectric comes...

Sounds intriguing. My personal experience with the multilateration option isn't great though, there are many practical problems (such as receiver availability and their often less than optimal QRM situation, quality of GPS reception and whatnot) that seems to render this method very unreliable. I on...

For a fixed installation - looks like a worthwhile project! For portable usage and small spaces, well -> SULA!

At times I regret not having gone down the DIY electronics rabbit hole and I still find the thought of making simple but powerful radios interesting. What curbs my enthusiasm though is the mechanical side, how to make not only something that works well and looks good, but something that has a proper...

Reddit, the self-proclaimed "homepage of the internet" is known to be a pretty toxic place. Since it has some "subs" related to all of my hobbies, e.g. r/shortwave, r/amateurradio and r/hamradio I occasionally read the newest posts there anyway, but more for the entertaining crin...