I was just browsing a page, a blog, or more a list of entries for an activity, where the claim, on a page pointing to the list, is that the activity is still being hold regularly but the newest entry in the list was already 7 years old.This has pushed me to look back into my own blog. As it looks my newest entry is almost 3 weeks old now. Time for some updates.
Testing Antennas
As the FunCubeDongle Pro+ I have ordered from a local dealer is still backordered I have set out to test the wire that I had put up on my balcony. After I got my dipmeter I just could not resist and I had put up a wire across the long side of my balcony. I guess the most accureate type description for the antenna would be an “inverted-L”. To save a little on the distance across (so to use more as an antenna) I have put up two plastic beams and connected the wire directly to those, without the use of an insulating guy. So the is no lenght lost with the guy-rope. I could only do this since I had the possibility to use very short pastic stubs, any long piece would not give the stability.
The idea on testing came up as I was discussing whether I could listen to the TRT 4 longwave station on 180kHz some 2000km away. It turned out to be impossible due to two other stations in the vicinity (frequency- and location-wise) block the signal. One of them even appears on every other frequency, it poisons the whole spectrum. Also information on the internet contradicts if the station I wanted to listen is still active or not.
Later I also looked into MW / AM stations. Of course in both cases the antenna is absolutely detuned. It was never meant for the mid and longwave broadcast frequencies. Sorrily I have absolutely no shortwave reception device. Well at least I now get why no one is interested in AM boradcast anymore. The quality, even of close by stations is just bad.
Hamnet
Although I am still not a licenced amateur I really am interested in all the stuff about it. One interesting thing for me in particular is Hamnet. No wonder, I am a CS-Student. That was the reason I ordered a Ubiquity NanoStation M5. It arrived pretty quick, in just 2 days. I would really wish my China orders would be a little more like that. (More on that later)
So the Nanostation arrived and I played around with it for a while. Although it can only work on the 5GHz wlan band it could find a couple AP’s in the neighbourhood that I did not see until now. Even on the lowest setting the signal strenght is on par with the maximum setting on my router. I tested mainly to see if any of my wlan enabled devices are capable to communicate with out-of-standard 10MHz or 5MHz bandwidth. That was a total failure, none of the wlan 5GHz enabled devices I own can do that. If it were possible, I could simply go to one of the HAMNET user entry points in my city and use whatever mobile device is capable. The disadvantage of the NanoStation vs. any other mobile device is that it will need external power whereas a laptop or mobilephone or tablet is easier to use and set-up somewhere near a HAMNET user entry point. It would just have simplified a sneak-peek, I will need to wait to make my licence and put up the NanoStation on the roof.
China
Well, I have been waiting for several packages from china and meanwhile they seem not to be able to transfer parcels within the 45 days period in which paypal allows for refunds. That makes it really difficult to weigh a refund up against waiting for the parcel. This got worse over time. I can remeber receiving parcels from china within 6 days. Seems like I will need to wait till the last day and request a refund via paypal, I see no other option.
