HamAlert

Spots this morning, only one
DXcluster  spot!

While I'm on and into 60m DX these days I always find it interesting that when a DX station is calling out of the blue suddenly the whole spectrum is full of signals calling the DX. I asked myself, do all these station listen or view (FT8 these days) 24/7. No, I thought....there has to be something that alerts you without even being in the radioshack!

In the past people would telephone call or SMS each other when a important DX was on. These days people use messenger and whatsapp. But still the DX cluster on the internet plays a important role. However a DX cluster still needs input from users. The Reverse Beacon Network has made things interesting as well as the input would come automatically from participating monitor station. But still, you have to view those on a screen, even with filters on. And the RBN is not working for SSB. Most times you need to be in your shack as well to get noticed by any visual or audio notification.

Callsigns programmed being known
active on 60m.

Now I found a simple solution and it works well. HamAlert is a website/Android/iOS app that can be installed on your phone or tablet. Thanks to HB9DQM Manuel who created it. The DX information is gathered from the DX Cluster, RBN, SOTAwatch and PSKreporter. It contains several possebilities in alerting and many filter options you should find out yourself. I only use the push notification on my phone but it can also notify you by e-mail. SMS is still a possebility but is not free. A nice feature is the integration with clublog for the real DXCC band slot die hard!


It's how they do it. The modern way of DXing...

QRPguys digital fieldstrength meter

A while ago I bought a digital fieldstrength meter kit from QRPguys. I have made myself a very nice analog fieldstrength meter in 2014 which does a nice job but is not much more as a indicator. I hoped the digital one would be more precise.

So, a few weeks ago I started to build the kit. So far, no problem. All components were there and the instructions are very clear to me. Till I came at the digital voltmeter part...

The voltmeter needs to be modified to read the low voltage output of the LM358 op amp. This is done by bypassing the input scaling resistors.
However, none of the pictures in the instruction does match the voltmeter supllied with the kit.
So, I wrote QRPguys and within a week I was answered with another drawing of a different voltmeter and how to modify it. Unfortunately this drawing still didn't match the voltmeter. So I wrote QRPguys again 2 weeks ago to ask them for a solution. Unfortunately till now I didn't get any answer, they probabely don't know a solution I guess.

I think this shouldn't be a difficult mod but I'm not that smart I can instantly see what to do. Without the voltmeter the whole kit is useless. I hope one of my readers can tell me how to modify it.
Here is the picture I also send to QRPguys to examine.

The original building instruction can be found here:

https://qrpguys.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/fsm_assy_050219.pdf

Decoding number stations

A while ago the ARRL published a article free online about number stations written by Allison McLellan. It gives some nice background info and I think most radioamateurs are interested in this kind of topics.

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST/This%20Month%20in%20QST/November2019/McLellan.pdf

After some discussion on a dutch hamradio forum it became clear that PA5E Peter really build his hobby on this topic and it was the reason he obtained his hamradio license. He came up with a nice music clip he made with a friend. He's featuring in this clip as well, for you to figure out were....

http://priyom.org/