Radio

A while ago while spinning through the 80 metre band late on saturday night, I came across an AM transmission on 3670Khz, at first I thought it was a net of sorts, but then it started feeling more like a talkback radio show. It also seemed rather dated (I later realised that what I was hearing was a retransmission of an earlier transmission from the 80s).

A few weeks later I found the same station again, and started listening, and discovered it was also been transmitted on 1850kHz too.

The conversations were quite interesting, ranging from technical topics to pure irevrance, then I noticed someone talking that I knew from the radio club i’m a member of (Lionel VK3NM.)

It seems that these ” ‘missions” have been going on since the early 70′s if not even earlier.

more information can be found at http://www.crossbandradio.com/

Anyway last weekend, I joined in, now due to licensing, I couldn’t really call in via 2 metres as it was been retransmitted on 160 metres and untill my advanced licensing comes through I can’t operate there. So I called in via skype, and ended up in a confernce between VK3ASE, VK3NM and myself..

Alot of fun.

~Ivy

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Well last weekend Hannah and myself went to Amateur Radio Victorias trash and treasure sale. Hannah found a really nice antenna tuner.

I found though a Kenwood R-2000 I’d seen one of these at the GREC Hamfest earlier in the year, and quite liked it, but the asking price was just a little too much then.

It’s a receiver that covers 150kHz to 30MHz (though the dial can go down to 100 kHz) and has AM, FM, SSB, and CW modes.

The first thing I tuned to was 3LO (774kHz) and I was struck by this radios sound quality. It was pretty much all through the bands, though as it only has a 50Hz tuning step, ssb transmissions can be a little hard to tune in so that the voice sounds natural.

But through the HF broadcast bands, again AM sounded wonderful, even with the narrow AM filter, and I found it did a much better job of receiving AM transmisions, compared with the ICOM 706mkIIG. It may be just that the R-2000 was designed for reception.

I am just struck by the “warmness” of the sound.

I am looking forward to seeing how well it goes for listening in on the 160m AM nets that are on most mornings, and the crossband “missions” That are on on Saturday nights. The only issue is most of the time I’m outside of the city, and it appears that the ground wave for 160m is only about 50 Kms, but at least it is also transmitted on 80m.

~Ivy

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