Later on during my school days, the AR88 popped its mains transformer and we were down a receiver. There was a CR-100 and a B40 in the other radio room connected to a Creed 7B. Both of which were so hopeless we kids realised how good the AR88 was. I never liked the Creed 7B, the TTY15 seemed proper in comparison. The AR88 was replaced with the newly released FRG-7 and then a FRG-7000 turned up They were stable such that the vibrations of the TTYs didn’t cause the tuning to change. Hey the FRG-7000 had digital display so it must be better!
Perhaps it was that particular B40 but it was the pits. I’m sure Her Majesty’s Navy only bought B40s to drop over the side of destroyers or frigates in the hope they’d hit an enemy submarine and sink it. They were no use as receivers.
The swansong just as I was finishing school was an ASR28 that had a PSU with a mercury arc rectifier in it. Not only did you get the smell of the machine oil and the clacketer-clacketer noise but there was a flashing purple disco light show by your feet.
It was similar enough to the ASR33 that on progressing to university, I was less bothered if I had to use an ASR33 instead of a VDU on the mainframes. We do seem have come on somewhat in only 40 years. Analog SSTV excluded!
Ah that’s why the WX is rubbish… SOTA visitors in GM! I forgot you were coming up Tom. I hope the WX is better for you as it is heavy and persistent rain here and has been all morning so far.
The AZ rule came to my aid. Like on our last visit, the cattle up here were very lively and inquisitive - but this time they were in the upper field near the trig point and true summit. I set up at the upper edge of the middle field, 7m below the true summit.
Driving off the hill I had to perform an emergency stop on the wet descending lane when a deer hurdled the fence to my left and landed in the road in front of my car before hurdling into the field on the other side! At least I know the tyres and brakes on my Duster are working well!
That’s impressive Tom. I’ve recently played with SSTV at home and managed to transmit an image from the shack to my bedroom! Just need to try a longer range next.
What I’ve not properly cracked was sending a new image. I did it by creating an image sized correctly in pixels but I see you used an image taken on the activation. This sent me back to the PC and discover you can easily add an image from file and it automatically crops and resizes it. Very clever.
I’ve been thinking about doing some SSTV again, but on 10m. It looks like 28.260 is the usual part of the band for SSTV. I suspect the only places people really look for SSTV are 14.230 and 144.500 though, so it would need a sked + self-spots to have any chance of working. I’m away this next week, but after that, do you fancy trying a 10m SSTV S2S, exchanging “nearly live” images of our respective summits?
Looks like a few packets got through, but disappointingly few. None picked up at my home QTH from the summit.
I had the tracker running for the drive there and back, albeit on the car dashboard, strapped it to the top of my backpack for the walk up, then attached it to the antenna mast on the summit.
When I swapped the VHF for the HF antenna it fell off and I noticed it had powered off. I turned it back on and put it back up but I think it shut itself off again.
I’ll try with a bigger, fully charged battery next time.
Looks like 5 packets from you got through to me. 60.1 miles 70cm 100mW - not too shabby really. I would really only expect to be getting packets at that range when you were at or very near to the summit. Thanks for trying.
Any details of your set up and
