PESKY RX101

P1070535 The PESKY RX101

Today I received in the post the PESKY RX101 from Spectrum communications it’s billed as:
A single band PSK receiver as a further development of the RSGB Centenary Receiver and the Sudden Receiver, with new band pass coupled front-end filter and bipolar RF stage. The full historical development of this receiver from its 1st version in 1989 to the present day is the subject of Doing It by Design in PW in July 2014. The receiver connects between the aerial and the computer and should prove an ideal companion for the Raspberry Pi computer.
It sounds a fun item of kit to have in the shack I was keen to get it set up and running – however we soon discovered that on RX there was brake through from a strong broadcast station that spoiled the decode of the PSK signal I called the shop on the landline and after a chat with G4CFY we were advised to remove C5 by removing C5 we had lowered the gain of the RX once this had been done we were in business the unwanted broadcast station had disappeared and we were able to decode signals

International Marconi Day 2014

Allison and I with Monty called by The Museum of the History of Science on broad street to see the Annual event Marconi Day Saturday

DSC_0172The Oxford & District Amateur Radio Society had been invited by The Museum of the History of Science to celebrate the birthday of Guglielmo Marconi

DSC_0128by operating a radio station GB4MHS.

DSC_0151It was billed by the museum as See who they can contact across the globe by the power of wireless – I worked GB4MHS on 40m and 20m cw and took along my qsl card. & took a few photo’s along the way

Aprs via the international space station

This afternoon I used my yaesu VX-8G GPS transceiver and Peters 2E0SQL 2m X quad antenna to send aprs data to the international space station. I was Successful on my second attempt I had tried just after lunch using the hand held and rubber duck antenna but I was getting nowhere with this and thought that on the next pass I might use Peters arrow antenna instead of the rubber duck but on second thoughts due to the variable weather we are having over this Christmas season I came up with the idea of using Peter’s 2m beam this proved to be the right combination for success.

Screenshot 2013-12-31 15.45.46 (2)

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And Tim G4VXE heard me and sent me the above screen shot.