SWl Hobby - Weather Fax Transmissions
1 Aug 2021 0:58:23 UTC
Topic 225765
(moderation:
I'm a ham and I also dabble in some SWL stuff. I recently got back into receiving the weather fax transmission on the shortwave bands. It's a rather old technology but it's still being used today (at least for now ...).
One I decoded this evening was broadcast from New Orleans Coast Guard station NMG on 8.502 MHz. It had been damaged for some time due to tornadoes but it is up again this evening. The chart shows wind speed and direction as well as wave heights.
There is another in Point Reyes, CA - NMC, I was receiving yesterday but it's rather a noisy picture. I'll try to get a clear pic from there if I can.
Processing work units with "outdated" (according to Microsoft) Ryzen 7 1700
Are you using an SDR for
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Are you using an SDR for that? I think that SDRs are breathing new life in to the SWL hobby. It has for me...
Styx N Stones wrote: Are you
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Hello. Yes I was. I was using an Icom IC-7300 amateur radio transceiver which is an SDR. Yes the display really makes it a lot more interesting to use the receiver because it lets the operator view the spectrum and what is going on around the signal of interest as you know. I have a collection of older shortwave receivers that I have restored, but they aren't as fun to use once you have an SDR!
Processing work units with "outdated" (according to Microsoft) Ryzen 7 1700
My XYL and myself enjoy
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My XYL and myself enjoy restoring old tube radios with wooden cabinets. She works on the wood, and I get out the soldering iron. The art of the woodwork is great. We recently finished a Philco about 4 foot high. Inside was the original tag from Jan 1941. Had to wonder who listened to Pearl Harbor on it.
I'm getting out some of my
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I'm getting out some of my older SWL receivers and using them for a while. These are mostly made in the 1980s which I got from Ebay sellers over the years. I did complete restorations on them and also did the service manual alignments. This one is a Kenwood R-2000. It wouldn't have been used by very many people to receive anything other than AM or CW/SSB back in the day and most certainly wouldn't have had it's audio piped into a personal computer for receiving a weather fax. But as you can see, it does the job pretty darn well 40 years later!
The transmission is out of NMG station New Orleans on 8.502 MHz.
Processing work units with "outdated" (according to Microsoft) Ryzen 7 1700
Ive worked a few NOAA sats
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Ive worked a few NOAA sats with my SDR dongles. Quite alot of fun. Lately Ive been monitoring some SSTV stuff with it. Its been years since Ive worked any SSTV.
Is your Kenwood feeding audio out to the soundcard in on the laptop, or did you need to do a discriminator tap? Im guessing no tap was needed.
BTW Im KD6IMX... Roger out of Iowa.
Styx N Stones wrote: Is your
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The audio is coming out of the record output of the radio and is fed into the SignaLink on top of the radio. That unit then converts it to digital audio and goes to the PC via USB. The software is called FLDIGI which you have probably heard of.
Processing work units with "outdated" (according to Microsoft) Ryzen 7 1700