Radio Sweden

Having resurrected the R1000 I was cruising the broadcast bands and stumbled on Radio Sweden on 15735 Khz. They were announcing the fact that from October 31st this year they will no longer transmit on Shortwave. So another well known international broadcaster leaves the airwaves. Interesting my Interner Radio (based on the RECIVA platform) does not seem to list Radio Sweden. Their website at http://sverigesradio.se/international/
doesn't seem to offer any clues either.

New schedule from Oct 31

Short wave disappears, still on satellite around the world, live webcasts, and FM nationally.

10 metre mobile

I had a short 10 minute journey to make today, just across the village. Since 10 metres was open again I put the 10 metre whip on the car. Actually its an El Cheapo CB whip that I bought from  a local Maplins shop.

I relly need to trim it for 10 metre use, but at the moment the LDG auto tunes it nicely. I was rewarded with a QSO with an Italian station, located in Sicily. Can't remember the call though, keeping a log is difficult when you are mobile!
In any case that was my first 28Mhz mobile contact.

More R1000 work

Looking at the blown S meter bulb in my R1000 I suddenly remembered that I had an old Scrap CB transceiver which I had bought for parts. That had a brightly lit s-meter. A few minutes later I had extracted the bulb, it looked almost identical to the R1000 bulb.

So this morning I removed the power board from the receiver and pulled out the old bulb. The wires are so thin it was difficult to solder the "new" bulb in but I managed it eventually. Here it is on the flying lead that connects to the power board.

And the proof that it works!- here is the R1000 with the meter illuminated

Of course the replacement bulb is I guess almost 30 years old. It will be interesting to see how it lasts. But for now at least my R1000 is back in full operation.

Higher bands open

I noticed yesterday that 10 metres was open with quite a few signals to be heard on SSB. I managed to work  Rob TA4ZN and then moved on to PSK 31 and worked a couple of Russian stations. Its nice to use 10 metres again, I have seen reports of several band openings but until yesterday I seemed to keep missing them!

R1000 repair

I finally got around to repairing my Trio  R1000 receiver which was intermittently locking up with a frequency reading of 39Mhz. Sometimes a good tap to the side of the receiver cured this but the fault always reappeared. Research on the internet showed this was a common problem, normally caused by dry joints on the power board.
I removed the power board and remade some of the joints below the multi way connector on the board. This did not do the trick unfortunately. I then turned my attention to the two transisistors you can see on the heatsink in the picture. Re flowing the solder on the underside of the board here has cured the fault, for now at least and the R1000 is sounding good again. Now I notice that the S meter bulb has blown so I either need to find another bulb or maybe try an LED as a replacement.

QSLs

Received another batch from the QSL bureau this week. No DX here bit some interesting cards!

Last rally this year

This morning despite suffering with the start of symptoms for a nasty cold I headed off to the Blackwood and District ARS rally at Coleg Gwent, Crosskeys about 45 minutes drive from here. I wasn't looking for anything particular at the rally, other than some coax cable, connectors and fuses, all of which I found. I also purchased these books from the RSGB stall which looked interesting

  I have only had time to have a quick scan through these books but I notice that "Stealth Antennas"  has a case study featuring the antennas of a certain G4ILO!