Erections and waterfalls

 

Finally some progress today.

My lunchtime project was to put up the antenna on the pole I brought yesterday. Somehow I managed to screw up that measurement, and took a quick trip back to Bunnings to swap over to a narrower pipe.

Rain threatening, and wind ever increasing, I found out exactly how difficult it is to put a 6 foot steel pole with an antenna on top down into the existing mount pipe all whilst being below it. Alas, I survived. Currently though it’s holding with a single screw. The second screw to mount the new piping in kept sheering off. Another day, better weather and some pilot holes might be in order.

I can see the improvement in the signal meter already. I may also have been able to get a very rough and distorted response off a repeater that I yesterday couldn’t get near. Progress.

The D-150 mounted above the NBN Wireless antenna.. and the rear security camera. Great line of sight to VK3RBA. Also picks up VK3RWA and VK3RGL reasonably well.

 The RTL.SDR arrived today. A quick fiddle around and it’s setup. A little flaky with GQRS initially but seems OK. I noticed fairly quickly that the frequencies are out. A little fiddling involved to see what the PPM error measurements are to see if I can tweak it out. Still, now I have waterfalls to look at. I really need to put some time into working out how to use these various SDR apps. The crappy external antenna it come with has come in handy on the UV-5R. Not as good as the external, but for the nearest repeater, good enough.

I also received a lightning arrester and some plugs I ordered yesterday. Pity the stuff I’m really in need of is still in transit. Now I need to get my head around exactly how I’m going to hook this up.