marxy's musing on technology

Home brew master, Stephen, VK2BLQ has been at it again and has created a two valve regen a la 1967 All Wave Two, using two 6BL8 or 6U8 triod...

This week I had visits from several hams including Dave, VK3ASE, who brought a long squid pole and an offer to help with antenna raising. Da...

The Bendigo Amateur Radio Club held a meeting where Brad Geier, VK3VLK, spoke about the great future of Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) transmi...

This week I was invited to be a guest on Marc Fennell's Download This Show. Marc must be the busiest person in media but he still has ti...

In my pursuit of low receive noise I've been using a linear power supply but the one I have makes a loud audio hum sound that is a bit a...

Work to reduce noise here at Drummond has been going well and,  yesterday during a voice contact with WSPR reception leader, Phil VK7JJ , he...

My low noise reception seems worth sharing with a few friends so I set up OpenWebRX . I initially tried on an Ubuntu 21.10 laptop but for so...

It is hot in my shack here at the moment and I can't stand it in the shed for more than a few minutes so I decided to buy a new macOS ap...

It's been great having a dipole up high in the trees but I wanted to be able to use more bands so I made an off centre fed dipole , cut ...

At my new location I was able to throw a line up a tree to support the balun for a 40m dipole. Dallas, VK3EB, kindly visited with an 18m squ...

I've continued to work on the 40m dipole here at Drummond and, despite an arm in a sling, managed to throw a line with a rock attached o...

I've moved my shack into a shed and strung up a better dipole in some trees but away from everything electrical. Signal reception is imp...

With my new low noise QTH I'm able to hear Alan, VK2ZIW's FreeDV 700e beacon on 7177kHz. He's running 20W from Emu Heights in NS...

It's long been a dream of mine to have a location for HF reception in a quiet place outside of the city. Since we moved to Thornbury abo...

We're not a big country really. It seems odd that each state has evolved a daily COVID report that broadly looks similar but has the var...

Once again I was a guest on ABC RN's Download This Show presented by hard working and talented Marc Fennel . "The Commonwealth Bank...

I've moved to Melbourne, Victoria, and my 2m hand held radio didn't have any of the local frequencies in it. It's a real grind t...

Last Monday the IPA published the first of five episodes in a new podcast series, “Their ABC”. Its preposterous proposition is that the ABC ...

I've been slow to adopt surface mount components for home construction but watching Paul, VK3HN 's, technique has convinced me it...

This week I'm a guest on Marc Fennell's ABC RN "Download This Show" . "We’ll soon be walking around with them and fla...