The weather got milder today. It was foggy, very little wind and about 4C. I simply couldn’t resist making one more attempt on erecting the HF2V.
HF2V Assembly – But no Erection
I have now received all the parts for the HF2V with 160m and 30m extensions, and I took a few days off in order to erect it during a long weekend.
PBT Mod for the IC-765
As you may already know, the IC-765 has IF-shift but no passband tuning. There is, however, a simple mod originally designed by Gerd Henjes, W2ISB, which allows the IF-shift button to tune the passband while the IF-shit button is in OFF position. This mod is described in the VE3HUR IC-765 notes and reproduced here with some illustrative pictures, as well as a video demonstrating the difference between PBT and IF-shift
IC-765 Overview
The IC-765 has been ICOM’s flagship HF-radio for many years. Even today (2006) it represents excellent value for money as it has one of the best receivers ever made. The IC-765 has 4 IF stages (69MHz, 9MHz, 455kHz, 9MHz), built-in power supply (PS-35) and automatic antenna tuner (AT-150), and it comes with 500Hz CW filters (mounted from the factory. Optional 250Hz CW filters (FL101 and FL53A) are available, too, as is the optional FL102 6kHz AM filter.
Gpredict 0.7.0
Tonight, I have released Gpredict 0.7.0 containing the automatic TLE update feature, satellite ground tracks, and improved single pass prediction doalogue.
Grig on Mac OS X
I haven’t done any work on grig for the last couple of months. It seems most users are happy with it (or just left giving up every hope).
Go for the HF2V!
We entered december, and the Christmas holidays are coming closer and closer. I had to make up my mind about which antenna to buy for my top-band adventures. As I wrote in a previous article I had some serious worries about the GAP Voyager DX. I simply can not afford to spend 650 euros on a vertical that may be destroyed by the first comning storm. The GPM-1500 was pretty much ruled out as well, due to low expectations on efficiency.