Dxing 7BU 00558 khz

Contact Details

Time UTC:- 1130

Date:- 29 Jan 2010

Strength:- 2/5

Noise:- 2/5

Fading:- 3/5

Interferance:- 4/5

Overall Quality:- 3/5

Distance:- 315 km

Mode:- AM

Frequency KHz:- 00558

Station ID:- 7BU www.7bu.com.au

Station type:- Commercial

Location:- Burnie Tasmania Australia (Table Cape)

Polarisation:- Vertical

Antenna Height (MAX):- 60 mtrs

Maximum ERP:- 20 kw (120ᵒ - 300 ᵒ)

Adj ERP for bearing:- 2kw (0ᵒ - 120ᵒ)

Map to contact

SWL DXing.... and "local" AM stations

At night one of the things I like to do is see what is the furthest AM broadcast station I can aquire. I am only working the AM broadcast band when I do this and dont want to say hey I picked up China Radio from Beijing at 200.000 watts when I can try and tune a "local" station say in Colac at 2000 watts. Needless to say the Beijing signal aimed at the pacific area by bouncing it off the ionosphere is much much stronger then Colac...

Reciever is Realistic DX-150B FET SW Receiver with a 20' long wire aerial about 10' off the ground running North to south horizontally.

For those that dont know the quality strength etc is shown as a rating out of five, 5/5 is the best and 1/5 is the worst.

Strength is the received power

Noise is atmospheric interference

Fading is the signal fading in and out, this affects the overall volume

Interferance are signals from other transmitters on the same frequency or are very close to it

Overall Quality is a combination of all of the above and how "listenable" the station is

ERP is short for Emitted Radiated Power it can be different at certain directions from the transmitter depending on the broadcast pattern. It might be omnidirectional and be as strong in all directions or it might transmit north south or east west. For example the weather is broadcast to shipping from two transmitters, one in Queensland doing the east coast and one in WA doing the west coast, they are set up to transmit north to south to follow the coastline and both are inland with the Qld one near the NT border not the coast

Thanks,

Mark (Pocket's) Clohesy

Google Wave Invites

Hi to all my readers,

I am giving away 5 Google wave invites to the first 5 people that email me at hiddensoul(at)twistedsouls(dot)com. You must use Google Wave Invite Giveaway as the subject line

Cheers Mark

Haceduino Nano for Christmas :)

A few days ago I got my latest parcel from Hace electronics an order I had made for Christmas. Inside were three HACEduino Nano's with an ATmega328 on them, I carefully unpacked the package and got a bit of a surprise, Adrian had upgraded my breadboards as he had said he would, but the boards I got were much bigger then I had expected.

As well as the nano's and breadboards there were three complimentary USB cables to program the Haceduino Nanos's and three protoshields (Ver B) to build a project on to. I have wrapped them all up and placed them under the tree, I did solder one of the protoshields together so the kids can copy it on Christmas day.

I did have a look at one idea I have had about using the protoshield as a mounting board to prototype for the HACEduino nano, so far it looks like the concept is sound now I just have to play with it on christmas day and then I will blog about it and will also have some photos for you.

Have a great festive season.

MIcks latest valve project

Well Mick has been up to it again, he has been fiddling with bits and pieces of electronics and has come up with an amp for his guitar. I will leave it to him to describe it in more depth as it is pretty out there.

Specifications for the HACEduino 2009 (Arduino Duemilanove clone)

The HACEduino "2009/328" is a powerful development board based on the ATMEL ATmega328P-PU AVR micro controller, and is still FULLY compatible with the Arduino Duemilanove and its shields, so basically it is an Arduino clone

.

When you purchase a HACEduino "2009/328" you will get a board with a small micro controller, this is a whole computer on a small chip, in this case it is an ATMEL AVR ATMega328P-PU.

The HACEduino's design is quite simple, and its design was intended so as the micro controller could easily communicate with a variety of devices, and could be programmed with your computer with a simple design IDE or Integrated Design Environment without the need for sophisticated hardware to program it. In fact, the software, your HACEduino and a handful of components are all that you need to get started.

A standard HACEduino "2009/328" features 14 Digital I/O pins, These can be inputs or outputs, which is specified by the program, known as a sketch which you create in the IDE. The HACEduino also has 6 Analogue In pins, These dedicated analogue input pins take analogue values (0-5v), for example voltage readings from a sensor and convert them into a number between 0 and 1023.

There are also 6 PWM (pulse width modulation) Output pins, These are six of the digital pins that can be reprogrammed for PWM output using the sketch you create in the IDE, the PWM output allows you to create pseudo analogue output voltages(0-5v)

The HACEduino can be powered from your computer's USB port, a USB charger, or an AC adapter. If using an AC adaptor then a 9 volt one is recommended, it will need to have a 2.1mm barrel tip, centre positive to use the powers socket although you can also connect to the Vin pin on the HACEduino.

If there is no power supply plugged into the power socket or the Vin pin then the power will come from the USB socket, however as soon as you plug a power supply in to the HACEduino it will automatically switch over and use it.

When operating the board with an input voltage between 12V and 14V excessive heat generated by the voltage regulator may damge it. Damage caused by this is not covered by the warranty you get on the HACEduino.

The HACEduino with the ATmega328 micro controller is the perfect entry point to learning to program a micro controller and develop using the Arduino development framework.

The HACEduino "2009/328" has the following features:

Micro controller ATmega328

Operating Voltage 5V

Input Voltage (recommended 9 volts) 7-14V

Digital I/O Pins 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)

Analogue Input Pins 6

DC Current per I/O Pin 40 mA

DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA

Flash Memory 32 KB (ATmega328) 2 KB used by boot loader

SRAM 2 KB (ATmega328)

EEPROM 1 KB (ATmega328)

Clock Speed 16MHz

Motorjet to startTurbojet

G'day All,
it's been a while but I'm back!
(too many Projects, too little money)

Iv'e been working on a Starter Motor for the Turbo Jet project,
I don't know weather you can make it out from the pix but it's a Cox .049 ci
with a puta fan blade attached!
(yes Brad it IS the same motor I used on the model boats we made as teenagers!)

Appearntly people tried using puta fans as ducted fans in the early days but,
found them to be useless cos the crappy plastics they were made of used to
fly apart when exposed to 22,000 + rpm
(I wonder why?)






But thankfully puta fans now are made out of tough ABS plastic,
which should be up to the task!
Some of the better quality fans are actually balanced!
(you can see the dremel marks on some the back of the blades!)











Cox went out of buisness in Feb 2009 but Iv'e found a shop
in Canada that has a warehouse full of motors and parts!
(and he does bulk lots too! I bought 6 piston/conrod/cylnder assys for
less than 30 bucks au, including postage!)




You can still get the parts to make a replica "Black Widdow Venom"
(the originals were only a run of a 1000 and are very rare!)
BTW, FYI, the "Black Widdow Venom's" were the motors that could pull
22,000 revs!










I have yet to fabricate a bracket to mount the
motor in the "Duct" but as you can see it basicaly
fell together, just drill a few holes in some Stainless Steel tube and Vioal!
A home brew Ducted Fan,
the stainless came from the inside of a "Thermal Cup"
and is quite lightweight and a perfect fit to the Turbo Inlet.
(just dumb luck!)









The motor in the pix is also rare for other reasons,
it is a single transfer port bore which were discontinued early on cos
they only pulled a measly 10,000 to 12,000 to revs!
The more common one comes
with 2 transfer ports and "Slit Exhausts" they pulled from 15,000 to
17,000 revs!
And the Venom's piston was lightened, polished crankshaft, they had
extra ports and had higher compression
they were capable of 22,000 revs







The Idea is use a drill to start the Cox motor then plug the Cox into
the turbo's inlet to start the Turbo Jet!
Cool huh?






BTW,
Ducted Fans actually qualify as a Jet by themself and are also known as Cold Jet's ,
Motor Jets or (my personal favorite) Piston Jets!


cheers, Mick. '-))

Lord,
if you can't make me a better Boy,
don't worry about it,
I'm having a great time as it is!