After some time playing with SDR I decided to finally get a decent dedicated shortwave radio.
In this image the Sangean ATS-909X2 is set to receive at 14.074 MHz in USB mode to capture some FT8 signals.
The phone is running the FT8CN app and it captures the audio to decode the messages via the microphone.
7.074 MHz and 28.074 MHz also work great for this.
It’s all super fascinating. There’s a plethora of digital modes, FT4, JT65, JT9, to name a few. Then there’s Slow-scan TV (SSTV) which is a lot of fun:
I can go on and on, really consider getting your license, I think you’d have a lot of fun!
Ooh, is that what SSTV should look like? I tried capturing some earlier today using Radio 36, but I could not get a good image. I even trying capturing the image directly from the audio of YouTube videos, and I could only get the silhouette of the image that way. I’ll keep trying.
Alright then, I’ll do it then… The exam will combine two challenges in one for me because I’ll have to take it in Dutch, and my Dutch is still not amazing, haha
Yes! This happens to be pretty good reception of an image, there are others which are not so great. Sometimes you have to tweak the settings, or make sure you’re using the correct decoding mode; there are quite a few of them. They have names like Martin and Scottie, among others.
If–and I hope you’ll forgive me for an assumption here–you have a US mailing address, you could get your US amateur licenses fairly quickly and then operate under CEPT (once you have General or Amateur Extra) within certain Dutch jurisdictions. You do not need to be a US citizen, or even live here. You can conduct your entire exam via online zoom call. I did my Tech (first license in the US) from a beach on a tropical island with adequate WiFi during the pandemic, and then I did General and Amateur Extra upgrades a couple of years later in a different part of the world, each only weeks apart, also via zoom.
In this way, you can gain some experience operating before taking your exams in Dutch. https://hamstudy.org/ and from there you can book exam appointments online. Here’s how wild my setup was: I was on a Pacific Island, taking my US exam, which was conducted by volunteers from the Volunteer Examiners of Australia, some of whom happened to be in the US. You’re joining a a true global community.
Alright, I think this is one that I should first practice with an SDR. I already identified the signal at 14,230 KHz, but maybe the phone is not capturing the audio from the device with the quality required. Or it might be the decoding. This will be easier to test with the computer.
Thanks for the tip, I wish I was a in tropical island at the moment. I don’t have a US mailing address, although I some in my family and family friends do. However, the system here appears to be quite streamlined - register online, show up to the test center, answer 40 multiple choice questions - I will do some practice tests with the relevant Dutch terminology and give a try. There is no penalty for failing (other than test cost) and no limit to how many attempts I can do. My partner also wants to get one so that she can also transmit, otherwise she’d see me having all the fun.
I tried a few different training methods and I am liking this one: https://stendec.io/morse/koch.html