Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 07:59:00 +0000
From: John Pumford-Green GM4SLV <gm4slv@sighthound.demon.co.uk>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Message-ID: <20080303075900.15456571@lurcher.twatt.local>
In-Reply-To: <88d2415e0803010631w71fa0de3hd50725d6c2ae236a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <d63.149a1d41.34f96791@aol.com>
	<009401c87ae1$0f703020$6901a8c0@AIRPORTTERMINAL>
	<006801c87b91$9ab77d90$0301a8c0@g3kev>
	<88d2415e0803010631w71fa0de3hd50725d6c2ae236a@mail.gmail.com>
Organization: The Gammy Bird
Mime-Version: 1.0
Subject: Re: LF: TA on 500kHz
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org


On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:31:18 +0000
"lawrence mayhead" <laurie.mayhead@googlemail.com> wrote:

> I cannot agree ! I use this grabber all the time and find it very
> useful. Sometimes during the day there is no signal but then I am on
> the south coast,
> a long way away. At night no problem, so John please keep up the good
> work. Laurie G3AQC
> 

Thanks Laurie and others for the kind words re: grabber.

The grabber RX (AR7030) is fed from my main 500kHz TX antenna and I
discovered over the weekend that it was very off tune after more
Shetland storms had rattled the ATU enclosure. 

I retuned and it appears the receive sensitivity of the grabber has
returned.

I have all but given up on 500kHz operating recently - too many other
distractions - but at least I can provide something of use to the rest
of the active users of the band instead of just sitting moaning about
appliance operators and lack of activity. If I was retired, with few
other interest in life than radio I too could be sitting all day & night
in the shack looking for non existent DX on 500kHz.

However, I'm glad others find my investment of radio hardware, PCs &
internet bandwidth of value to their own experiments. 

One thing I should announce, I have suspended the "automatic archiving"
of each 5-minute screengrab. All that happens now is that the new grab
is uploaded to the web. The local copy isn't stored. I found that after
7 months of saving a JPG image every 5 minutes that I had over 10GB of
pictures stored...! 

Since I have had only one request over that period to look back to
specific day/times I figure I'm wasting my hard drive's storage space
by attempting to archive every screengrab.

I guess it's now up to yourselves to use one of the various "grabber
grabber" tools to make your own saved sequences of periods of interest.

I have zipped up each month's screengrabs (approx 1.5GB each month)
from July 07 to Feb 08 and will keep them for another month after which
time I fear I'll have to delete them to free up space on my Hard Drive
for other projects.


Cheers

John GM4SLV