----- Original Message -----
From: "John Pumford-Green GM4SLV" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: LF: TA on 500kHz


> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:31:18 +0000
> "lawrence mayhead" <[email protected]> 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.

Well I knew there was something seriously wrong but did not like to say
until someone else mentioned it, imagine no antenna and a mistuned ATU.
The alligator grabber was not grabbing!!!!!
.

>
> 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.

VE and W acty is hardly non existing DX not to mention EU and UA6, you seem
to be totally out of date with 500 acty.


Give the appliance operating a rest, give the hooving and window cleaning a
break and try a bit of cw operating.
>
> However, I'm glad others find my investment of radio hardware, PCs &
> internet bandwidth of value to their own experiments.

A broadband qso is ideal for the appliance operator, what would we do
without it , probably revert to real radio like building a valve tx/rx
system.


>
> 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.
Get a bigger HD

>
>
> Cheers
>
> John GM4SLV
>
>
>
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