WWW.MIKESDX.COM

On the web Since 1999

For FM antenna specs, tuner mod info, phasing, filter info, look under LINKS above.

HELLO!

Hello! My name is Mike and I'm retired. I've been DXing in one form or another for around 55 years. I spent 35 years in the office copier industry as a technician for Minolta, Saxon, Savin, Ricoh and (my favorite) Canon office copiers. I also serviced Canon fax machines and IBM selectric typewriters, Anyone remember them? Now I spend my time playing with Linux distros on my computers and searching for weak, distant AM and FM radio signals (and DTV signals, too) using my SDRs. I also dabble with HTML and have built this simple website from scratch. My goal here is to show you a simple, clean, uncluttered website. I have time to play, so why not. Learning is fun.

I've renewed the domain for one more year(2021). You can't get rid of me yet, lol.

I recently watched a YouTube video from SDRPlay that showed me how to add RDS Spy to SDRUno, which is what I need to use with my RSPDuo and its diversity mode. I appreciated that especially since I really like RDS Spy because of its sensitivity but was never able to get it to work with Virtual Audio Cable on my Dell desktop. Before buying the Duo I was "stuck" using SDR concole with my RSP2 instead. Console is good but Spy is even better, so I installed it and got it running and it is so much better than Uno's own RDS display in that it shows you everything (PS/RT/Pty/PI) completely and quickly. If you have a SDRPlay product, consider adding RDS Spy to SDR Uno. If you don't want to mess with virtual audio cable, use the Hi-Fi Cable option instead. It's much easier. That's what I used.

I have written my own article on how to add RDS Spy to SDR Uno. I published it in my club publication and soon after needed it to re-install everything on a newly wiped hard drive. To my surprise, it didn't work! Then I went back to the video and discovered I had left out something very important so I re-wrote the article. The corrected article (pdf) is HERE and the corrected part is in bold print.(March 2021)

I changed SDRs in March 2020, after the urging of two of my friends. I'm now the owner of an RSPDuo from SDRPlay. This radio has been out for around four years now but I just got around to buying one. The thing that makes this SDR different is that it has two tuners, and you can phase one against the other to null (phase) out your local and semi-local stations. It just works great in nuking HD sidebands and it's also easier to create a null than a Bolin Phase Box or anything else. I've already used it during skip openings to hear skip through my local HD sidebands. It works very well. I've already gone through an RSP-1, an RSP-2, an Airspy Mini and an Elad FDM-S2. I keep the RSP-2 for a spare and use the Elad strictly for medium wave (AM) DXing in the winter. I keep the Airspy for DXing with the laptop, which has Linux on it and not Windows. I sold the RSP-1. How many SDRs do I need, anyway?

In 2020 I had two screengrabs of new lowband DTV stations. Both were seen recently on ch2 during skip openings in late May and June. With luck I hope to see more. So far I've seen thirteen. See the link above.

THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE. The TV antenna you see at the top of this page is an Archer VU-190. It was originally sold by Radio Shack as a VHF-UHF combo. This antenna is brand new and has been sitting in the basement for the past 5-6 years until just recently when I decided to put it together and do something with it. I decided to try it as a phase antenna along with my APS-13 and Bolin phase box. The UHF elements were removed. The result is an antenna that works really well on FM and works fine as a phase antenna. It has enough gain that it does not need a pre-amp between it and the input to the combiner. The antenna was bought at a yard sale for just a few dollars, sold by a person who either didn't know what it was, or just didn't care.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you found something worthwhile here. Come back again because who knows what I'll be rambling on about next time!


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