Topband: Moon and the Ionosphere : YO3FFF

[cris blak]

Hello Tom,
Actually I'm looking for the specific tool, not so much a 
general idea.

OK. Sorry for the long "theoretical" explanation from the previous e-mail. You can try Radio SkyPipe. This is written for radioastronomy and it have a freeware version. Is a strip chart for the back end of the radiotelescope and accept inputs from the soundblaster and ADC as MAX187 or MAX186(commercial version). I play with it and is OK. It doesn't contain filters so...for 1Hz filter you can use an external DSP or another PC. I like very much the small filtering program written by JE3HHT called "DSP Filter". Also a good tool is the Spectrum Lab by DL4YHF. With it you can do anything you want from the soundblaster. It have a scripting language you can play with. Or you can play with an RF spectrum analyzer which can log the traces. IMO, if you have a linear receiver is better to play on audio.

I would like to know because I have been thinking a long 
time about comparing the signal level on three antennas, 
dipole at 300ft, a dipole at 130 feet, and a vertical.

You can use three receivers and a MAX186 ADC together with RadioSkyPipe and a 1Hz filter for each. On Windows XP one can use several soundblasters on the same platform!
You'll get the detected signal from each receiver than insert it to the soundblaster input, get it filtered by 1Hz from the output of the soundblaster than inserted into ADC MAX186 and than on parallel port back to PC on RadioSkyPipe. There will be a delay depending on the power of the PC but if this will be the case with all three signals than never mind.

I thought about an attended high power beacon on 1999kHz 
with Internet reporting system, but perhaps it would work to 
use a receiver and record the signal levels from distant 
transmitters.

You can use other beacons or AM BC stations but you cannot control theme to be sure if what you'll record is due to propagation of the transmitter. One way to go is than one should monitor that transmitter on its ground wave than correlate your record with this.

73 de YO3FFF
Cristi

 
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