Thanks to May (VA7MAY) and Mark (VA7MM) spending the time to scan my 630m QSL card collection, I have now been able to complete their work by posting a dedicated page for the cards. If you've ever wondered what can be worked on this 'below the broadcast band' MF amateur band, then viewing the cards and reading their comments may give you some insight into its character.                               The new page can be found here ..read more

Another month has zoomed by and it's CLE time once again. This is a challenge for all newcomers to NDB listening and the ultimate test of your medium frequency receiving capabilities. Can you meet the challenge? 'CLE's are 'Co-ordinated  Listening Events, and NDB DXers around the world focus their listening time on one small slice of  the NDB spectrum.   With the number of targets slowly being decommissioned, the hunting grounds have been slightly widened ... this month the frequency range is for the NDBs whose published frequencies are between 335.0 - 349 ..read more

This summer’s Sporadic-E season has pretty much wound-down once again. As E seasons go, this one ranked right up there with the worst of them but this comes with some provisos. Over the past several years, my only interest has focused on Europe and Asia, looking for any DXCC entities that I have not yet worked and I tend to ignore most domestic openings unless the MUF appears to be climbing into the range of 2m. There were several openings from here in British Columbia to most regions of the US and Canada, so many would likely disagree that it was a poorer season than normal!   Unlik ..read more

List candidate AP-378 Mayne Island, BC...Can you hear it? Here is the remaining information needed for this weekend's CLE 292. Please give it a try, especially if you have not entered before. MF conditions have been very good this week. Hello all Our 292nd CLE starts at 12:00 UTC  this Friday (probably ‘today’ as you read this) and it ends at 12:00 UTC on Monday. Big thanks to those of us who each chose 1, 2 or 3 ‘special’ NDBs for us all to try and log during the event.   Several of you also gave interesting reasons why they are special – something for the Coordin ..read more

ZSJ-258 Sandy Lake, ON (ve3gop.com) This coming weekend brings CLE 291. This is a challenge for all NDB hunters, both new and old and the ultimate test of your medium frequency receiving capabilities. Can you meet the challenge? 'CLE's are 'Co-ordinated  Listening Events, and NDB DXers around the world focus their listening time on one small slice of  the NDB spectrum.   With the number of targets slowly being decommissioned, the hunting grounds have been widened...this month the frequency range is for the NDBs whose published frequencies are between 240 ..read more

YNE - 207 Norway House, MB (tnx ve3gop.com) Yes! It's CLE time once again. This is a challenge for all newcomers to NDB listening and the ultimate test of your medium frequency receiving capabilities. Can you meet the challenge? 'CLE's are 'Co-ordinated  Listening Events, and NDB DXers around the world focus their listening time on one small slice of  the NDB spectrum.   It's a two-parter this time: The first part is hunting for the NDBs whose published frequencies are between 190 - 239.9 kHz. With NDBs closing down at a rapid rate, this wider range wil ..read more

Crystal Shortwave Receiver of Al Klase (N3FRQ)    The Facebook Crystal Radio DX Group’s fall listening event was held two weekends ago over a two-night listening period. Unlike last year’s event, this was not a contest but rather a leisurely opportunity for members to take some time to see what they could hear with their setups. Also unlike last year, this one introduced and encouraged members to see what they might hear on shortwave! Since circuits losses are measurably much higher as you climb above the broadcast band, audio amplification (AF) was permitted to encour ..read more

My summer radio project, motivated by a magazine article published in 1936, has now been completed and fully described on my main website. Hopefully we can soon exchange Cycle 25 signals with it on the higher bands:                              https://qsl.net/ve7sl/6a6.html ..read more

Time marches on and once again, it's CLE time. This is an opportunity for you to discover the KIWI SDR online network and to put it to use for hunting NDBs ... either close to you or on the other side of the world! 'CLE's are 'Co-ordinated  Listening Events, and NDB DXers around the world focus their listening time on one small slice of  the NDB spectrum.   When tuning for NDBs, put your receiver in the CW mode and listen for the NDB's CW identifier, repeated every few seconds. Listen for U.S. NDB identifiers approximately 1 kHz higher or lower than th ..read more

Blog readers may recall my last two construction projects, the ‘Neophyte’ 1-tube regenerative receiver and a matching ‘Neophyte’ 1-tube crystal-controlled transmitter. The receiver turned out to be an exceptionally good performer once some slight tweaks were made to the original design published back in 1968. It worked so well that I then decided to build a simple 1-tube transmitter to physically match the receiver and put together another circuit from the 60s using a 5763. Once I had the pair working well together, I set myself a goal of Worked All States on 40m CW with the tiny pair. I had ..read more