[Premium-Rx] 500 kHz License

[George Georgevits]

Hi Pat,

Just a short note because I see you mention Chatham Radio. Some five years
ago my wife surprised me with a holiday to NZ which included 8 days on
Chatham Island. The reason for the Chatham trip was that I was always
reminiscing about my childhood days of listening to shortwave, and in
particular the marine forecasts from places like Chatham Island. Anyway, we
went there for 8 days - very rustic but the best holiday we ever had. My son
was 5 at the time, but he still remembers things like fishing off the wharf
and hooking a big purple conga eel, and the seal colony - 200 big seals
which you could smell from miles away! As space was very limited on the
aircraft, I took a little specially modified 40m CW QRP rig with me with a
plugpack power supply and a tuned folded dipole made of TV ribbon feeder.
Anyway, with my 1W station and the antenna strung up on two clothes line
poles, I made some 20 contacts from all around the world as ZL7... (I forget
my temporary call sign), despite my woeful CW skills. I would have made
more, but many operators just wouldn't send slowly enough for me to copy. I
guess I should have practiced more before we left!

We went looking for the Chatham Radio site, only to be told by the local
techo that the place was closed some years back. I was very dismayed.
Anyway, for something really different, I would thoroughly recommend Chatham
as a place to go. They are not big on tourists, but that is what I really
liked about the place.

Also, that reminded me about a Premium-RX question I have been meaning to
ask. The Chatham tech kindly gave me a Japan Marina Co Model Fx-240
facsimile receiver which had developed a fault, and he had no further use
for it because he had long since received a replacement. It appears to be a
synthesised communications receiver attached to a special FAX machine which
worked on silver paper. The receiver is quite nice, with push-button up/down
frequency tuning 0-30MHz coverage LSB/USB/AM/FM. I was wondering whether
anyone on the list would have any info on this Rx. I would love to get it
going again, and it would be good to have some service info or a circuit or
something before I start.
Regards,
George Georgevits

VK2KGG

  -----Original Message-----
  From: premium-rx-bounces at ml.skirrow.org
[mailto:premium-rx-bounces at ml.skirrow.org]On Behalf Of Pat1McA at aol.com
  Sent: Saturday, 16 September 2006 4:14 AM
  To: ny2h at yahoo.com
  Cc: premium-rx at ml.skirrow.org
  Subject: Re: [Premium-Rx] 500 kHz License


  Hello Warren,

  Thank you for this information which, I, for one, find very interesting.

  As an ex Maritime R/O I had to monitor 500kHz 8 Hours a day and you get to
know what that frequency band can actually do after a few years.

  I always used to get great pleasure listening to WCC ChathamRadio
announcing their Traffic List on 500kHz at local sunset time on the other
side of Madagascar - IN THE INDIAN OCEAN!!!

  To me that represents REAL DX.

  A similar interesting listening experience was listening to the RugbyRadio
MSF 60kHz Time Signal at S9+10  in the Gt. Australian Bight off Tasmania.

  Lets hope some of this fun can now be repeated with 500kHz perhaps coming
back on line.

  Best wishes,

  Pat G3YFK, MPJY, GHLH ,GVNE, GTIV, GNOL, etc, etc, etc.
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