hf dead?

[Gemini4]

Last year when I bought the funcube+ and 20mtrs of garex cable..there was nothing stopping me from picking
stations and ham up..now this past three months all is dead except for the odd broadcast..is there anything I am
missing or not doing..the set up is exactly like it was at the beginning of the year.

I seem to pick more up on the Sony 7600 than this which is odd?
I'm also having problems with SDR V2..keeps expiring oddly.

[owza]

There is plenty of solar flare activity at the moment, the bands are pretty poor

http://www.hamqsl.com/solar.html

The broadcast bands near the 'Good' regions should have some activity though?

[Gemini4]

Thanks for that owza...
I've uninstalled SDR V.2 and downloaded 1.5 but I can't get the waterfall to work for some reason.

[nerdsville]

V1.5 doesn't support the FUNCube Dongle PRO+ only the earlier version which didn't have HF

As for V2, on http://v2.sdr-radio.com/Download.aspx

If you see a message "Licence Expired" for version 2.0 either:

Install the 2.1 Beta, or
Wait until version 2.1 is released on or around January 16th, 2014.

[Gemini4]

Simply stupendous nerdsville..must have missed that one Thanks

[Excalibur]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806

[Gemini4]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806
something is happening then

[Tinman]

I'm guessing it's still happening too.

Not been listening in to the HF for a while due to lack of equipment. Managed to get back into listening again today for the first time in ages after treating my self and getting a Fun Cube Pro + dongle. During the day the bands seemed reasonably active later tonight everything seemed to go dead. There were some broadcast stations on air but everything else amateur and data mode wise seamed to go dead.

Even the buzzer seems a lot weaker than normal which is strange.

I'm wondering wether it is the conditions at the moment or if I need to do some repairs to my antenna.


Dave

[Gemini4]

think its the solar activity thats doing it..sometimes mines dead during daytime and comes alive at night..other times its dead 24hrs.

[JGR]

What is your verdict of the Funcube Pro+ dongle? It is something I have been looking at for a little while as an upgrade from the basic RTL dongle, is the front end filtering applicable as the RTL suffers some what when a strong signal is near by.

And yes the solar activity is up and down more than a Soho prostitutes knickers!

[grahamwilman01]

Even the buzzer seems a lot weaker than normal which is strange.

I'm getting the buzzer at about 9 but its competing with a lot of white noise at the moment

[Tinman]

Quite enjoyed using the Funcube Pro+ so far. Only really used it on the HF bands though and haven't really used it higher up as yet apart from a quick look on the FM broadcast band as I haven't got a proper antenna for higher up as yet but hoping to sort that soon.

I got the Funcube to replace a Soft66LC4 which I had and wasn't really impressed with. I also have an RTL Dongle and converter which I got bundled with the Soft66LC4 but haven't really used that.

Mainly used it with HDSDR for the hf stuff and when looking at the FM band I used SDR V2 which also appears to be able to decode the RDS signals from FM stations.

Still seems to be pretty much up and down here condition wise. didn't seem too bad last night and only seemed to drop off late at night where as tonight it seemed to go pretty much dead in places as soon as it went dark.


Dave