Brad McConahay

I recently decided to replace my little portable shortwave radio, the Sangean ATS-505, with something better. My #1 requirement was to get something that didn’t have the “chuffing” problem. When using the tuning knob, the sound is muted between every frequency. My main use is to tune through the amateur radio bands, so chuffing is very annoying. Getting better sensitivity and a backlight color other than puke-green were secondary wishes.

After a lot of online research, I thought maybe the Sangean ATS-909 would do, but I would still need to do the anti-chuffing modification. Then I ran across RadioLabs and their “Super 909“. This is an ATS-909 with many great modifications. New filters, a better speaker, a blue backlight, increased sensitivity, anti-chuffing, and removal of the tuning knob detent for smooth tuning. There were several favorable reviews of the Super 909 version of the radio on eHam.net, so I pulled the trigger.

I labored a bit over whether or not to pay $100 more for the mods, but ended up deciding it would be worth it. Well, I was right. With regard to both sensitivity and audio quality, it outperforms the 505 by leaps and bounds. I could only hear the strongest signals with the 505 and a longwire. With the Super 909 and the telescoping whip, I hear so much more. And with a longwire or active antenna, it rivals my ham HF gear. Granted, this isn’t the best comparison – I wish I could hear the difference between it and an un-modded ATS-909. Speaking of which, they will mod your existing ATS-909 with these modifications if you already have one.

As odd as it sounds, my only complaint was the way they offered free ground shipping on the Super 909. They had it set up as the only shipping option. I would gladly have paid more to get the radio here more quickly. Since it was traveling from California to Ohio, it took almost two weeks to arrive. Very aggravating.

But I’ve been enjoying listening to the HF ham bands without having to go into the shack for several weeks now, and I’m damn happy. I highly recommend this modded version of the radio. Good job, RadioLabs!

On Thursday morning I was listening to the police scanner as it often makes for good background listening while working. All of a sudden there was a big police chase moving across Hamilton County that originated in southeast Indiana where suspects had just robbed an auto parts store. Anytime a chase crosses state lines it becomes a bigger deal than the average pursuit. The local TV stations were even breaking into regular programming at this point.

After a while, I noticed they were moving toward Golf Manor and getting very close to my mother-in-law’s house, the house where my wife grew up. Imagine the surprise when they said the suspects had just wrecked at the intersection where she lives. I called the wife at work, and she called her mom. It turns out that they wrecked into the telephone pole right in front of her house, and they had taped off her yard. What a way to wake up! The passenger was captured near the scene of the wreck with lots of cash, and the driver fled to an apartment complex a couple blocks away.

Almost all of the TV coverage was centered around the SWAT team who eventually arrested the second guy hours later. But WXIX Channel 19 did manage to show one quick clip of the wreck, which is the picture shown above. It looks like it was taken from my mother-in-law’s driveway, with the yellow police tape leading over toward either end of her house.

What are the odds?!

Here are a few links to the story…

WLWT Channel 5
WKRC Channel 12
Cincinnati Enquirer

When originally hearing about SuitSat, the satellite made out of a spacesuit, I didn’t figure I’d bother trying to monitor it during its brief 2-4 day window of existence. Besides, I had just run across a slashdot post pointing to an ABC News article proclaiming SuitSat a dead animal.

So while tooling around the ham radio IRC channels on EFNet during the wee hours last night, I ran across Deeply (KD7YVV) and thinkpol (K5BCT) in the process of trying to hear SuitSat. Apparently it wasn’t dead afterall. They informed me that there had actually been some reception reports.

I did a quick once-over of the NASA SuitSat article and learned that it had the same orbit as the ISS (International Space Station). I loaded up JTrack to follow SuitSat’s current position, and used JPass to find the next time it would be in my sky’s view. Before its next pass, I threw a 1/4 wavelength telescoping antenna on my Kenwood TH-F6A, killed the squelch, tuned to 145.99 MHz, and pointed the antenna toward the south sky.

And then … I heard stuff!  But not the right stuff.

Hmm, I heard varying intermittent packet bursts, ranging from full scale to barely audible. That didn’t sound right. And I knew from my mid-90s experience of digipeating through the Mir space station that I should probably be hearing doppler shift on the signal. There was none. This sounded local. I decided to read the NASA article more closely and learned that SuitSat is only transmitting voice and SSTV (Slow Scan Television). So what was I hearing?

Since these signals did actually come and go with the orbit of the space station, I checked the NASA ARISS page (Amateur Radio on International Space Station). It turns out the uplink frequency for the ISS packet station is 145.99, same as the SuitSat frequency. So these signals were local stations trying to digipeat through the ISS packet station.

Okay, that’s a little inconsiderate to somebody trying to hear SuitSat during its short life, but I didn’t really care – I now had the new goal of trying to hear ISS on its downlink frequency of 145.8, or at least see if I could tell which stations were trying to digipeat through it on 145.99.

I moved the telescoping antenna to my TH-D7AG with its built-in TNC, already configured with my APRS info. I put the lowly stock antenna back on the TH-F6A, tuned both radios to 145.8, and headed for the back porch. As the next pass moved across my northern horizon, I could hear ISS surpsingly well on my F6A with the stock rubber antenna. But it was not nearly as present on the D7AG. Bummer. There were a couple fairly strong packets, but the D7AG was unable to decode any of them. Incidentally, I was totally surprised by how deaf the D7AG with a 1/4 wave antenna was compared to the F6A with its stock antenna.

The next pass would go up through Washington state and across northern Canada. I couldn’t hear anything on either rig on either frequency that time. Neither could Deeply or thinkpol. Time to give up.

So SuitSat was a bust. But now I have the urge to try ISS with a bigger antenna and radio. The last time I wanted to try something with a bigger antenna and radio, I ended up dropping a couple grand on HF equipment. Oh no!

-N8QQ