This photo was a grab shot, taken with the iphone 12. OK, it’s not brilliant, but you can definitely see it’s Orion. I’d like to try and get a better one, of Orion, and other constellations. So, I’m going to try something. I’ll let you know how it goes.
When I was a member of the Horndean & District Amateur Radio Club, I bought a very old radio receiver. It was only £20, so not a huge cost. I brought it home and plugged it into the same antenna that my Marine Traffic Automatic Identification System Node uses. The AIS not somehow seems to cover an area of 300 square kilometers – not quite sure how it does that, but that is what it tells me.
Anyway, I guess, a bit naively thought that if I plug it in to that antenna, I should pick stuff up. Typical isn’t it, not a squeak, nothing. OK, first time, it might just be quiet,, unusual but not impossible (well, it probably is really, but we’ll ignore thta uncomfortable truth). Over the coming years, I’ve tried and the same result nothing. And, to be honest, I was getting near the point of consigning the thing to the bin.
Then I moved it to the shed. Just to try, an experiment you understand. I powered it up, set it to the lowest band, and here I need to stress this, with no antenna attached. It picked up a station. Well would you believe it, it works! What it also showed was how ridiculously noisy the LED lights are in the shed, they pretty much drown out everything, across all bands.
So the lights can’t be on and I need to get an antenna, I am tempted to just get a bit of wire and throw it over the tree and see what happens. also, I need to get a non-LED lamp!
