HF weatherfax/Target/laptop A RESULT

[paulg]

Sailed from Plymouth to Canaries Dec 2nd and took Target hf for trial. Strung the aerial around the saloon headling,used a phono lead jack to jack,( Thanks Jools) found Northwood schedules, ignored the grounding issue,and.......HEY BLOODY PRESTO it worked! Surface analyis, swell, Surface T+24,T+48,T+72 all the way across Biscay until laptop display settings played up. A great comfort, Navtex was hit and miss. Was not so pleased with audio reception but that was an installation issue probably, and secondary to the fax function. So a big THANK YOU to all on this forum who pointed me in the right direction.Long may it continue. Does anyone know of an alternative to Target? I,m thinking of a portable with 3-30Mhz digital tuning to do same job but portable from boat to boat to home. Sony?

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[Talbot]

There is a sony and a roberts portable radio that are supposed to be SSB compatible, of the two the sony is probably better, but I have been advised that there is problems in getting a decent output from them. I would be delighted if a user of either of these could comment on the forum.

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[Birdseye]

the target should function as well or better than the portable radios - it is supposed to be a communication receiver and reasonably well specced.

but a bit of wire strung round the cabin and no earth is not really giving it a fair chance. even if you are moving from boat to boat, its not that difficult to run a single wire aerial up a flag halliard, and earth to the anode.

there are other comms receivers that you can buy from people like <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.wsplc.com/>stantons</A>, or martin lynch, and there is a computer based receiver made by one of the big jap ham set makers. this is probably the most portable, but expensive.

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[LadyInBed]

I have a Sony ICF-SW-100E

I have only made a half hearted attempt, without success, to pick up weather fax using JVComm32, probably more me and JVComm than the radio, otherwise the radio is compact and very good.
Sony also do a 12v to 3v 700mA adapter, I tried using generic adapters but the radio wouldn’t work with them.


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[ongolo]

Siemens makes a digital receiver with SSB, BFO etc. the same is made under License for or by Tedelex. I have one of each, but they may have only the upper or the lower band, cant look now they are packed too deep. )


The other I have is a Kenwood R1000 which is very good but uses lots more power and has USB and LSB and is basically the receiving half of Kenwood tranceivers.

I have tried WFax (not very hard) but failed due to noise of RF componets of the PC and the use of unshielded cable. That will be overcome when I need to do it properly, but it gave me the impression that it would workwell when all is sorted out.

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