Powernumpty

1. Yes, Mini whips can pick up a lot of noise on the feed, experiment, satellite coax like WF100 has great shielding at low cost, before I moved to WF100 generally I used coax (RG58) vertically down (7m) from the antenna then CCTV balun and CAT5 back to the house and another CCTV balun, noise here is severe. WF100 with F-type to BNC adapters is used here as the RX feed other than external CAT5 shielded.
2. The cable will feed common mode noise to the house and antenna. In my limited experience electrical probes are not the best choice for city locations unless you can get good separation, use a mag loop instead. I don't personally think a horizontal section will make a positive difference when you consider the wavelengths, but if it being horizontal also includes more distance from noise sources give it a go.
3. Linear is best, then play with voltage as you have, as it only needs a small supply so look at what people are throwing out, even ask older folk if they have some in the drawer*, gather linear psu's and test them for this use, some are better, some have old caps or lose transfomer windings. Obviously watch the light or off-load voltage, test before using them as often a 12V 1A linear may be 16-18V lightly loaded.
4. These need to be high, mainly to get away from noise, I really struggle to use them here, at least they are small enough to move around and try to get away from the QRM
5. I used as many grounds as I could but had most success seeing one part of the whip/feed as the "antenna" then everything after that needs to be grounded/shielded/buried
6. Voltage as long as you don't go over voltage I have seen surprisingly good results in noisy locations dropping it back, I even ran the current mag lops under "recommended" voltage range by about three volts seeing only marginal reduction in WSPR spot counts.

My experience is mostly through trial and error, the link below leads to some more insightful posts from others who have a better understandings of electronics and RF theory.

I did put an image on this forum on the layout I settled on before switching to LZ1AQ loops, If I find it later I'll link.
Mine was roughly 7m fibreglass mast, down to earth rod (lightning discharge) and air coil, low pass filter, cctv balun -CAT 5- cctv balun, earth rod, house Bias Tee with filters on the mains feed to linear psu.


* I am now "older" and have mostly draws of full stuff I "may use one day, too good to throw out".

Showing in the daily WSPR results now, excellent!

I did have a look when you first posted but as it was a quiet part of the RF day and I could not recall the previous spectrum it was hard to comment.
WSPR results are great for feedback on antennas and location, if not for WSPR my radios would probably be in a box marked "try again with new neighbours".

Would it be worth adding "connmanctl disable wifi" to the basic instructions?
If someone is not interested in the Wifi dark arts they could at least turn it off.

BTW 36hr, 14wspr 1.5GHz
Stats: 0 dropped, 0 underruns, 0 sequence, 0 realtime

Project needs a "Thermal Cape"
I've ordered some bits as my scrap box only has a couple of heat pipes and both need a lot of work, would get round the space issue though.
This is just waiting for some themally conductive double sided tape plus a pad for the PMIC and a bit more inspiration on physically retaining at the network end.

Looking at how close some tiny SM components are to the fixing locations some small physical revisions wouldn't hurt too.

I stuck my old laptop heatsink down and fired it up without a fan, it took a long time to do anything but gradually headed up to about 51C before I went back down to the room it is in (open no case right now) and put a 12V fan at 8V over it, back to the PC and I thought I'd messed up as it was still showing 47C.
It takes an age to change with that much copper on it, small improvements take about five minutes to fully reflect.
Should be good once I actually duct a fan for it.

Glad to hear the Odroid is working so well, I think I take advantage of that one most days.

--later--

Stuck it back in the 2U rack case, case fan only but now blowing in the same direction as the fins (distance about 2" 50mm, no ducting).
Clocked it up to 1.5GHz (don't intend to leave it there) 14 wsprdaemon channels running and it levelled out at 43/44C. the room is probably 4C colder than the 1GHz run with supplied heatsink.

Looking at how close some tiny SM components are to the fixing locations some small physical revisions wouldn't hurt too.

I stuck my old laptop heatsink down and fired it up without a fan, it took a long time to do anything but gradually headed up to about 51C before I went back down to the room it is in (open no case right now) and put a 12V fan at 8V over it, back to the PC and I thought I'd messed up as it was still showing 47C.
It takes an age to change with that much copper on it, small improvements take about five minutes to fully reflect.
Should be good once I actually duct a fan for it.

Glad to hear the Odroid is working so well, I think I take advantage of that one most days.

--later--

Stuck it back in the 2U rack case, case fan only but now blowing in the same direction as the fins (distance about 2" 50mm, no ducting).
Clocked it up to 1.5GHz (don't intend to leave it there) 14 wsprdaemon channels running and it levelled out at 43/44C. the room is probably 4C colder than the 1GHz run with supplied heatsink.

Project needs a "Thermal Cape"
I've ordered some bits as my scrap box only has a couple of heat pipes and both need a lot of work, would get round the space issue though.
This is just waiting for some themally conductive double sided tape plus a pad for the PMIC and a bit more inspiration on physically retaining at the network end.

Project needs a "Thermal Cape"
I've ordered some bits as my scrap box only has a couple of heat pipes and both need a lot of work, would get round the space issue though.
This is just waiting for some themally conductive double sided tape plus a pad for the PMIC and a bit more inspiration on physically retaining at the network end.

Hi Martin,
That sounds better, assuming the tags are all tidy, for some reason I make hard work of editing them quickly (must try harder, wonder if there is a good video on youtube..).
It was mainly for channelised frequencies and was thinking in fairly narrow terms (image bodged at lunch).
But now you say it going up down the tags seems an interesting feature that could have more uses if we could filter or swap out the current tag list.

What hit me was how hard it currently is to step one channel of our crazy off-set UK frequencies like 27601.25 to 27611.25.
Obviously there is little happening round here on the CB but I have fond memories of the band.

I dabbled with controlling the Kiwi by Midi controls from a phone (TouchOSC) some bits were easy but I gave up at entering frequencies.

Cheers
Stu

Fully aware am I that this won't go anywhere I just want to throw it out there.

There are up and down arrow by the frequency input, they must come from a list created as we use the Kiwi.
If there was a C "Channel" button the user could switch to an admin defined "text file" list of frequencies and displayed names.

E.G. if the user wants to go to UK CB channel 1 rather than having to enter
27601.25 they click C and select "UK CB 01", Rather than 27405, "Cept CB 40"
For downconvertors S number for 2m Channels, U for 70cm.
As part of the channel selection it could overide the largest step to fit channels or half channel (like 12.5kHz on 2m listing)