After some recent discussions with two friends Rich & Dave I have been playing with WebSDR, decoding all sorts of transmissions using MultiPSK. I have never been particularly interested in amateur or “ham” radio but receiving and decoding signals from around the world is a fun way to pass a cold evening.
There is lots to find: weather information, humorous IRC style chat, worldwide operators trying to reach as far as possible and even digitally coded pictures.
Today I received some prototyping boards from Mike at White Wing Logic. These are a little like stripboard/veroboard on steroids, they have footprints for a number of different surface mount parts and connectors with breakout pads. I have used breadboard or custom PCBs solely for a few years but increasingly packages are only available in surface mount.