70m UKAC August 2020
First time running the 23-element 70cm DK7ZB yagi at the full 10m mast height (although the pics below only show it at about 6m) - and it was rock solid, which was reassuring. Lightning stopped play early (at about 9:30BST) but to be honest things weren't going too well anyway. There was some DX (2 x GD and one in JO03) but I seemed to work more off the back of the beam than the front. The rig was also showing occasional SWR errors too, so I think the antenna needs a look...
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Woodside Country Park Camping 2020
FT-857d and YT-100 tuner into an old CB whip antenna on the car outside the tent. Three evenings of FT8 while the kids were asleep resulted in 17 contacts.
Read More2m FMAC July 2020
Got set up in time to take part in FMAC this month and it was quite a busy session!
Read More2m UKAC July 2020
First time back out portable since the lockdown. Excellent evening activity-wise (weather not so much...).
Read MoreCoronavirus/COVID-19 Lockdown & HF Data Modes (again)
Just a quick update on my lockdown activity...
FT8 is fully up and running now and as it's easier to use than FLDigi over a remote link I've pretty much completely switched over to that. The main change here is that I've rebuilt the shack PC. It's now running Xubuntu 18.04 LTS like the laptop I use for UKAC portable operation - however I have decided to keep the base OS as stock as possible. This means that all the radio apps are running in docker containers. So far I have the...
Read MoreCoronavirus/COVID-19 Lockdown & HF Data Modes
Like most of the country, and indeed the world, I'm currently stuck at home due to coronavirus. Most of my radio kit lives in the car most of the time for UKAC contests, and general commuter-mobile use. As that won't be happening for the foreseeable future I've moved the FT-857d into the garage, hooked it up to a G5RV Jr antenna which is strung up in the roof of the garage (via my YT-100 tuner) and also to an X200 dual-band colinear. The G5RV is all of 3m agl (possibly 4m if I'm being...
Read More70cm UKAC March 2020
Problems:
- The antenna was swinging on the mast, so anything up to about 30° out.
- About 10 minutes after the start, the voltage at the rig started dropping to about 10V after a couple of seconds of transmit. This causes the rig to either FM or to just cut out completely. The voltmeter on by ignition-sense disconnect box wasn't showing a problem. I didn't manage to properly diagnose the problem but feeding the system from the cigar lighter socket seemed to fix the... Read More