Month: January 2011

Days 29, 30 and 31 – That wraps up January

It’s been a nice weekend on the radio with well over a page full of QSOs in the logbook.  This is partly due to a big HF contest over the weekend and partly down to the fact that conditions have been good on VHF with a  tropo opening to Europe. I knew there was a […]

Days 26, 27, 28 and a minor “DX only” rant

On day #26 I decided to have another bash on 144MHz to see if it was as successful as when I’d called a week earlier.  It took a few attempts and some beam tweaking but I had a nice chat with David, 2E0YUB up in Lincolnshire. Day #27 was ‘cool’.  I spoke to SI9AM on […]

QRSS for the third time

As mentioned over the last two days, the G0PKT QRSS transmitter has now been spotted by a number of ‘grabbers’ around the world, the furthest away being just over 1400 miles away in Russia. Not bad for a transmitter and aerial that cost less than £20 to put together and runs around 150mW output. As […]

Days 23, 24, 25 and more QRSS

On day #23 I wound the radio onto 18MHz again and had a tune around, I found UY5ZZ, Vlad calling CQ DX so I did the same thing I’ve done previously, turned the power down and asked he minded working a QRP station. He was good with this and so we had a brief chat. […]

QRSS, woo!

I arrived at work this morning to an email from Mauro, IK1WVQ to tell me that he’d spotted the G0PKT QRSS beacon on 30m.  This is the first time we’ve had a reported signal and looking at the trace he sent me, the signal really was quite strong.  It stayed with him for a large […]

Days 20, 21 and 22 – More VHF and an old friend

I’ve noticed over the last week or so that conditions on HF have been really poor, I’ve called CQ on both 40m and 80m in the evenings with no replies at all and so my last QSO on day #19 was on VHF.  When I turned the wireless on in the evening of day #20 […]

New aerial plans

I mentioned in the blog last year that I needed a new aerial and that I had plans for a Carolina Windom.  Although I’ve got the Windom I don’t think I’ll be putting it up. I’ve recently become a member of the Hadley Wood CG and have had a lot of discussion with their very […]

QSL cards

I’m in the process of making some sticky labels for the back of my QSL cards and I’m planning on QSLing all the contacts in my QSO365 as far as is practical. I’ll fill out the cards as usual and they’ll have a sticker on with details of the project and the URL of this […]

Days 17, 18 and 19

Week days are always going to be a little hectic and this week so far has been no different.  I wasn’t at work on Monday but I had loads of things to get done so around mid morning I took a break and put the radio on.  I was expecting the bands to be busier […]

Days 13, 14, 15 and 16 – Saudi Arabia!

It’s been a busy few days for me on both the wireless and in ‘real life’ but I’ve been able to keep the project going without too much trouble. On day #13 which was Thursday I was home from work and back out again very quickly with my daughter to visit my mum.  This is […]