Day #64 dawned and with it the fact that it was a Saturday morning with contests throughout the day on both HF and 144MHz. Before I did any contest operating though I had two PSK31 QSOs on 40m with DC2QT, Heinrich in Germany and G6UWK, Jon who is in Manningtree, about ten miles away from […]
Month: March 2011
Replacing the Schottky diodes in my FT-847
Some time ago I blogged about Radio improvements and tweaking things to make them better, specifically a number of modifications that I’d had made to my Yaesu FT-847. I talked in that entry about swapping the cheap switching diodes out for low noise Schottky diodes to reduce the HF noise floor and I said I […]
Working VK for the first time – For real
A short while ago I was calling CQ using JT65-HF on 40m when I noticed a trace right at the edge of my screen – VK6BN was calling CQ. I tried to call him but he was right on the edge of my passband and started working someone else. I retuned my radio and when […]
VK land – Signal heard
On day #63 as I went to bed I put my station on the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter Network running just 5 watts on 28MHz. I’d jokingly said that I expected to be heard in Australia with a signal strength of +20dB. Well, it’s easy to confuse plus and minus isn’t it! When I got […]
Days 61, 62 and 63 – Data, data everywhere
Three days absolutely stuffed full of data contacts. Don’t worry though, I do pick up the microphone on day #64 and that will be in the next blog entry. Day #61 was another of my long days out, I left home at around half six in the morning and wasn’t expecting to be home until […]
Days 58, 59 and 60 – Lots more data
I’ve not picked up the microphone at all over the last few days and am really having a good time working the data modes, almost exclusively JT65. I explained how JT65 works in my last blog post and I’m getting more interested by the mode every time I read about it and operate using it. […]
Review – February
February was a very enjoyable month, things have settled into a regular pattern and I’m still going strong in my quest to have a QSO per day. I’ve had less contacts in February which I put down to me operating in less contest situations which isn’t a bad thing. Less contacts, better quality! As I […]
