A short while ago, the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was announced. The original Pi Zero and the Zero W are widely used in MMDVM based hotspots and the new Zero 2 W is a direct, drop in replacement. The most obvious question is whether you need to replace your Pi Zero with a […]
Amateur radio picture of the week
Over the weekend I was operating in the World Wide Digi DX contest and I wondered if I could get a screen capture of my TS-890 just as I started transmission. I reached over and as the radio went into transmit, I hit the screen capture button and this is the result. As you can […]
Being in the right place at the right time
I happened to look at my emails and noticed that someone had posted to an email reflector I’m a member of that 5I3W (Tanzania) was on 20m SSB. The post had been made just a few minutes earlier so I switched on the wireless and tuned to the appropriate frequency. I was just in time […]
Entering the Batavia FT8 contest
Oh this is going to bring the haters to the fore! Not only is it an 48 hour contest but it’s a 48 hour contest using FT8. Mind you, as it’s FT8, it only takes up a few kHz of the spectrum in an area that’s not used for SSB or CW so it shouldn’t […]
I have a new amplifier (again)
In my last post, I said that I’d be replacing the broken Expert with a valve amplifier and I’ve done just that. I now have an Acom 1500 sitting on the shelf in my shack. There simply wasn’t enough room on my desk to fit the amplifier and the Kenwood TS-890 so I had to […]
I no longer have a new amplifier but I do have a new radio.
I posted only a short while ago that I’d bought myself a new amplifier but unfortunately it didn’t last long. I’d had it for less than a month when without warning, it failed. I’d made a couple of QSOs on 15m, switched to 17m and worked someone there and then QSYd to 40m where I […]
Ferrite, ferrite. All the cores.
Ferrite, ferrite everywhere! I wanted some more ferrite so decided to order them in bulk and get a known type, rather than pick up the odd unknown versions at a rally somewhere. Behold, twenty large and twenty small cores, all mix 31 and delivered today from Farnell.
Some equipment changes – I’ve got a new amplifier
Long term readers will remember that in November 2011 I bought myself an Acom 1000 amplifier and that really was a super piece of equipment. It served me faultlessly and worked without any issues whatsoever. It alerted me a few times to aerial faults but just soldiered on and on and on. Over time, there […]
150 DXCC entities worked on 17m FT8
Wow! That’s taken a while. Back in August 2017 I set myself a challenge to work DXCC on 17m using just FT8. At the time, I described it as ‘the new FT8 mode’ and it really was in its infancy back then. I completed that challenge in March 2018 and then quietly set myself another […]
Accurate time keeping on an Apple Mac running macOS Big Sur for FT8, FT4 and WSPR
I’ve been using Apple computers for many years now and even though I’ve made a couple of previous blog posts about keeping the clock accurate on a Mac, those methods have never really been needed and I posted them as a sort of belt and braces addition to the built in time-keeping. However with macOS […]
