Towards the end of last year, my attention was drawn to the RSGB HF awards and I realised that I probably qualified to apply for some of them. I downloaded the check sheets for the IARU Region 1 Award and the Commonwealth Century Award and over the course of the next couple of evenings, I […]
There’s been lots going on in my life throughout January but that hasn’t stopped me playing radio – I’ve made a point of sitting in the shack for a few minutes every day just to take my mind off of other things and as a result, I’ve managed nearly 550 QSOs so far working 73 […]
A couple of months ago, I started working on some upgrades to qso365 and I’m pleased to report that everything is now complete. The most obvious thing was the change of theme which controls how the website looks. The old theme was the original one I set up in 2010 and was starting to feel […]
In early 2012 I bought a cheap weather station from a major UK amateur radio supplier. It lasted a few months before failing. They replaced the broken parts, it failed again a while later and they replaced the parts again. When it failed for the third time, I got fed up with it so I […]
I noticed recently that sometimes my D-Star based MMDVM Pi-Star hotspot would unlink itself overnight from any reflector it was linked to and I decided to investigate and see if I could work out a way to automatically link it to a reflector. If I can’t stop my Pi-Star MMDVM from disconnecting then at least […]
Last weekend was the biggest SSB radio contest of the year, CQ WW and I decided to put in an entry. I expected things to be slow going because we’re pretty much still at the bottom of the solar cycle. I was pleasantly surprised. Both 20m and 15m were full from bottom to top and […]
Over the last couple of months I’ve been concentrating on 30m using the dipole I installed late last year because I was keen to complete my 30m DXCC before the winter kicks in. Most of my contacts on 30m are using digital modes, either JT65, JT9 (remember them?) or FT8 and I knew that I’d […]
I woke up early this morning, about an hour and a half before sunrise and it occurred to me that if I were to switch the wireless on, I might get some greyline propagation. Sunrise was at 06:03 and first light at 04:44. I got up and fired up 30m FT8 which was pretty dead, […]
I saw this posted on a forum somewhere recently and it struck me as being the best piece of advice for newly licenced radio amateurs that I’ve ever seen. It’s quite straightforward: “Don’t get offended if someone corrects you” In the UK, it’s possible to go from having zero knowledge to getting your Foundation licence […]
A while ago I moved some equipment around in the shack and I managed to damage the cable that goes between my MFJ-434B Voice Keyer and my TS-590SG. I could have patched it back together but it would have been very messy. I struggled to locate a UK supplier of the cable and I couldn’t […]
