Month: February 2011

Days 55, 56 and 57 – Data!

Over these three days I had 21 QSOs and only used the microphone once!  The one time I used it I called a contest station who only wanted to work French stations so I tuned away. On the afternoon of day #55 I had a delivery from Slovakia.  This parcel contained a microHAM USB Interface […]

Days 52, 53 and 54

A fairly quiet three days because my kids are away and so it’s just the wife and me at home. On day #52 I first worked OZ3FD, Henry on 80m when I was running just 10 watts and then I had a chat with Jim, MM0SMD in the fantastically named “Dufftown”, Scotland. I did a […]

The Archers and Camilla – A rant

Strange title?  Not radio related? Correct.  No apologies though. I listen to The Archers, I’ve listened to The Archers for more years than I care to remember and I like it.  For fifteen minutes a day my mind goes to Ambridge and I think it’s great. For a while now the press (specifically the BBC […]

Days 49, 50 and 51 – Three new DXCC entities

I’d just arrived at work on day #49 when my mobile phone rang, it was Yan, M0YNK with exciting news.  He’d just arrived outside his work QTH and had noticed that 10m was a little lively.  In fact it was more than a little lively as I could hear in the background, it was very […]

Days 46, 47 and 48

Day #46 saw two QSOs, first I spoke to EA3WD, Vic near Barcelona on 40m and then I moved to 80m and worked DF0AF, Klaus  who was operating a special event station commemorating five years of the First Assistance Samaritan Team. I also had two QSOs on day #47, both on 80m with DF2DD, Carsten […]

What’s this?

I collected my old component rack from my mum’s loft a couple of weeks ago and in one of the drawers I found two pieces of breadboard with the same thing built on each of them.  I built these when I was in my early teens and that’s quite obvious from the quality of the […]

Days 43, 44 and 45 – The birth of radar

I found day #43 quite difficult, there was a big contest taking place, the Dutch PACC contest and every single station I heard was calling CQ contest.  The idea is to work as many Dutch stations as possible and I didn’t realise this to start with so I called and worked EA5DFV in Spain and […]

MKARS80 – Everything from bag two is fitted

The MKARS80 kit comes with all the parts in a number of bags, the previous blog post about it was when I’d completed bag number one and now spent some time fitting all the components from bag number two.  I think it’s starting to look quite good.

Days 41 and 42 – A QSO on a new band

Day #41 saw just one QSO, that was with Andre, HB9HLM in Switzerland on 80m. On day #42 though I started off quite early and had a nice conversation with Rainer, DJ8CL on 40m.  We spoke for about fifteen minutes and he advised me that my audio wasn’t too great so I made a few […]

Uzu in Ammeland

Uzu in Ammeland (Who’s who in Ham land) I first saw this published around thirty years ago and it probably needs a little explanation nowadays.  There were no ‘M’ callsigns, no ‘2E’ callsigns and UK radio amateurs consisted of G2s, G3s, G4s and G8s.  G2s, G3s and G4s were class A callsigns where the holders […]