If you use any of the data modes for QSOs such as JT65, JT9, or FT8 or if you operate using WSPR then you’ll know how important it is that your computer clock is accurate. Anything more than a couple of seconds out and you won’t decode anything and nobody will decode your signal. On […]
Category: Amateur radio
CQ WW RTTY 2017
Looking back at my old contest entries, I noticed that I’d never made a serious entry into CQ WW RTTY on 15m in the past and have always concentrated my efforts on CQ WPX RTTY instead. I’ve won the Single Operator, High Power 15m section four times in the past for stations in England and […]
Time for a new aerial, I’ve replaced my doublet with an OCFD
Earlier this year I decided it was time to replace my doublet with a new wire aerial. There was nothing actually wrong with the doublet, I’ve worked plenty on it but it always galled me that I had a smarttuner connected to it which limited my transmit power. I could only run 100W SSB or […]
SCC RTTY Championship 2017
It’s been some considerable time since I put in any serious contest entry and I’ve been looking for the chance to do it for a few weeks. I sorted out my data problems a while ago and have been happily able to operate RTTY, PSK, etc ever since. I’ve been looking for a data contest […]
A detailed look at three different methods of operating the low power WSPR mode
There seems to have been an upsurge in people operating WSPR recently. Barely a day goes by (sometimes barely an hour) without someone posting a map of where their signals have been received on Twitter. When I first started experimenting with WSPR and QRSS some years ago, I did exactly the same. I’m quite sure […]
A new challenge – DXCC on 17m using FT8
It’s been a while since I set myself a challenge and so it’s time for a new one. Despite my initial misgivings, I’ve decided that I do actually quite enjoy operating FT8. I’m attempting to work DXCC on 17m using the new FT8 data mode. Considering that in nearly 1,000 QSOs using JT65, I’ve only […]
FT8 – The latest data mode
I’ve posted a lot about the low power, low signal modes, JT65 and JT9 in the past and now there’s a new kid on the block. This one is called FT8 which stands for ‘Franke and Taylor, 8-FSK modulation’, developed by Steven Franke (K9AN) and Joe Taylor (K1JT). The biggest change from the slow, plodding […]
I’ve broken my Hexbeam – Again!
With the title to this entry, I can imagine a collective sigh from my readers, followed by “Oh no, not again”. This time is different though, this time it was nothing to do with RF or with melted insulators. A few weeks ago I decided to add some anti-bird measures to my aerial consisting of […]
Are you transmitting illegally on 70cms?
An interesting subject came up on our 70cms voice repeater earlier today following an incident on a local DMR box yesterday and it got me thinking. There are a lot of 70cms repeaters in the UK with input frequencies between 430 MHz and 431 MHz and many people don’t realise that our licence only allows […]
My amateur radio station in 1991
I was recently looking through some old photographs and I found some pictures of my old radio shack and aerials from when I still lived at home. These photos would have been taken in the second half of 1991. The first photo is the inside of my ‘shack’ which was really just one side of […]
