Category: Amateur radio

What constitutes “real radio”?

This is a question that’s being asked a lot these days. For me, the answer is fairly simple. If it involves RF leaving my station on a frequency which requires me to have an amateur radio licence to transmit on, then it’s “real radio”.  That is, it’s “Amateur radio”. That includes, HF, VHF, UHF, etc […]

Visiting GB6NT at Walton-on-the-Naze

View of GB6NT from the top of the Naze Tower

A few days ago was the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend and a group of locals under the umbrella of Colchester Radio Amateurs operated a special event station using the callsign GB6NT from the Naze Tower at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex. This location is very close to me and I visited on both Saturday and Sunday.  On […]

Running my own DX Cluster again

A few years ago I set up a DXCluster using AR-Cluster on my old Mac Mini with Windows XP installed.  It ran for a long time, I had good connections into the network and although it was listed on the DX Cluster info page, nobody ever connected to me.  This was fine, the cluster was […]

An unexpected QRP entry into the DMC RTTY 2018 contest

Map of stations worked in the DMC RTTY contest 2018

I keep a regular eye on the contest calendars as although I don’t have a lot of time for serious entries, it’s nice to be able to give away a few points.  For example – I worked around one hundred stations in the IARU HF World Championship last weekend without too much effort. This weekend […]

Statistics for the second quarter of 2018

Map of stations worked during April, May and June 2018 (click for large version)

Although this blog hasn’t been very active over the last few months, I’m still operating the radio regularly.  The warmer weather has appeared in the UK and I’m spending a lot of time outside walking, riding my bike, eating ice-cream and topping up my sun tan. During the second quarter of 2018, I’ve made just […]

The return of GR6NHU

Map of stations worked using GR6NHU to celebrate the Royal Wedding in 2018

Last weekend saw the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle which wasn’t an event I was particularly interested in but all UK radio amateurs were given the opportunity to use a special prefix to celebrate.  The last time we were allowed to use a GR prefix was back in 2011. I applied for […]

Updated guide to setting up an APRS RX only iGate using a Raspberry Pi, RTL-SDR dongle and a pre-built image

Initial test of the RPi and RTL-SDR Dongle APRS RX only iGate using Raspbian Stretch

** image has been updated as of 21/04/2018 to resolve the problems some people had booting their Pi ** Note: 27/02/2022 I am no longer seeding either of the two source files via BitTorrent.  The compressed version is available via SourceForge, is not corrupted and will still work if you can decompress it. Other people may be seeding […]

Statistics for the first quarter of 2018

Breakdown of QSOs made during the first quarter of 2018 using G6NHU and M7P

I’ve had a good first quarter of 2018, partly helped because I dropped the legs of my OCFD towards the end of last year, cable tied my smartuner to the bottom of the mast and put up an inverted L which gave me access to the lower bands.  It works better than my old doublet […]

When is an “All Time New One” not an all time new one?

Earlier this month I heard 5A1AL calling CQ on 17m and managed to work him fairly quickly.  My log showed him as an “All Time New One” (ATNO). When I looked at his qrz page, he mentioned that he uses ClubLog so I checked my callsign there against his log and was very surprised to […]

17m FT8 DXCC challenge is complete

My 17m challenge to work 100 separate DXCC entities using only FT8 is complete.  I expected it to take a lot longer than a mere seven months.  I don’t have them all confirmed but that wasn’t part of the challenge – I just wanted to work them. In the last few days I’ve worked Hong […]