I bought myself a new handheld at the Newark rally earlier this year, an Anytone AT-D878UV to use on DMR. When I went on holiday in October, I took a couple of copies of RadCom with me and in one of them there was a review of my handheld. The author mentioned that he’d used […]
I’ve never had a decent aerial for the 30m (10 MHz) band and have struggled to work much on the band either with my old doublet or the inverted L that I’ve had up for the last couple of years. About a month ago, I realised that I could hang a single band 30m dipole […]
Some time ago back in 2012 I first heard about the Anderson Powerpole in episode 53.5 of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast and I immediately bought a load of them to use in the shack. I have a number of tails hanging off my PSU, all terminated in Powerpoles. I’ve always soldered the metal contact […]
At the end of July, I happened to glance up at my aerial and noticed the 15m element hanging down. It was broken. It didn’t look serious though and I was sure that it was just that the connector on the end of the element had snapped off. Around the same time, I was offered […]
About a month ago I bought a 1090MHz PCB aerial on eBay and immediately forgot about it. It arrived a few days ago and I had a good look at it before I connected it to anything to try and work out what it actually was. I decided from the construction that it was a […]
For the last couple of months, I’ve not done much in the way of traditional radio, largely down to the fact that I’ve been really busy at work. I’ve had lots to do and I’ve spent a month working away from home either on training courses or in meetings preparing for a very large project. […]
It’s been well over a year since I moved my external ADS-B receiver to the top of my Alimast and it’s been performing very well, regularly sitting in the top five of the UK receivers according to the FlightAware statistics page and in the top ten world wide on the PlaneFinder sharers list. A good location […]
Over the years as I’ve operated QRSS and WSPR, I’ve noticed that my original TS-590S and then the replacement TS-590SG have always been slightly off frequency and suffering from a little drift. This frequency inaccuracy was barely 30Hz which seems minuscule but when monitoring a section of the band which is only 200Hz wide, the […]
Two or three years ago I had a browser tab sitting open on the Hendricks 41dB Step RF Attenuator from Pacific Antenna/QRP Kits in California. For some reason I never ordered one and when I finally remembered that I was going to get one, they were out of stock. I dropped them an email back […]
One of the new local Foundation licence holders recently did the Intermediate course and exam and as part of her practical assessment, she built a capacitance meter which I’m sure helped her pass the course. Well done, Caroline! I fancied doing the same as it’s a handy piece of test gear that I’ve never owned. […]
