Another bumper update so again it’s a list – It makes sense (to me anyway) to provide a list like this as it saves extra typing! I’m especially pleased by the QSO with TR8CA using PSK125 – I’d seem them work a few stations and suddenly there was a change in the audio, I was […]
Category: Construction
Assembling a Cushcraft MA5B and finishing the second Alimast section
Some time ago I bought a second hand but never assembled Cushcraft MA5B and yesterday I collected it with the plan to get the aerial all built and ready to go. It’s a couple of years old so it comes from the time before MFJ acquired Cushcraft so I hope that it will be a good one. Once I’d got […]
Assembling a section of Alimast
In my last update, the final image shows a single section of Alimast standing on the concrete. I bought four sections of Alimast from Aerial-Parts of Colchester, each being 2.5m long for a total of 10m (33ft). These four sections were delivered with one being fully assembled and the rest being parts for me to […]
The next stage of the new mast – Mounting the pivot pins in concrete
My new Alimast from Aerial-Parts of Colchester tilts over using a pivot system and so the ground anchor consists of two pivot pins mounted in the ground. These two pins have been linked together for ease of securing in concrete and to add a little extra resistance against pulling out of the ground. Here you […]
Building a Nixie Clock
A week or so I was inspired by a post on a forum I frequent to build a nixie clock. If you don’t know what a nixie tube is, the best way for me to explain it is to reproduce the first few sentences from Wikipedia. A nixie tube is an electronic device for displaying […]
Aerial work and digging a hole for my new Alimast
It’s taken a few weeks of planning but today a small working party consisting of myself, Colin (M1EAK), Yan (M0YNK), Chris (M6GSD) and Kevin (M0GWE) descended on my house to take down the mast with my VHF beam and move the 10m 5/8 wave to the standoffs the VHF aerial was on. That was completed […]
Operating portable with homebrew aerials
One of the things I love about amateur radio is the fact that there are so many facets to the hobby that there’s always something new to try. At the meeting of the Colchester Radio Club last month there was a talk by Kevan, 2E0WMG about operating portable with lots of photographs of him operating portable […]
Building a dummy load
Some time ago I decided that I really ought to have a dummy load in the shack. I used to own a very good BNOS load a long time ago but I really have no idea what happened to it. At some time it probably was either sold or stashed in the loft, I really […]
Building a 40m (7MHz) horizontal delta loop
Over the last few weeks I’ve spent quite a lot of time reading about different options for wire HF aerials and one kept coming back into my head as being something I could easily try at this QTH – A full wavelength horizontal ‘delta’ loop for 40m. My garden is the right sort of size […]
Now it’s time to run QRSS on 80m
Having had lots of fun running QRSS on both 30m and 40m I decided to try another band so a few weeks ago I ordered the 80m QRSS kit from QRP Labs and it was almost completely assembled within an hour of me receiving it – I documented that in the blog post here. It […]
