I’ve only worked four stations over the three days but have been playing QRSS again. On day #130 I first spoke to ON5KQ, Ulli on 40m – I was only using 10w for this contact and then I had a chat with Terry, G4BFS up near Norwich on the same band. Terry was using a […]
Category: Construction
A day without the internet and an 80m QRSS transmitter
I woke up yesterday morning to find the worst possible scenario (except perhaps for a zombie apocalypse). The internet had failed! I tried rebooting my modem and even went as far as resetting it but not only was it not connecting to the internet, I couldn’t even connect to it. So I arranged to have […]
Intermediate exam, the community is split. What do you think?
I was in the local radio shop yesterday and had a flick through the Intermediate licence training book and one of the sample exam questions jumped out at me. The question was: When referring to soldering, the term ‘dry joint’ means: (a) A form of soldering using dry paste (b) A good solder joint (c) […]
40m QRSS overnight, 01/04/11 to 02/04/11
Last night was a good night for me on 40m QRSS, I was spotted by four grabbers that I’m aware of, they were, in alphabetical order. IV3ONZ, Italy at 1114 kilometres, 692 miles ON5EX, Belgium at 199 kilometres, 123 miles VE1VDM, Canada at 4634 kilometres, 2879 miles W4HBK, USA at 7288 kilometres, 4528 miles […]
10MHz QRSS and WSPR
I’ve blogged previously about my total lack of success running QRSS on the 30 metre (10MHz) band and I’ve always blamed my aerial. I ran my home made QRSS kit into my long wire for a few days and nobody heard me. I tried running it into a home made dipole for a few days […]
G6NHU ‘grabbed’ in Pensacola again
I totally forgot on Friday night to switch the QRSS transmitter on but remembered just before I went to bed last night to tune the aerial for 40m and connect up the kit. This morning I had a hunt through the archives at W4HBK’s Pensacola Snapper and was very pleased to see that my 150mW […]
More QRSS, overnight full grab from Pensacola
Just a quick update, I’ve been shown a full overnight trace from the Pensacola Snapper I mentioned earlier today and I’m pleased to post it here. It clearly shows when my signal appeared and then faded away, it’s a good trace, I like it.
QRSS – I was right, 40m is better than 30m
I posted an entry to this blog a couple of days ago about my 40m QRSS transmitter which I left online that night. I wasn’t grabbed by anyone and so I planned to have it running during the weekends because I was advised that W4HBK’s Pensacola Snapper generally switches to 40m on Friday nights. I […]
QRSS on 40m. It’s got to be better than 30m.
I’ve mentioned QRSS a few times and have put together a good page all about it on the Martello Tower Group website which you can read by clicking here. I’ve tried running it on 30m from this QTH either through my long wire or a cobbled together dipole in the loft but neither method has […]
Replacing the Schottky diodes in my FT-847
Some time ago I blogged about Radio improvements and tweaking things to make them better, specifically a number of modifications that I’d had made to my Yaesu FT-847. I talked in that entry about swapping the cheap switching diodes out for low noise Schottky diodes to reduce the HF noise floor and I said I […]
