I posted back in January to say that the 17m element on my Hexbeam had snapped in the storms and was causing problems. It took over three months before everything came together to allow me to get the mast down and repair it but I managed it last weekend, just in time for the CQ […]
Last weekend was the biggest SSB radio contest of the year, CQ WW and I decided to put in an entry. I expected things to be slow going because we’re pretty much still at the bottom of the solar cycle. I was pleasantly surprised. Both 20m and 15m were full from bottom to top and […]
A while ago I moved some equipment around in the shack and I managed to damage the cable that goes between my MFJ-434B Voice Keyer and my TS-590SG. I could have patched it back together but it would have been very messy. I struggled to locate a UK supplier of the cable and I couldn’t […]
In 2013 I applied for M7P as a Special Contest Callsign, and have used it successfully in a large number of contests throughout the years. One of the reasons I chose that particular callsign was for the rarity value when working the WPX contests, my logic being that people are always chasing new multipliers and […]
This weekend was the ARRL RTTY Roundup contest and for the first time, FT8 was allowed. I spent a couple of hours operating just to give away a few points and get some experience using the new version of WSJT-X in contest mode. I’d been working mainly European stations and all of a sudden, I […]
I go through phases of not sleeping very well and I’m in the middle of one of those right now. Yesterday evening after a very bad night previously, I went to bed relatively early in the hope that because I was so exhausted, I might actually drop off quickly. No such luck, two hours later […]
This last weekend was the CQ World Wide DX CW Contest and I decided at short notice that I’d spend some time operating. I was planning on being out for most of the day on Saturday but had nothing arranged for Sunday which would give me a few hours. I actually managed half an hour […]
In 2017 I entered and won the 15m section of the SCC RTTY Championship and although I wasn’t available for the full 24 hours of the contest this year, I did make a token entry by operating for around four hours on the Sunday morning. The problem was that on the Sunday, conditions had absolutely […]
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 […]
In 2013 I was issued a Special Contest Callsign (SCC) and used it very successfully for a number of contests which you can see on my Contest results page. Because I wasn’t active in the qualifying contests very much after that, I couldn’t renew it when it expired at the end of 2016. Part of […]
