Back in February, I bought myself a Yaesu FTM-100DE with the intent to use it connected to a PC for WIRES-X. In the meantime, I’ve been using it to talk to friends via a YSFReflector and I wrote about how to build a Yaesu System Fusion reflector on this site here. When I finally got […]
Category: Data
UTC clock for macOS
As radio amateurs, time is important to us and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), often called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the most important. We log our QSOs in UTC, (ideally) we give net times in UTC and our clocks need to be accurate to the second for data modes such as FT8, FT4, JT65, JT9 […]
How to set up a Yaesu System Fusion reflector (YSFReflector)
Over the last four or five years I’ve been a regular user of two digital voice modes, D-STAR and DMR. I don’t particularly like to use them to work ‘DX’ but they both have their advantages regarding linking repeaters together and allowing me to keep in touch with people when I’m away from home. Both […]
Essex Radar
I’ve been running an instance of Virtual Radar Server (VRS) for some time and recently decided that this is something I can easily share to anyone who is interested. What is VRS though? VRS is a server running on my network that can take a feed from multiple ADS-B receivers, consolidate them together and provide […]
Receiving weather fax pictures on HF using fldigi
A week or so ago I saw a weather fax (WEFAX) picture someone had posted that they’d captured on HF. This grabbed my attention because I like maps and I like to see things to do with the weather. I’d tried a couple of years ago to receive satellite weather pictures with little success (due […]
QSO365 #2 is complete – A QSO per day in 2018
To start with, I’ll post the basic statistics for the entire year of 2018 and then go into the background. QSOs made: 3789 Unique QSOs made: 2962 Average QSOs per day: 10.4 Days missed: 0 <- This is the most important statistic, it means that QSO365 #2 was a success. DXCC entities worked: 160 New […]
If you use WSJT-X for FT8/WSPR/JTx etc, you should upgrade to V2.0.0 as soon as possible
WSJT-X version 2.0.0 has been released and everyone who uses this software for any data modes should update as soon as possible. This new version is NOT compatible with previous versions so everyone is encouraged to upgrade to 2.0.0 as soon as possible. New features in WSJT-X 2.0.0 Compound and nonstandard callsigns are automatically recognized […]
Statistics for the third quarter of 2018
A gorgeously lovely summer means I spent less time on the wireless for these three months, making just over 600 QSOs and working only 80 DXCC entities. My data / phone / CW ratio is still about the same as earlier in the year and I’ve picked up three new entities on 160m and two […]
Visiting GB6NT at Walton-on-the-Naze
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 […]
An unexpected QRP entry into the DMC RTTY 2018 contest
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 […]
