A short while ago, the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was announced. The original Pi Zero and the Zero W are widely used in MMDVM based hotspots and the new Zero 2 W is a direct, drop in replacement. The most obvious question is whether you need to replace your Pi Zero with a […]
Category: Data
Amateur radio picture of the week
Over the weekend I was operating in the World Wide Digi DX contest and I wondered if I could get a screen capture of my TS-890 just as I started transmission. I reached over and as the radio went into transmit, I hit the screen capture button and this is the result. As you can […]
Being in the right place at the right time
I happened to look at my emails and noticed that someone had posted to an email reflector I’m a member of that 5I3W (Tanzania) was on 20m SSB. The post had been made just a few minutes earlier so I switched on the wireless and tuned to the appropriate frequency. I was just in time […]
Entering the Batavia FT8 contest
Oh this is going to bring the haters to the fore! Not only is it an 48 hour contest but it’s a 48 hour contest using FT8. Mind you, as it’s FT8, it only takes up a few kHz of the spectrum in an area that’s not used for SSB or CW so it shouldn’t […]
I have a new amplifier (again)
In my last post, I said that I’d be replacing the broken Expert with a valve amplifier and I’ve done just that. I now have an Acom 1500 sitting on the shelf in my shack. There simply wasn’t enough room on my desk to fit the amplifier and the Kenwood TS-890 so I had to […]
150 DXCC entities worked on 17m FT8
Wow! That’s taken a while. Back in August 2017 I set myself a challenge to work DXCC on 17m using just FT8. At the time, I described it as ‘the new FT8 mode’ and it really was in its infancy back then. I completed that challenge in March 2018 and then quietly set myself another […]
Hexbeam is fixed, DXCC 2021 and general updates
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 […]
I’ve had a busy January
There’s been lots going on in my life throughout January but that hasn’t stopped me playing radio – I’ve made a point of sitting in the shack for a few minutes every day just to take my mind off of other things and as a result, I’ve managed nearly 550 QSOs so far working 73 […]
I’ve successfully worked DXCC on 30m
Over the last couple of months I’ve been concentrating on 30m using the dipole I installed late last year because I was keen to complete my 30m DXCC before the winter kicks in. Most of my contacts on 30m are using digital modes, either JT65, JT9 (remember them?) or FT8 and I knew that I’d […]
Digital audio noise on receive when using WIRES-X
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 […]
