I’ve recently made some updates to this site to make things better for my readers. Firstly, there’s a new “Subscribe” button up in the top right hand corner so you can receive email updates whenever I make a new post. Simply enter your email address and hit the “Subscribe” button. You can also subscribe to […]
The return of GR6NHU
Last weekend saw the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle which wasn’t an event I was particularly interested in but all UK radio amateurs were given the opportunity to use a special prefix to celebrate. The last time we were allowed to use a GR prefix was back in 2011. I applied for […]
Updated guide to setting up an APRS RX only iGate using a Raspberry Pi, RTL-SDR dongle and a pre-built image
** image has been updated as of 21/04/2018 to resolve the problems some people had booting their Pi ** Note: 27/02/2022 The compressed version is available via SourceForge, is not corrupted and will still work if you can decompress it. I am still seeding the two torrent files, the compressed one is here and the […]
Statistics for the first quarter of 2018
I’ve had a good first quarter of 2018, partly helped because I dropped the legs of my OCFD towards the end of last year, cable tied my smartuner to the bottom of the mast and put up an inverted L which gave me access to the lower bands. It works better than my old doublet […]
When is an “All Time New One” not an all time new one?
Earlier this month I heard 5A1AL calling CQ on 17m and managed to work him fairly quickly. My log showed him as an “All Time New One” (ATNO). When I looked at his qrz page, he mentioned that he uses ClubLog so I checked my callsign there against his log and was very surprised to […]
17m FT8 DXCC challenge is complete
My 17m challenge to work 100 separate DXCC entities using only FT8 is complete. I expected it to take a lot longer than a mere seven months. I don’t have them all confirmed but that wasn’t part of the challenge – I just wanted to work them. In the last few days I’ve worked Hong […]
How to make your vertical HF aerial work better
Add more radials. No really, that’s it.
QSL card from Iran
My DXCC count of worked and confirmed stations has been slowly increasing over the last few years and I’ve received QSLs from every entity I’ve worked except for Iran. I’ve only made one QSO with a station in Iran and up until late last year, I’ve not chased for the QSL card due to the […]
Do people complain you’re quiet on the repeater?
One of the biggest complaints on our local repeaters is that people are quiet with very low audio. Often they’re using the cheap Chinese handheld wirelesses such as the Baofeng UV-5R or similar which have a reputation for being quiet. There are well documented ‘fixes’ available such as drilling out the microphone hole. However it’s […]
Installing a good quality TCXO into my Kenwood TS-590SG
Over the years as I’ve operated QRSS and WSPR, I’ve noticed that my original TS-590S and then the replacement TS-590SG have always been slightly off frequency and suffering from a little drift. This frequency inaccuracy was barely 30Hz which seems minuscule but when monitoring a section of the band which is only 200Hz wide, the […]
