Today I took down my Cushcraft MA-5B again to investigate the problem of high SWR on 20m and 15m and after a struggle to get the traps on the driven element disassembled, this is what I found. The bottom section was taken from the ‘hot’ side of the feed, ie the centre core of the […]
Not a very good night at the Martello Tower
Last night was the April 144MHz RSGB UKAC contest and as usual we were at the Martello Tower to take part. Things started off slowly with only 15 stations or so worked in the first half an hour with just two of those being given a genuine five-nine report. Signals were generally much lower than […]
More problems with my Cushcraft MA-5B
There I was, at quarter past eight this morning calling CQ in the April Fools Day contest on 20m 😉 when I noticed that my SWR had gone from 1.1:1 to 3.5:1. Something was clearly wrong so I stopped calling straight away and started to investigate. The first thing I did was to tune around […]
Statistics – March 2012
I’ve operated lots of data again during March and have had plenty of fun doing it. My DXCC count continues to grow slowly and steadily and I’m not far away from having DXCC confirmed on 15m. It’s been a while since I applied for 10m DXCC so hopefully that will come through soon. My operating […]
Looking forward to the AFD PSK contest this weekend
Since I got my IMD meter recently, I’ve been looking forward to the AFD PSK contest this weekend. It’s only the second time it’s been run and I gave away a few points last year. From what I remember, it seemed a lot more relaxed than some of the bigger contests. The contest runs from […]
New test gear for the shack
“With great power comes great responsibility” Ben Parker said that to his nephew, Peter Parker, more commonly known as Spiderman. It’s not just true for Superheroes though! Now that I have a decent HF amplifier and am capable of running the UK limit of 400 watts, I decided some time ago that I’d like some […]
What a difference a week (and a mode) makes
Last weekend was a bit of a disaster with just 41 QSOs in the Open Ukrainian RTTY Championship which was even more disappointing as I’d messed up the dates with the EA PSK63 contest. That particular contest was this weekend and so due to other commitments, I only had a few hours to play today with […]
The Open Ukrainian RTTY Championship 2012 – High Band
This weekend was the Open Ukrainian RTTY Championship which runs over three parts – The first two are “Low Band” which consists of 160m and 80m and the third part is “High Band” and that’s 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m. I’d managed to misread a contest calendar and had thought that the EA PSK63 contest […]
How to apply for the NoV for your Olympic and Jubilee special callsigns
I posted a while ago about the special callsign prefixes for the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee here and I’m pleased to be able to report that the process to apply for these has now been published and it’s much simpler than it was for the Royal Wedding last year. There is a basic form […]
Statistics – February 2012
I put a lot of QSOs into the logbook during February, the majority of these were data contacts made during a couple of RTTY and PSK contests and I had a lot of fun doing them. I’ve got fldigi configured how I like it and I’m feeling pretty competent using it during contests. It doesn’t […]
