After I replaced the balun and coax tails on my MA-5B, I posted recently to say I wasn’t quite as happy with the results as I could have been. I contacted Bob at Balun Designs who suggested that if I’d made the coax tails a different length to the originals that I may need to […]
Winding coils for various radio projects
Over the last few days I’ve found myself winding coils for construction projects. I dug out my MKARS80 kit from where it’s been sitting for the best part of a year and the next stage was fitting some trifilar wound transformers. These are made by lightly twisting together three lengths of 38swg enamelled wire and […]
The CQ WPX RTTY Contest 2012
Anyone who follows me on Twitter or reads this site will have noticed that I was planning on taking part in the CQ WPX RTTY contest last weekend and that I was keen to sort my aerial out in advance. I lowered the mast, fitted my new balun along with two new coax tails and […]
A replacement balun for my Cushcraft MA-5B from Balun Designs
After the investigative work a couple of weeks ago where I tracked the fault on my Cushcraft MA-5B to the cable between the balun (matching network) and the 12m/17m element I decided that I wanted to replace the entire balun, including the two coax tails out to the elements. I figured that because one tail […]
Statistics – January 2012
I’m keen to continue posting the monthly statistics posts so I can keep a track of how things are going and so that I can compare against last years figures. I’ve made over double the number of QSOs in January this year compared to 2011 and I’m slowly getting more countries confirmed on LoTW. My […]
Cushcraft MA5B is broken – and repaired
Last weekend was the Hungarian DX contest and I decided a few days prior that I was going to enter it. I planned on a single band entry which would allow me to spend a few hours on the Saturday afternoon and then come back again on Sunday morning when the band re-opened. I worked […]
Special temporary call signs for UK radio amateurs in 2012 for the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee
I’ve blogged about special callsigns before because of the R prefix for the Royal Wedding last year and so I think it’s worth posting the news article that’s just been published by the RSGB. I’m happy with the fact that there are special callsigns available but I’m disappointed to see that one has to apply […]
The weather forecast is as follows…
Last weekend when we did the work on the mast, we also put up a weather monitoring station here. I don’t have a real interest in the weather but I’m keen to know what the wind is doing and I’ve been looking at weather stations for some time. I’ve worked out that the stations within […]
A video of raising the mast after replacing the pulley
Yesterday Yan, M0YNK and Tony, G0MBA came to my QTH for a short while. I’d previously mentioned that the two shackles we’d used as a pulley really weren’t suitable and so it was time to add a proper pulley. We lowered the mast, fitted the new pulley and then raised the mast back up. This […]
QSO365 statistics and final review of 2011
To start with I’ll post the basic statistics for the entire year of 2011. It should be noted that these figures only include contacts made using G6NHU so any QSOs had by GR6NHU aren’t included. QSOs made: 4138 Unique QSOs made: 3045 Average QSOs per day: 11.3 Days missed: 0 <– This is the most […]
