Day #358 was Christmas Eve and so I had some QSOs first thing in the morning before I went off to hook up with the other members of the Martello Tower Group at the local cafe for a late breakfast before heading over to Coastal Communications for the traditional Christmas Eve nibbles. I first worked […]
Days 353 to 357 – More midweek 40m data
All QSOs over this five day period were on 40m using JT65 and the pattern is the same all the way through with one or two contacts early morning between 06:15 and 06:30 and then maybe one more at least twelve hours later after work. Day #353 KJ4QXC, Dan and UA1ZFL, Vladimir. Day #354 W2BT, […]
Days 351 and 352
Just in case there were problems putting my beam back up on day #351 I had a ‘banker’ 40m JT65 QSO first thing, I worked IZ2QPP, Ermes. All went well though and so I spoke to UA9CUA on 10m SSB followed by P39P on 15m. After that I had a chat with M3TUC, Tucker in […]
I received my DXCC certificates
“DXCC is Amateur Radio’s premier award that hams can earn by confirming on the air contacts with 100 countries” – ARRL I’m pleased to say that I reached this some weeks ago and submitted my application to the ARRL. I actually waited until I qualified for two awards, the initial ‘mixed’ and also for ‘phone’. […]
You can never have too many 0.1uF decoupling capacitors
A couple of weeks ago I needed to repair my iPod transmitter for the car and the fix was a simple one – Resolder the power supply cable and replace the decoupling capacitor because it had broken. The problem was that I had no ceramic disc 0.1uF capacitors. I ended up using a miniature multi-layer […]
Days 346 to 350 – Early morning and late evening JT65
With my mast down and just a 40m monoband dipole up at 15ft and my 10m vertical, I was quite limited in what I could do this week because I was actually worse off for aerials than I’ve been all year. I started with a long wire through the smarttuner so at least I could […]
Aerial is back up and the winch mechanism works perfectly
Today was the final test for my aerial installation and I’m pleased to report that everything went well. This morning, David, M6DHU and myself wrapped up warm and ventured out into the garden. We first lowered my 40m dipole and moved it out of the way then we proceeded to apply some anti-bird measures to […]
Days 344 and 345 – The ARRL 10m Contest
These two days were the ARRL 10m contest and I had high hopes for it. I had a mental target of 500 QSOs over the course of the weekend but things didn’t go as well as expected. I started off on Saturday morning and it was difficult to get a run going and that really […]
Mast and aerial are down!
After the recent heavy winds in Scotland it’s now time for the south of the country to get them and we’re forecast winds of up to 65 mph at some point over the next few days which equates to Storm Force 10. My Alimast from Aerial-Parts of Colchester hasn’t been lowered since it went up. […]
Days 337 to 343 – Aerial work at the Martello Tower and the 2m UKAC
I had a nice lot of QSOs on day #337, largely on the higher bands again. I was up at a reasonable time and had a couple of CQ shouts on 10m, first working UV3QF, Igor and UA6BCB, Vlad. I was then nicely surprised to be called by ZL4CZ, Steven who was a nice loud […]
