First Swallow of the Summer, etc

THIRTY-odd years ago, early in my professional career I moved up to Central Scotland from Yorkshire, where I remained for about six years.   In the late Spring of the first year I was there I noted the date on which I spotted the first swallow of the summer, it happened to be May 1st, and thereafter May 1st has been the "yardstick"...

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40 metres

The YL was busy watching the royal wedding this morning so I had some extra "Shack time". I thought I would see if I could find any of the special MR or GR prefix callsigns. I opted for 40 metres, using the TS830 on SSB for a change. I was going to use the TS450 but I couldn't find the mike! Anyway conditions seemed rather noisy but I did...

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Icom 706 and 6 metres

I use an Icom 706 Mk1 in my car. Coupled to an LDG IT100 auto atu it works well. Press the "Tune" button on the rig and the ATU does its stuff. Although I use mono band whips for the HF mobile the ATU is very useful in broadening the useable bandwidth.  reading the reviews on Eham I recently saw a reference to this mobile antenna  and am thinking about getting one. It seems it is basically a whip with a balun of...

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Ready to Go

Ok, It does't look much but today I made up a doublet for the HF bands. 40 metre top section, 10 metres of 300ohm feeder and a 4:1 Balun.Its going to be fun fitting this into the garden, in fact half of it will be in the field behind the house. In any case I am hopping it will be a little better than the shortened dipole is on 80 metres and...

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Band I TV and Radio Meteors - the End is Nigh!

I have blogged a couple of times already about the disappearance of VHF analogue TV in Band I, today I came across a little more information about the demise of the few remaining sources available to we "Meteor Reflection Enthusiasts".It seems the Ostrava (Czech Republic) transmitter on channel R1 (49.76MHz) will close on 30th November 2011,...

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Wrestling with PHP, MySQL and Simple Machines Forum ...

Like a lot of busy folk, I've been looking forward for some time to the few days off work around the Easter / May Day holiday period (enhanced (in length at any rate) by Royal Shenanigans of course) to allow my poor old brain to cool down and to start functioning again.So it was I returned to tackle a little problem I had set myself a few months ago, to install a Simple Machines Forum on my own web server, with the principle objective...

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More work on the TS830

Here is the 830 minus its coversOne of the replacement 6146BsThe two valves in SituPa compartment cover screwed back on!The good news is the 6146bs I had work. The neutralisation process I am not sure about however. As the handbook suggests I tuned the rig up on 28.500, turned the SG switch on the rear off and using my R1000 receiver adjusted...

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Time for a change?

Well it is for these 6146b valves that I pulled from my TS830s tonight. They don't look in good shape If you don't know how they SHOULD look (I didn't!) I will post a picture of one of the unused 6146s I have shortly. Hopefully you can see that the metal filament in the valve is warped. Both 6146s are basically the sameI think the state...

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Matching my speed

Having finished work a little early today I was sat in the shack, I only had a few minutes as the YL wanted me to take a short walk with her. I decided to call CQ on CW  on 15 metres. Now at the moment I am still using a straight key and I would estimate my sending speed at around 12 to a maximum of 14 words per minute. I was only running...

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Progress................of a kind!

Well my TS830s isn't quite as badly damaged as I thought.It is now working OK on receive at least. Why is it now receiving? Well I am almost too embarrassed to admit this-but lets just say its important to make sure the fuse holder in the rig is screwed fully home!!In any case switching on the heater switch shows that I have some plate current to the PA valves but the current rapidly increases within seconds and if the heaters...

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Not good news

With the higher bands opening up nicely over the weekend I thought I would try my hand at some CW on 15 metres. I started to tune up my trusty TS830s when it blew the fuse. Not the mains fuse, the fuse in the rig. Since this has happened before I was not too concerned and i had some spare fuses to hand. I replaced the fuse and a few minutes later as i keyed the rig, everything went dead again. This time replacing the fuse had...

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