HF Mobile

A couple of weeks back I ordered a multiband HF SRC 8010 mobile whip from Snowdonia Radio Company. It took a while to arrive and a follow up email to the company wasn't replied to but luckily today the antenna arrived. The antenna with the aid of an auto ATU will, according to specifications tune from 80 metres up to 6.I have tested...

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First the bad news.................

Switching on my 2 metre rig today I noticed a complete absence of signals. Ok I know 2 metres is quiet around here, but I had just come into the shack minutes after pulling up on the driveway where I had been listening to a QSO on the mobile 2 metre rig. Trying to transmit revealed the problem- an infinity SWR. The antenna was fine yesterday-...

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6 metres

Whilst in the shack this afternoon I heard a local station on 2 metres saying that 6 metres was open. Well I think I caught the tail end of the opening but managed a 59 report from OZ2KEC who was the strongest signal on the band with me. Not bad for 30 watts to my loft dipole. I think I will have to plug my straight key into the FT857 that I use on 6 metres. I heard quite a bit of CW on the band and surprisingly some of it was...

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3S4 QRP Midget

Last week I paid a visit to my friend Skip, K7YOO, in Winona. While rooting around in his parts storage I noticed a little transmitter. I've a weakness for QRP homebrew and this one, with miniature tubes, is of an era I don't have covered. A couple of days ago Skip dropped it off here in Rochester as he headed for the airport.It is a version...

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Homebrew DSO

The image is from an engineering version of the product, not released yet.Having spent a fair amount of time recently learning some FPGA programming I'm going to have a go at building a homebrew version of this DSO for my own learning purposes. The product they call DSO-203 which is a quad channel portable DSO.You can find some of the information...

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Radio Active

I have managed to get a fair bit of time on the radio over the weekend. Yesterday I found 15 metres to be quite active and worked several stations including SV7BAY just running 10 watts into my 40/80metre dipole.This morning I left the rig running 1 watt on WSPR on 10 metres but the I was heard and could only hear one station, in Norway....

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Broadcast QSLs

Here is my latest QSL card from the shortwave broadcast station- "voice of Nigeria"I am hoping to get a few more reception reports off to various broadcasters soon. The Aim is to QSL as many as I can before they all disappe...

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Weekends are just too short!

Working away from home during the week inevitably that the weekend proper gets off to a slow and delayed start.Generally I am so pooped on Friday evening that I am incapable of doing anything remotely demanding, and 24 hours later I am just starting to feel like myself again.This is how it was last weekend.Then there is the lawn mowing, plus...

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Fresh Air

Apologies for anybody expecting a radio related post today- Its something different for a change!The annual classic car show which is held locally here tempted me out of the shack! The venue is within walking distance so I set out hoping that the rain would hold off. It did luckily and in fact for the couple of hours that I was there we even...

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Spring at Last!

Spring is here at last, but I did have to drive 150 miles to find it.Some extra time in my travel schedule today gave me the chance to do my first Picnic Table QRPxpedition of 2011. The I90 rest area just outside of Mauston, WI turned out to be fine place to stop, have some lunch, throw the antenna up into a tree and see who I could work....

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First Es (Sporadic-E) Opening of the Season

My radio friends know that I spend a lot of energy (mental and electrical) monitoring distant Band I TV stations looking for and recording the effects of meteors on the propagation of signals between that remote transmitter and myself.A side effect of this is that when Sporadic-E (Es) propagation occurs at the critical point along that path,...

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