AmateurRadio.com

After a good few weeks without any radio fun I hooked up my semi-homebrew 2 ele beam and had a good couple of QSO’s with CT1EAV and CT1EEB on 6m. There were a good few station out this evening and I’m glad this brief outing has proven that the flimsy beam works.

I’ve had a mechanically completed SatNOGS ground station sitting in my garage in need of some care and attention for a while. Its just one of the projects that that I have filed under ‘ working but not very robust’. Essentially after I killed off the first driver board we have not managed to get it to drive properly (that is without smoke pouring out of motor driver’s).

Fortunately the SatNOGS gang have made it much easier to load up the client software on a RPi and run a rotator free ground station on the development site. So over the weekend I have produced a standalone set up in between going to the 2nd harmonics rugby festival under the moniker Ground Station 170

The set up is very simple get yourself a RPi 3, an rtl-sdr dongle and a simple antenna (I used this one which took all of 10 minutes to make) and have scheduled a few passes to see if it works. There is some info here if you’d like to have a go

If you have a few moments you can look at the other SatNOGS stuff such as the recently presented video.

I have the company of 3 rigs in my shack. The XYL IC-7000 friendly rig that offers quite a decent amount of features for its pygmy size. Not to mention its requirements for very adaptable fingers to enable these features and a good memory. The handheld VX8-GR which give me a fell friendly access to 2m and 70cms and the always useful APRS. Finally the FT-817  for holidays and occasional summit activations.

Lately the FT-817 has been lagging behind in the ‘access to all parts of the band’ feature which is pretty useful at worst and a necessity when the bands are crowded or as in the case of this weekend. A special event station run by our club, GB1WSL was transmitting outside of the window of opportunity for the unmodified rig. GB1WSL was on 7.133Mhz and mine stopped in its tracks at 7.099.9Mhz.

Until this evening, when soldering iron in hand I removed solder from 1 jumper and added some (not the same stuff i might add) to another jumper and hey presto the Full TX on FT-817 as mods.dk calls it was complete. Its a bit more fiddly than that but even an inexperienced soldering iron toting danger managed it in about 15 minutes. Why had I not done this before?

Now the rig has the full 40m band, which is the primary reason why I did the modification,  it becomes even more indispensable when I go portable. Next stop is a suitable capacity LiPo battery that I can add on to give it the full output away from a power outlet and an ATU for portable means. I wonder if there is a design out for a homebrew ATU about.

It’s not often I hit some DX but WSPR helps me out quite a lot. Here’s a screenshot from my latest 1w big gun escapade

1w into Hustler 6-BTV

Whilst some might say that lifes too short for QRP. Newly licenced hams take note. 1w into a lossy vertical in a bad location doesn’t mean you’re stuck with QSO’s as far as the end of the street.

All this was achieved with a modest transceiver (IC-7000) and a modest antenna (Hustler 6-BTV with a few radials). The lesson here is that DX isn’t just for those with limitless pockets of cash, elevated QTH’s and antenna systems that can rival your nearest broadcaster. You just might not be talking to the other station!

I’ve committed to ‘presenting’ the B&Q beam to the club in a couple of weeks so I better get on making it. The idea is one that has been done a few hundred if not thousand times over. Give some new / inexperienced hams the opportunity to build a perfectly adequate 3 element beam for 2m from parts found at a local hardware shop. In the UK B&Q is just about everywhere and it supplies just about everything, apart from the thing you want, generally.

Seriously the design is taken from any of your favourite calculators. I have found that they vary slightly against the original maths but I know my Sotabeam works very well so that’s a good starting point for dimensions.

Costs to date are in the region of a few quid but by far the most expensive parts are the nylon bolts used to hold the elements. I’ve bought a bunch so I’ll have a few attempts at drilling straight through the nylon without heating it up too much.

For quite a while now I’ve not been able to get into the shack. Not because its stacked to the rafters with new gear but because I’ve had too much on to even think about it. Yesterday I managed to squeeze some time in and quite frankly I wish I hadn’t bothered.

My FT817 lives in a padded bag when its not in use along with its charger and an old Miracle whip. Now the Miracle whip no longer has a whip courtesy of my youngest who managed to snap it in half. Whilst it isn’t the finest antenna it was extremely useful for travelling. Now I need a replacement telescopic whip and I’m guessing they’re either hard to get hold of or unnecessarily expensive.

The other doom was the CI-V controller (mine is a G4ZLP USB digimater pro+) which has given some sterling service over the last couple of years but now has decided to read the frequency but not PTT or supply audio. Several wasted hours later the status quo remains. Reliability of kit in my shack isn’t that great at the best of times and this just confirms that a law based on expense and reliability. ‘No matter what it costs the chances are that it’ll stop working for no apparent reason’.

At this rate I’ll have nothing left either as a result of a 3 year old or its own suicidal components..

It has been a long time since I mustered up the time to post but there’s been a lot going on in West Cumbria and unfortunately most of it hasn’t had anything to do with radio. I did manage to get a day out last Sunday to the Norbreck Rally, thanks to Noel G4PEW for the driving, to help out with the club stand and pick up a couple of goodies for the portable enthusiast. I’ll post about them later when the work dust has settled.

You may remember that a while ago I bought a 2 element lightweight 50Mhz antenna that is currently sitting in a 95% completion state so that will need a bit of finishing off and talking about.

I also purchased a Prowhip 5 band fishing pole antenna on a bit of a whim, partly because I was going to make one and thought I wouldn’t have the time to do it this side of the summer and partly because it was so cheap I doubt I could have got the parts and made one up myself for much cheaper. It calls itself a multiband antenna but its really a 1/4 wave vertical in a fishing rod that will tune to 40m and a few higher bands with a tuner. More on that later.

The other thing I’m involved with is helping with the Workington club (MX0WRC) to try and help out some of the novices and non home brewers to make a simple 3 element 2m band antenna out of ‘stuff from a hardware shop’. There are some well established designs that work but the focus is on getting the guy’s and girl’s to make their own.

I’ll also be helping out with the Fred Whitton Cycle Challenge with the local Raynet group shortly so weekends are looking quite busy .So as you can see, plenty on the plate but no time to get on the air. Something is going to have to stop, my vote is work but I doubt the mortgage will get paid, mores’ the pity.