Trying to decide between a Baofeng and a Wouxun HT? Here are some thoughts…

The good:

• They are super-cheap
• They are usually dead-on frequency and stable through temperature change (better than most Japanese radios)
• The Receiver sensitivity is usually better than the .2 uV specification at 12db SINAD
• They always produce at least as much power as advertised
• The Wouxun is excellent at harmonic suppression and adjacent channel selectivity

The bad:

• The Baofeng usually is pretty bad on harmonic suppression sometimes as bad as 20db
• The Baofeng has terrible adjacent channel selectivity and is easily interfered with in busy RF environments

Overall, all the Chinese radios are decent, but in my experience, the Wouxun is excellent compared to the Baofeng.

The Wouxuns I have personally tested gave the Japanese models a run for their money, at about a quarter of the price.

What’s the use of holidays if you just do nowt? It’s never going to happen in our house. So I decided to do something with one of he old netbooks I have. Remember them? Mine is an Advent 4211 that my lad decided to pull the keys off and eat them whilst our backs were turned and he was a less mobile menace

Anyway. A media server is something we’ve been missing since our NAS decided to go on a ‘go slow’. After 20 mins Googling I ended up with OpenMediaVault. Impressed eh?

An all in one server is almost on us. I did the usual and downloaded the iso, burnt it to a USB stick with Rufus and installed it on the machine. As expected the installation was simple and I used this tutorial to help. Needless to say the 20 mins Googling the right software was the quick bit.

The MiniDLNA bit was what I was after and after a few ‘Uh’s’ and a quick trip round the internet and back and it looks like its going to serve me nicely. Did you see what I did there? serve? server? Oh well never mind. Here’s to you internet and your ability to give me ideas for stuff to do in the holidays whilst I’m waiting for stuff to arrive from China……Now what’s next on eBay?

Many of the larger dealers are offering special deals in the lead up to Christmas. But, are you really getting a bargain? For example, MLS have the FT1200 at less than £1000 after cash back. Maybe this radio is over-stocked as people prefer the IC7300 or the FT991?

Call me a cynic, but I think we are being offered discounts on radios that have not sold. As they say, “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. If something looks too good there is probably a catch. Of course, if you really want one of the discounted rigs then now is as good a time to buy as any.

See www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beware-of-greeks-bearing-gifts.html .

The slide down from a solar maximum is (usually) slower than the climb from the minimum to the maximum. Very gradually, the sun is going “off the boil” and solar activity is slowly falling away. With each year for several years to come things will get progressively harder on the higher bands. Some are predicting the next maximum may be a “damp squib”, so enjoy the conditions while they last. It is quite possible that 10m will never be as good again in the lifetimes of many of us. Certainly 10m is already not as good as a year ago. Although Es is good at any part of the cycle in late spring and summer, F2 DX is best around the peak of solar activity. In the past 6m has supported worldwide DX at times, but I think those days are sadly over.

See http://www.solen.info/solar/ .

Are you ready for the annual, month-long special event by the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC)? The SKCC Group membership is free, and celebrates the longest tradition of amateur radio: Morse code. But, not just any Morse code. The manual creation of Morse code by “straight” keys means no electronic origin, only mechanical. This is a month-long event, during January 2016, modelled after the ARRL Straight Key Night.

Here’s a video that I made showing my activity as the control operator of the special event station, K3Y/0, during one of the many shifts during January (2015). K3Y is the special event callsign of the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC). The special event operates each January. I’ll be doing this again, this coming month, January of 2016.

K3Y, the Straight Key Century Club’s annual January celebration, commemorates the club’s founding in 2006 following the American Radio Relay League’s Straight Key Night. A small group of participants wanted to extend the fun of SKN throughout the year. The SKCC is the result.

For the first three years, the club’s founders used K1Y, K2A, and K3Y as the celebration’s special-event calls. But someone cleverly noticed that a 3 is nothing more than a backwards, curvaceous E. This “KEY” event has operated under the K3Y call ever since.

The on-air party is open to members and non-members alike. It runs from 0000 UTC Jan. 2 through 2359 UTC Jan. 31. It’s a great time to introduce others to the joys of hand-crafted Morse code using straight keys, bugs, and side swipers.

This year, January 2016, we’ll be fielding K3Y operators in each of the 10 US call areas, plus KH6, KL7 and KP4, along with specially scheduled stations in each of six IARU continental regions. Your QSOs with event operators in all these 19 areas will be tabulated in the Statistics section and can be confirmed with a K3Y QSL card and Sweep Certificate.

+ The SKCC website is at http://skccgroup.com

+ The K3Y special event page is http://www.skccgroup.com/k3y/

73 de NW7US​

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