AmateurRadio.com

It seemed ages since I’d taken the FT-817 and a whip antenna out on the bike. After a very wet Jubilee day yesterday, although there were some dark clouds about I decided to get out this morning before any rain could fall.

My simple 28/50/144/432MHz setup carried on the bike is the FT-817 and an ATX Walkabout antenna which I use on 28 and 50MHz. This morning, I took the Baofeng UV-5R for 144/432MHz FM.

A favourite spot to cycle to is Windmill Hill which is a couple of miles from our house. It’s not that high, but it’s open, quiet (both electrically and not too many passers by) and it’s also a pleasant place to sit for an hour or so.

There’s usually something to listen to. This morning 28MHz was pretty quiet. I heard beacons from Finland and Norway quite weakly and IK8JWY was heard CQing weakly on CW – not strong enough to work. 50MHz was quiet too, but interesting to hear the GB3MCB beacon on 50.042 from IO70. I don’t hear it from home, so just goes to show what difference a quiet band can make.

Just as I thought I was going to have to pack up without making a contact, Matthew 2E0RNM popped up on the GB3WH repeater so it was good to chat with him.

Picture shows the relaxed operating position – and the Palm Paddle used for CW.

Although the special callsigns for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee have been available for some weeks, I had decided only to use mine over the immediate Jubilee period.

I’m only using it for a bit of fun rather than to generate pileups!

As I said to Richard G4ERP last night, it’s the radio equivalent of putting it the bunting and celebrating our Queen’s jubilee.

Dave, WW2R/5 reports that the WX9XRU 70MHz beacon in Virginia was activated on Saturday afternoon, 26th May. The beacon is beamed across the Atlantic, so hopefully there will be many reports from Europe this summer.

Dave heard the beacon, by Es off the back of its’ beam on Sunday on his 70MHz dipole over a distance of 1626km.

Although 50MHz in particular, has been noisy today with some local electrical interference, there’s been some good Es propagation, particularly to the south. Around 1000z I noticed some loud Spanish stations on 50MHz, loud enough and short enough skip (EA1) that made me think that the MUF would be high enough for 70MHz. And so it was, with EA7HG coming through on 70MHz – we worked, although it wasn’t the easiest of QSOs. CT1DIZ and EA7KB were also worked on the band before propagation faded.

I dropped back to 50MHz and the band was still good into Spain and I made some nice QSOs. I was very pleased to work EA8BWY in the Canaries – pretty sure this must have been double hop – first hop to Spain and second hop from there to the islands. There was a brief opening this evening, again to Spain when I worked EB4IC.

G6AVK is reporting the 6V7SIX beacon on TEP – nothing here!

Although I’ve had the UV-5R around for several weeks and I’ve been using it to listen to various repeaters and stations, I hadn’t actually had a QSO with it!

This afternoon, a glorious hot afternoon, with temperatures around 23C I went out for a walk to our neighbouring village, Hinton Waldrist to deliver some papers and some Sky at Night Magazines to a friend. I popped the UV-5R in my pocket.

First QSO was a bit unusual actually – through the 2m repeater GB3WH. I’m faintly suspicious in retrospect that the gentleman concerned, although he was sporting an M6 call may have actually been a CBer trying out a rig, with a made up call! I couldn’t be certain of course, it might have just been a newcomer to the bands who’d spent time on CB before. As I’ve said before, I’ve no problem with that and most modify their operating style over time to reflect amateur, rather than CB, practice.

Second QSO was much easier, with Rob G4XUT on the 70cm repeater GB3TD. Rob was using a converted PMR rig which sounded good and was able to give me a good report on the UV-5R so that was very pleasing.

I also found that I could get into the GB3UK repeater up on the Cotswolds very reliably.

I’ve programmed the UV-5R now, with most of the local repeater frequencies as well as 145.800 in case of any ISS passes and some of the marine band frequencies used in the London area.

I mentioned in a post over the weekend that a couple of channels on the Anytone 10m rig were showing a slight discrepancy between transmit and receive when no clarifier was switched in.

I thought perhaps a factory reset might do the trick.

This morning, as I had a few moments before the train arrived, I performed the reset after I had parked up in the station car park.

With a loud beep the display changed to 25.615MHz! Quite a reset then, and the segments that had been programmed were lost! Just the lower bit of 28MHz was accessible!

Happily, you may recall that some months ago, I purchased the programming lead for the AT-5555. And even more surprisingly, I had backed up the configuration of the rig onto my laptop.

So, this evening saw me out on the drive with the laptop, the rig open and the programming lead. It’s all back as it should be (I think). Though I didn’t check yet whether those two channels were fixed.

For a change, it was quite interesting to listen to the activity on 27.555 as I drove home.

This morning we headed over to the village of Coleshill, where Julie wanted to take a look at a clothes sale. Having had a look around, I left Julie to it and popped back to the car.

Being the middle of the day, I thought I would check 28MHz SSB. First I heard a ZS6 who wasn’t too loud. Although he could just hear me, my 10W to the whip wasn’t enough for a contact. ZS3Y was a bit louder but he couldn’t hear me. HZ1HN was contesting but I couldn’t get him to hear me.

I was starting to think it was a receive only day, when I heard a loud station just finishing a CQ. I called and was pleased and surprised to get a report of 5/5. Even more pleased when I discovered the station was in Israel, 4X4FR. We had a really nice QSO. Just as I signed with Rafi and we were preparing to drive off, with Julie back from the sale, Phil G7GVV from Oxford called in – so we quickly exchanged reports.

Slightly oddly, I noticed that on two channels only, there is a small difference between the Anytone’s TX and RX frequencies. And the clarifier seems to be set correctly. Odd! Happily it doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe a reset will help!

Fun contacts from the mobile!