AmateurRadio.com

I was pleased to receive the following e-mail from Randy, W6SJ this morning.

You were among the dedicated operators to show your support of the DX Code of Conduct project. You and the other respondents energized me to really get some effort behind a project to change things. We gradually attracted a committee of high profile people, many of whom you might know as dedicated HF operators.

The result is that the DX Code of Conduct has been translated into over two dozen languages. Many of the national societies have featured in in their magazines and have links at their websites.

We developed a section for DXpeditioners and have gotten incredible support from them. All have supported us and they are listed too. After all, they are the real beneficiaries of polite operating.

We also have spread the word through a number of clubs and we just developed a Power Point that is designed to be shown at club meetings.

Please take a look at our website www.dx-code.org and see our progress. Note that we have had over 5500 unique visitors.

Your enthusiasm was important to me and the others on the team and you should feel pride at having given us the courage to try to change the situation.

Please take this opportunity to tell the rest of your friends about the project and encourage them to support it as well..

Please let me know if your club would be interested in seeing the Power Point once it is ready for release.

Randy also goes on to say “PS – This site and the Power Point were developed with my pretty feeble HTML 3.0 skills and both it and the PPT could benefit from some enhancement by a person with “artistic website skills.” If that describes you, perhaps you might want to volunteer to help us create a 21st Century look. “

It’s great to see that the DX Code of Conduct is receiving plenty of support. I hope that will translate to plenty of support on the bands too. We can but hope. And if you can help Randy with the web presentation of his excellent ideas, then I hope you’ll get in touch.

Before I tell you about the weekend and SDR – I want to do a shameless plug. My lovely wife, Julie is very talented in many dimensions. She’s just set up an online shop on ETSY where you can see some of the beautiful craft items that she makes and perhaps buy them too! Do have a look there – with Christmas coming up, you might find a nice gift for someone special.

Anyway. Back to Software Defined Radio. It’s funny how sometimes you can’t escape a particular topic! On Saturday, the latest Practical Wireless dropped through the door. Naturally I checked the VHF column had come out ok (it had, thanks Rob and the team!) and then started to look through the other examples. I was particularly interested in the review of the FlexRadio 1500 QRP SDR transceiver by Phil, G3XBZ.

What a fascinating looking little box that you plug an aerial and a morse key into, connect the USB to your computer and control the rig and all the filtering from within the computer. Phil had obviously had a good time with the rig and had made some nice CW and SSB QSOs with it. Ideal too, I should think for data modes. Very tempting. I don’t need another rig or anything like that. But if I did….

The next ‘nudge’ towards SDR came from an interesting posting via the Southgate club’s blog about the AMSAT-UK FuncubeDongle. This is a dongle, which takes antenna input via an SMA adapter and plugs into your USB port. It forms a VHF/UHF/SHF receiver, obviously aimed at the satellite market which operates between around 64 to 1700MHz. You can use it with any of the current raft of SDR control programs and thus decode all sorts of modes.

Interestingly, there will be two versions of the dongle – a basic one aimed at the educational/schools market – to allow them to listen / decode transmissions from the Funcube satellite and a ‘Pro’ one with a little more flexibility. The feature set of the basic and Pro models isn’t entirely clear at the moment. This looks a brilliant project. Pricing for the ‘Pro’ model looks to be around £100. A 64-1700MHz receiver for £100. That sounds worth keeping an eye on, doesn’t it!

See the FuncubeDongle site here. But before you do, go and see Julie’s ETSY shop and tell her I sent you 🙂

Last weekend at the RSGB’s convention, my friends at the Five Star DX Association (FSDXA) announced their next expedition to Kiritimati (Christmas Island) – T32 in the Pacific Ocean. The team aim to arrive 28th September, 2011 and depart 26th October, 2011.

The plan is to operate under the callsign, T32C. You can read more about the expedition at the official T32C site

I was very honoured to be invited to join the team, by Neville, G3NUG, though sadly I had to decline.

Having been involved on the inside of an FSDXA dxpedition before, I am absolutely certain that this will give DXers the very best opportunity to work T32. Hopefully, over the coming months, we’ll be able to bring more insights into the forthcoming operation.

You can see their first press release here

Alerted by posts by Patrick, WA0TDA and Steve, GW7AAV, I see that Wouxun have announced an entry into the mobile rig market, with their KG-UV920R rig covering 144/432MHz.

Based on the coverage that Steve mentions in his post, there is FM receive from 65-220MHz – so this rig could receive on 70MHz too! In fact, reading the posts, I was wondering whether Wouxun will, in time, consider a 70MHz capable mobile rig.

The Wouxun portables have proved excellent and I am looking forward to hearing more about the mobile rig in due course.

I didn’t spend too much time on the radio on Tuesday evening, as the cats were requesting entertainment again – which was a pleasure to provide! Being the second Tuesday of the month, it was the 432MHz Activity Contest and there was still some tropo around. The best DX for me was DF0MU in JO32 – which I was more than happy with. It was also good to work GD8EXI (IO74) – the first time I have worked GD from Longworth on 432MHz. Interestingly, like last month, he was at his strongest when I was beaming southeast. A reflection, perhaps? I was also pleased to hear some northerly IO93/IO84 squares which are less common for me.

Oh. And a special mention to the contester, whose callsign I will not mention, who when I called him first, he only got my suffix. No problem. He asked if I could give my prefix. No problem, I did. Then he proceeded to moan that he hadn’t got my full callsign! I seem to remember mentioning when I wrote the contest column in RadCom, that it’s best to be nice to the people who call you – otherwise they might not call you again. This gentleman won’t be hearing from me for a while, then!

Tropo seems to have faded down mostly now, although there was something weak on 145.650 this morning, either GB3PO or ON0WV – I couldn’t tell. Apparently the forecast for the weekend could be favourable for more tropo. Let’s hope so!

Most of yesterday evening was spent very enjoyably, getting to know our new cats – they are real stars! However, just before bed, I did pop into the shack to see what was happening.

OP7V from Belgium was very loud on 432.200 and I enjoyed a QSO with him. By the time I listened, 432MHz was quieter, so I switched over to 144MHz was was pleased to find DK3EE (JO41) coming through at great strength – so had a nice quick QSO with him and also DF0WD (JO42) who I also worked quickly.

Swapped e-mails with Allan, GM4ZUK and he’d been out portable last night and worked over 300 stations on 144/432/1296 over a few hours last night. Allan’s best DX on 1296MHz was OY and SP!

(Edited this in thanks to Ralf, DK4KW for letting me know about it)

This morning conditions were still good and ON0WV was coming through at S9 on 145.650 on my drive to the station. There was a very strong repeater on 145.6375 too, with French stations QRV. I didn’t hear it ID, so it may have been the Jersey repeater, GB3GJ.

We’ve had a busy weekend which didn’t contain too much radio. Last week was a bit of a sad one for us; we scattered my Dad’s ashes on Monday and then on Thursday we had to say goodbye to our much-loved cat, Buttons who was 16. A cat-less house was not good for us and we were ‘directed’ to visit the animal rescue centre, run by the Blue Cross at Burford. There we met and fell in love with two new cat friends, Pippi and Max, who I am pleased to say have kindly consented to come and live with us. They moved in yesterday and needless to say, much fun and time is being spent, looking after them and trying to settle them in.

When I popped out to the garden centre yesterday, I noticed some reasonable 145MHz tropo to the east, with the GB3PO repeater in Ipswich coming in better than normal on the mobile. Just before I went to bed, I saw a tweet from G0PKT on the east coast saying that he’d been working some good DX on VHF/UHF. I stopped off in the shack on the way to bed and had a quick QSO with Juergen, DL5EBS (JO31) on 432MHz. Signals were great – also, DJ6JJ was on 432.200 working Polish stations. Interestingly, I was able to detect fragments of the signals from the Polish stations.

This morning, on the drive to work, conditions were still good. On 145.650, I heard ON0WV identify very clearly a couple of times. And during our commuter ‘net’ on GB3TD (433.075) we were surprised and delighted to be joined by John, G6HKQ from Norfolk.