AmateurRadio.com

I was really pleased last night to hear from Matt Thomas, W1MST who is the Editor at AmateurRadio.com. Matt was kind enough to say that he’d been reading this blog for a while and that he would like to syndicate the posts onto his site.

Naturally, I’m delighted – thank you Matt for your kindness and confidence and I hope that readers will find my posts of interest.

Funnily enough, yesterday, I produced a word cloud based on the last six months of my posts on this site, which gives you an idea of where the emphasis lies at the moment. That’s not to say, of course, that it won’t veer off to somethng very different – as it tends to follow whatever I’m interested in amateur radio wise at the time.

Reading through the Southgate ARC blog this morning, I came across this interesting post from Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP.

It was funny, because this very morning, JackFM were playing the Buggles track, ‘Video killed the Radio star’ from 1979 (we hear the playback and it seems so long ago). And I was thinking, we probably really did think that video WOULD kill radio. But here I am, 31 years later (gulp), listening to more broadcast radio than I have in years – and seeing a really vibrant and varied radio scene (though as an industry it’s fair to say that it has its’ own challenges). And of course, “internet broadcasting” has become part of radio, as we would have called it in 1979.

So it’ll be interesting to see whether the predictions of doom for amateur radio ring true. My guess and earnest wish is that as a hobby, it will evolve. It may(will) not evolve to everyone’s satisfaction and how many times have we heard the phrase “but it’s not amateur radio” muttered?

The truth is that the hobby MUST evolve to survive. It cannot survive as it was, for all sorts of reasons. That doesn’t invalidate the pleasure that people gain from taking part in the facets of amateur radio that have existed “for ever” – not at all.

Geoff’s choice of title made me think about about the parallels with the music broadcasting world. The need and desire to broadcast will not go away – only the methods will change. And so, I suspect will it be with amateur radio – the underlying principles will remain, but the methods will evolve.

And the other thing is that moaning and complaining about it won’t stop “progress” either. Just get on with enjoying what you do – engaging with other people and showing them what a great hobby this is; past, present and future.

I’m Tim Kirby, G4VXE and that’s what I think, how about you?

Driving home last night, I was talking to Andy, G0UWS (who incidentally is now on Twitter) who was telling me and Richard, G4ERP that he was planning to be out on the 144MHZ UK Activity Contest that evening.

After we’d eaten and I’d attended to the dishwasher, I popped upstairs and had a quick listen to 144MHz SSB. Sure enough I managed to work Andy who was a great signal, along with a number of local stations. Conditions didn’t seem that great. I came back to the rig a little later on, around 21z when the GB3VHF beacon seemed a lot louder than it had been earlier.

I was able to work a few more people in the East and South East – it’s always good to work into the Suffolk/Norfolk area as well as some of the Cray Valley guys like M0RCV and G0VJG/P to the south-east of London.

Richard, GD8EXI was an intriguing signal. I could barely hear him beaming direct path, but his signal peaked up to the south-east! I didn’t bother to call him, but I strongly suspect I would have been able to work him.

Around that time, I noticed that the PI7CIS beacon was coming through nicely on 2m, so I went over to 70cms to listen for it there. Sure enough it was somewhat above average, though not startling. I tried a couple of CW CQ calls on 432.200 beaming towards the Netherlands, but no luck on this occasion.

All in all, an interesting evening. And thanks to Andy, G0UWS, for without the ‘prompt’ during our earlier FM QSO, I might not have checked the bands.

I use a magnetic mount to attach my relatively small VHF/UHF antennas onto the car for my daily activity on the commute to and from the station. I tend to need a new magmount every 12-15 months as repeated opening and closing of the hatchback eventually takes its toll on the coax!

The last but one magmount I had worked really well for the usual period on all the VHF/UHF bands I use from the car. It finally gave up and I replaced it, with one from the same retailer, with ostensibly the same spec. It certainly worked, but particularly on 70cms, the performance was considerably worse. Not catastrophically worse, more like ‘conditions aren’t very good today’ worse – so I just put up with it.

I had the opportunity this morning to try a different magmount – a slightly more expensive model (the original one I was using retail at around £16 and the newer one at about £25). On 433MHz the difference was enormous! GB3TD which had become unusable at the far end of my commute near Didcot, was just fine! I don’t think it was just conditions. but it will be interesting to see how the new mount affects the other bands.

So now I’m wondering what was ‘wrong’ with the old magmount. It’s not as if it really didn’t work, but perhaps it was just very lossy. Either way, I’m glad I tried the different mount. Your mileage may vary, but you may be well advised to spend slightly more on your next magmount!

I’d wanted to create an APRS object for the Ridgeway Repeater Group‘s two voice repeaters, GB3TD and GB3WH for a while. In practice, this just means making sure that they show up on the map in the right place, when someone goes to http://aprs.fi and looks at the area.

I wanted to display an icon for them, showing the approximate position and their callsign, and some detail available, if someone clicks on the icon. I’d looked at various ways of doing it, but found OpenAPRS the best method.

I’d looked at doing this a few months ago, but had stalled, because OpenAPRS required me to verify my account using an ‘RF APRS client’ which I didn’t have – all my APRS interfacing is done through the Internet. Without verifying my account, I couldn’t create objects on the APRS map.

When I was looking at OpenAPRS the other day, I noticed that they were offering another method of verifying accounts, using Paypal and a small (dollar or so) donation. I was happy to pay this and sure enough the account was verified very speedily.

Having done this, it was straightforward to create an object for each of the repeaters using Tools/Create Objects and then clicking on the map in the appropriate place and entering the information. In some ways, rather than clicking on the map, I’d have preferred to manually enter the latitude and longitude, but this didn’t seem to be possible.

Either way, GB3TD and GB3WH are now represented on the APRS map. I like this – and it provides some useful information to people about where they may find activity in particular localities.

I noticed a D-STAR buzz on 145.6375 the other day when I was testing an analog set and a quick ‘Google’ showed that the GB7ML 2m D-STAR node was now operational from Tring. The coverage map at ukrepeater.net looks really impressive and showed potential hand-held coverage around our village here.

Sure enough, when I took the IC-E92 along the footpath this morning, I could just about get into GB7ML!

This should prove a great D-STAR resource for increasing activity around the Home Counties and beyond.

By the time August comes along, the Es openings on the VHF bands are generally dying down a bit. Certainly, I’ve been checking 50MHz less frequently from the car and I’ve even been thinking about what band I’m going to use the IC706/mobile for over the winter (more on that soon!).

However, chatting to Ken, G3LVP this morning about 70MHz, he told me that yesterday there had been an opening to Portugal on 70MHz. Ken had worked CT1FJC from the Algarve.

So, keep checking those bands!