AmateurRadio.com

Unexpectedly, owing to domestic circumstances, I found myself at home today. VHF was in good shape and from early on, 50MHz was going well. I decided to concentrate on 70MHz today and see what I could work.

The Wouxun 70MHz FM handheld that arrived yesterday didn’t yield any contacts, but it was a great indicator on a couple of occasions that the MUF had reached 70MHz, when the broadcast FM from Eastern Europe was clearly audible on the handheld. I’m looking forward to playing with the handheld (even though I was the last person in the country to know about their availability, living here under my little rock…!)

So, as I was passing the shack, I kept checking 70MHz on the FT847. IZ8DWF (JM78) was first in the log, I worked him on SSB this time. I was pleased to find IF9/I2ADN (JM67) for a new square. I2ADN always goes to some great places for the Sporadic E season and it was good to work him for the first time on 70MHz, we’ve had many QSOs over the years on 50MHz.

I5OXT (JN52) made it into the log at lunchtime. Later on, IS0AWZ would have been a new one from Sardinia, but he called CQ CQ CQ and didn’t hear me. Lots of QRM from the East at that time, so I’m sure he was getting a lot of interference. At 1530z, I heard a weak SSB CQ on 70.200 which got louder. I was delighted to work YO9HP in KN35 for a new country on the band. ES1CW appeared briefly on 70.200 on the key, but I couldn’t attract his attention.

Just after 1600z the band opened nicely into Italy again. I worked IZ5EME (JN52), IW0FUK(JN61) and I6BQI (JN72). It was particularly nice to work Angelo, I6BQI – someone that we used to work back in the 1980s on 144MHz Meteor Scatter.

I took a different route to the station this morning. Leaving home a little bit earlier than normal, I popped into Oxford to see our friends at Jack FM. It’s lovely to see them and see how effortless they make producing a great show appear.

As I was driving down the A34 from Oxford to Didcot, I popped the FT8900 on and had a listen around. To my surprise the GB3CF repeater at Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire was coming in very strongly – approaching S8 on some of the hills to the south of Oxford..

What was interesting to me was that my route this morning wasn’t more than 10 miles or so from my usual one – but it’s quite unusual to hear GB3CF on the normal route – certainly at that sort of signal strength.

An e-mail from Robin, AA4RC to the DVAP Dongle Yahoo group today announces the arrival of the latest release of firmware (v1.05) for the DVAP. Robin notes that he hopes that this should resolve the transmit issue that some people (including me!) have been having. Moe, AE4JY is credited with finding and resolving the problem. Thanks Moe!

The revised firmware may be downloaded from the Downloads section at http://www.dvapdongle.com

As you might recall, I upgraded the firmware on the DVAP the other week. I hadn’t used it much since the upgrade. This evening I thought I’d play a little D-STAR. I found that I would start transmitting and then I would lose connection and my audio would be lost. One or two other people have been experiencing the same thing. Indeed, Ron, KA2HZO that I was speaking to this evening was having exactly the same issue.

Ron downgraded his DVAP firmware back to 1.01 and found that performance improved. I’ve done the same and things seem better. I had experienced the problem from time to time myself on 1.01 but it seems less frequent.

Of course, it could just be an issue with the internet connection – something else on the PC which the newer version is slightly less tolerant of. I’m sure it will be resolved in due course. But for now, I’ve downgraded to the v1.01 of the DVAP firmware.

Update: 21st June Had an e-mail last night from Nidge, G0WFS. He’d experienced the same problems as me with his DVAP running under v1.04 of the firmware. He reverted back to v1.01 and all is well again. So it looks like there are some issues with v1.04. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, but if you do have problems, a simple reversion to the v1.01 firmware should have you back up and running reliably in an instant.

There’s been plenty of VHF Es buzzing around here today. It started off, literally with a buzz on 50MHz as I was driving down to the Post Office in the next village this morning. I heard some TV buzz on 50MHz, almost certainly out of Eastern Europe. A few stations started coming through including YU1EXY, the Belgrade University club station.

After that, I had plenty of things to do and didn’t get to the rig again until around 1530z. There seemed to be a contest going on 50MHz. I worked LZ9W (KN12) and YT2F(KN03) as well as an EA6.

There were some reports of 144MHz Es too. At one stage, I could hear DLs working Es that I couldn’t hear any trace of. At 1735 though, I heard LZ2ZY (KN10) briefly. He was working into Belgium at the time and I didn’t hear him work any Gs. G4MKF, not too far from me, worked a station that I couldn’t hear at all, but the opening seemed pretty fleeting. Though it was a shame not to work LZ2ZY, it was great to hear him!