AmateurRadio.com

In this episode, your intrepid hosts discuss several ham-radio related stories including operators interfering with jail communications, getting lost in strange valleys, and transmitting through a hammock. But that’s only the beginning. Thanks for tuning, and for being a valued listener of our show.

73 de The LHS Guys

Sarah, Evan, and I had the opportunity to go to her parents’ place for the Easter holiday weekend. Since the trip coincided with the Michigan QSO Party, I decided this might be a good test of the portability of the K2. Unfortunately, I was unable to operate much longer than a half hour but I had some fun on 40 meters and tried out N3WG’s (Pignology) HamLog for logging. Neat stuff.

Saturday saw me opening a beer celebrating finishing off the new decking area…which means….Sunday saw me finishing off my portable hexbeam from Folding Antennas. The build took quite a while, about 8 for the hardware and about 3 for the layout and tuning. I’ve not used it much in anger as the rains started coming.

An early doors write up is here…..but so far its looking worth the build time. Here’s a shot of the half finished decking…oh and a half finished antenna.

Before the decking project was formally sanctioned and actioned through the domestic funding board / xyl I had thought about ordering a little kit to build over the summer. I had built the v2 QRSS kit from Hans Summers, G0UPL and have used it on the 30m band and frankly enjoyed both the built and the fun tinkering with it.

The v3 kit changes the design slightly in as much as it used a more common 16×2 LCD and the PCB size as increased slightly. But from what I can tell there is a deal of difference between the two designs. Both encourage the builder to tinker with the PA’s, increase functionality with GPS and use the add on LPF relay to build a multi band TX. The one big and obvious change is the used of the dedicated DDS.

Plans for this kit are to still do the build and then buy up 10 kits and build them at the BEC fab lab one Saturday. I will no doubt get a suitable date for the build day at next weeks club meeting. Until then its finish the decking or be in trouble with the domestic CEO.

For as long as I first heard about SDR i wanted to get involved. Unfortunately children and jobs got in the way of significant investment. Until now that is. I received an email from a local ham who had an Angelia board that he no longer wanted.

‘Did I want to buy it off him?’

‘Yes’ said I before even mentioning it to the domestic CFO / xyl.

Long discussion ensued and eventually I have come away with this….

Needless to say some of the domestic staff were not amused. As a consequence I have an FT817 and a VX8-GE for sale. Any takers?

Not strictly Ham Radio but worthy of a mention, I dropped into the BEC Fab Lab today to talk to them about laser cutting some cases for our clubs summer build. We’ll be doing something simple this year ( the Hans Summers, GoUPL Ultimate QRSS kit v3 – mine is on order) and I’m keen to tie in what we do with them as we could use their services and they could potentially open up amateur radio to a wider audience.

I was really impressed and can’t wait to get my hands on their 3d printer, I just don’t know what I ought to print…perhaps a callsign badge

BEC Fab Lab

Are of course untrue

Quite a bit has happened over the last few weeks. Primarily domestic and work duties have kept me away from the rig other than the occasional VHF contest appearance.

At home I have spent a considerable amount of time replacing cables and renewing bits and pieces that have succumbed to the Cumbrian winters and salt spray. The salty, windy air has corroded connectors, got into the coax outer (my poor connectors to blame) and generally caused some ‘issues’

So cabling all done

New telescopic mast purchased

New antenna purchased

So to the purchases. I bought a simple, manual 12.5m mast from Spiderbeam that is pretty substantial. Why no fixed mast? because radio is a hobby that I do and not the rest of the family and we enjoy the sea view more on that in another post. The antenna is a lightweight hexbeam from folding antennas. Again more info on that in a more detailed post. But suffice to say its all going down the same path. Simple radio. Nothing complicated. Nothing that can’t be easily moved or changed and no chasing the next rig / antenna / thing. Just turn on what I have and enjoy the simplicity.

Hold on a minute. I haven’t done the remainder of the decking….well at least I got to think about radio