The idea to do something with satellites again came from my wife. She doesn’t want to participate in the radio hobby, but she does see the value of it and gives me lots of encouragement. Back in Holland I made my own Arrow style antenna and heard some amateur satellites, but I was never able to work one.

Lo and behold, right after she mentioned sats I saw a mention of TAMSAT on our local ham chat site. After the CTARL and the CRA this is the third amateur radio club in Taiwan, (although they are closely associated with the CTARL). As luck would have it they had an activity day late last month with lectures and a DIY activity, namely putting together a Mini-circuit’s PGA-103 low noise pre-amp. I went there and made some new friends as well as seeing some familiar faces from the CTARL. Here some impressions….

The opening of the day by BV2OL, who is a teacher at the Taipei City Tech College where the activity day was organized. He is also heading TAMSAT.

BX1AD came from I-lan to hold a talk about the XW-2 or Hope2 satellite range which was launched last September. This was indeed a very interesting talk. BX1AD is one of the most active Taiwanese when it comes to satellites.

BX2AI introduced webSDR receivers and since I am using those too I was able to add some information to the talk.

In the afternoon we put the PGA-103 pre-amp together. All components were of the SMD variety, so a magnifying glass and extra light were more than necessary for the – mostly – old eyes that put together the kit. Here BX2AN and BV2BJ in action.

BV2AP took care of the testing with an R&S spectrum analyzer.

22 dB gain on VHF, a little less on UHF and above.

A big thanks to BV2OL (middle), BV2AP (right), flanked by BV2FB.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to put the PGA-103 into action, yet. The reason: I don’t have a shack at the moment.

The FT817 is a bit low in sensitivity on 472kHz so I was expecting a decent improvement with a preamp. To my surprise I am copying no more stations. In fact I am hearing just as many without as with! The result has surprised me. The rig sensitivity is definitely better with the preamp and stations are stronger but it is far from clear cut whether it is worth using it in reality. At the moment my 472kHz transverter does not have the preamp.

Maybe the FT817 sensitivity is good enough. In marginal cases (and these seem few) it probably helps, but most of the time it seems fine without.

After considering buying a new transceiver, I have decided to stick with the rigs I have. At present, my poor voice makes all speech QSOs an effort. I enjoy WSPR as this is really a true QRP mode and it tells me a lot about propagation, without shouting!

I’ll still “window shop” and might consider a new radio transceiver next year. I get by far the most fun from my $49 10m WSPR rig and my home-brew 472kHz transverter, proving that you do not need to break the bank to have fun. I am not against those who think differently – each to his/her own.

Portable Zero Accessories

Shortwave, in its many forms, has been part of my life for 35 years. And even though it is next to impossible to enjoy the high frequencies at home now it doesn’t mean I am ready to give them up. I still have my KX3 and MP1 to work portable and this years teaching schedule does leave me with some excess time to work the bands from my school ground. The funny thing is that I moved from PL04ou to PL04pv and my school is only a 10 minute walk away from my old home in PL04ou. At least my old QSL cards are still valid to confirm those portable QSOs then.

My school is located at the top of a plateau and the view is breathtaking when the sun is out. I am usually able to set up my gear around 0800 UTC and have some 45 minutes of fun before heading back home. My KX3 shack-in-a-box and the MP1 can be set up in 5 minutes if I use a mag-mount on the car. Unfortunately the frequent autumn winds are very fierce, so then a stand with guy wires is needed which takes 10 to 15 minutes to set up.

What a joy to operate without any man-made interference. More than often I think either my KX3 or my antenna is not working properly; it is that quiet. If the sun has some spots then working Europe on CW is possible, but I am happy to work Asian stations as well. I even added the DXCC entry of Tuvalu to my list last month, working them split with 5 Watts on 20 meters.

0800 UTC is also the time that 40 meters start opening up and what a joy that is. Signals from all over Asia and the States are booming in. My MP1 tunes to 40 meters well, but it is still a coil-fed vertical without a proper set of radials and then the lack of some power means I can’t make a fist. I am still trying and hopefully one day I will send my puny signal on 40 meters all the way to the States.

…last year December. A real fixer-upper: 35 years old and not maintained at all. But the price was right and it had a large size plot of land that came with it. Buy land, get old house for free. It is large plot for Taiwanese standards. In the States and Europe you would probably laugh at the size: 180 square meters. Most houses are here are built on a third of that. I will not complain, though, because having a garden, even though a very modest one, is a dream come true. We are already eating organic veggies from our own plot and those are yummy.

There was a lot of work to be done on the house. We put on a sheet metal roof against leaking, changed the layout inside to get the most efficient use of all the space and we added a utility room. All the water and electricity had to be refitted, too, so it was quite an undertaking. Unfortunately the end result was not what we had hoped for. I won’t say much about it, because the Internet never forgets, but these words from the main contractor sum it up quite nicely: “It’s not my house, so I don’t really care.” They took our money, ran and left us with sub-par work. Not one wall was ready for painting when we moved in last July. There was electricity and water, but most power outlets and faucets were fitted so poorly that I had to have a shout out with the sub-contractor before it was done a bit properly. Getting them to put in a good ground system was another big struggle. I need at least a year to finish the walls, ceilings, doors and the roof, fit all the lights, curtains, hang the paintings and get my shack in order.

Of course, not all Taiwanese are selfish rip-off artists and we did meet some really nice and honest people, too. The man who did all our metal work was made of pure gold (pun intended). Because of good connections we got a bargain on the solar water heater (one day of sun, three days of hot water) and the store where we get our paint gives us a steep discount, especially when we buy paint from Akzo-Nobel (a Dutch buying Dutch deserves a good deal).

So I have been very busy with plastering and sanding walls and ceilings and I’m getting pretty good at it. Work on my new shack is starting soon now that the living room is nearly done. But so many months without a radio fix was too much to bear and early September I quickly put up a 2×5 meter dipole. Unfortunately I was met with this…..

It seems things never go smoothly for me. Other people throw a wire into a tree and start enjoying the bands, I put up a decent dipole and get a bucket load of QRM. As you can see the noise blanker can filter out some of the noise, but not all. 7 MHz and below are fine, though, and oddly enough 17 meters also doesn’t suffer that much, either. But 20, 15 meters up to 6 meters are almost useless. An X-Phase noise eliminator might bring some relief here, but right now I don’t have time to build one.

My wife would say that this is the year of the sheep and as we are both born in the year of the sheep this is not our lucky year. She slid of her scooter two months ago and hurt her knee pretty badly, so she might be on to something. So….radio back in the box till next year? Or maybe time to reconsider what I am going to do with this hobby of ours. For DXing the top bands I need to build new antennas, VHF/UHF/SHF in Taiwan is all but dead, APRS is not that exciting either. So what is left? Satellites maybe?