AmateurRadio.com

Back at the end of last year, Malcolm G8NRP, secretary of the Harwell Amateur Radio club asked me if I’d be willing to give a talk there. Of course, I said, but at the time I had no idea what I might speak about it. Of course, it didn’t get much more brain time until a few weeks ago when Malcolm contacted me again…

“Did you decide what you were going to talk about -as we need to put it into GB2RS news”! Ah…

So, a quick decision was needed. I’d been playing with my Raspberry Pi computer a lot at the time and also with the USB receiver dongle for SDR applications. I thought I could probably put together a talk along those lines.

Earlier this month I gave the talk. I think it was ok. I think I was better on the SDR stuff than the Pi stuff, but anyway, it seemed to go down ok.

I promised the Harwell club a link to the slides which is here

As ever, I’d do it slightly differently next time!

Series Six Episode Eight of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Boston Marathon All Hams Reported Safe
• First Cuba to EI contact on FO-29
• Radio hams active in Argentina floods
• Radio Ham named to Senior State Department Telecom post
• Irish entries wanted for Youngsters On The Air
• Ham radio club's 90th birthday
• Warwick University students fly CubeSat
• The Michael Owen Plaque
• UK 434 MHz balloons head for Poland
• UKQRM launches public facing website
• Inner Hebrides on Ham Radio Satellites
• VK5 National and Conservation Parks Award

Listener mailbag feedback and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) talks to the Cambs-Hams about their upcomg DXpedition to Mull.

Series Six Episode Eight of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Boston Marathon All Hams Reported Safe
• First Cuba to EI contact on FO-29
• Radio hams active in Argentina floods
• Radio Ham named to Senior State Department Telecom post
• Irish entries wanted for Youngsters On The Air
• Ham radio club's 90th birthday
• Warwick University students fly CubeSat
• The Michael Owen Plaque
• UK 434 MHz balloons head for Poland
• UKQRM launches public facing website
• Inner Hebrides on Ham Radio Satellites
• VK5 National and Conservation Parks Award

Listener mailbag feedback and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) talks to the Cambs-Hams about their upcomg DXpedition to Mull.

Series Six Episode Eight of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, listener mailbag feedback and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ)is joined by the Cambs-Hams to discuss their upcoming DXpedition to Mull.

• Boston Marathon All Hams Reported Safe
• First Cuba to EI contact on FO-29
• Radio hams active in Argentina floods
• Radio Ham named to Senior State Department Telecom post
• Irish entries wanted for Youngsters On The Air
• Ham radio club's 90th birthday
• Warwick University students fly CubeSat
• The Michael Owen Plaque
• UK 434 MHz balloons head for Poland
• UKQRM launches public facing website
• Inner Hebrides on Ham Radio Satellites
• VK5 National and Conservation Parks Award

The eagerly awaited JT-Alert for WSJT-X has finally arrived! You can download it from the Ham Apps website.

This useful accessory will let you know if you have worked a station B4 or whether a station will fill a wanted band or mode slot. It sends spots of JT9 stations to the HamSpots website, providing a useful reverse beacon for the mode. It also logs contacts to  a few of the popular logging programs including MixW which happens to be the same log format used by KComm. Due to some nifty programming this new version of JT-Alert works with JT65-HF as well.

This new program couldn’t come soon enough for me as I have worked just about everyone who is on JT9 at the moment and it was getting tiresome doing manual log lookups. Hopefully this new program will attract some new participants to this amazing mode.

Elecraft K3 Final Build Assessment and First On Air Testing

So the Elecraft K3 build is finished ☺ Yes it has been a long process for me but only because of my time and schedule. I think this is a project you could finish in a weekend if you really put dedication into it but I’m not sure you would want to. I will explain this as I go along…

The first questions I got were why would you do this? There are so many radios out there to purchase and some could argue many better. Well, that’s subjective of course and I’m a big fan of my Yeasu 1000mp, which I believe is my third one. I also love what Icom is doing with their new rigs but I remember a hobby that I used to table and build circuit boards, solder resisters and diodes and even build a Heathkit or two. I wanted to regain that experience in the hobby…. Get on air with something I assembled and tuned… something my hands were inside and I know where everything is and could replace if needed. How comfortable would you be installing a filter in your radio? I could do it in 10 mins now ☺ so that is a big part of the why.

The second part – FUN. Yes, if you read my posts you will see some frustration in my build. There are a few reasons but one is I was sick during the first phase… I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis and was in the midst of an episode when I was doing the first few days of assembly. Take that out and I think you would find that I was having much more fun. ☺ Also – I have a really busy with work, life and family so I wanted something that I could have to sit down and take my mind away. This project seemed like a great one.

So here are the videos of assembly if you haven’t seen them and then I will provide you my overall thoughts below:

http://nicktoday.com/elecraft-k3-final-build-assessment-and-first-on-air-testing/

The front cover of the May 2013 issue of RadCom features an article about “Activating Wainwrights.”

Inside there is an excellent article by David G0EVV about the Wainwrights On The Air scheme (WOTA).