AmateurRadio.com

I’ve been working on a review of the Wouxun KG-UV920 for Practical Wireless over the last week or two. All done now and you’ll hopefully see the review in around a month. With the Wouxun out of the car I’ve decided to have the FT-7900 in the car for a while rather than the FT-8900. The 8900 is now in the shack and working out quite well.

For example I can scan a bunch of repeater channels and monitor 145.500. A couple of contacts have resulted already. Interestingly, although the 8900 is on a triband collinear for 50/144/432MHz, on a couple of days when 29MHz has been open, I’ve heard stations quite well. I may turn the power down and see what can be worked!

In the car, I’ve replaced another magmount and am back on 28MHz mobile which is good. Heard an A4 on 29.600MHz FM yesterday. Keen to try and work some 29MHz AM as well!

I’ve been quite active on 28MHz JT65A over the last few days too with some nice QSOs into South America in the evening. I was excited to work A61BK this afternoon – and even more excited when Khalid posted a picture of the QSO on Twitter!

Series Five Episode Twenty-One of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• RSARS e-docs library available online
• 2012 Barry Goldwater Amateur Radio Award
• Chinese student club complete in CQWW DX SSB Contest
• Emergency wireless system to close
• Sweden loses 2.3 GHz band
• Dundalk Amateur Radio Theory Classes
• FITSAT-1 – signal reports requested
• First RSGB ARDF world champion

Listener mailbag and Chris Howard (2E0CTH) reviews a Homebrew Voice Keyer.

Series Five Episode Twenty-One of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• RSARS e-docs library available online
• 2012 Barry Goldwater Amateur Radio Award
• Chinese student club complete in CQWW DX SSB Contest
• Emergency wireless system to close
• Sweden loses 2.3 GHz band
• Dundalk Amateur Radio Theory Classes
• FITSAT-1 – signal reports requested
• First RSGB ARDF world champion

Listener mailbag and Chris Howard (2E0CTH) reviews a Homebrew Voice Keyer.

For more years than I care to remember my website G4ILO’s Shack has been a member of the QRP Web Ring. Web rings are a tool dating from long before search engines came on the scene and were set up to help web surfers locate sites of similar interest.

In order to be a member of the QRP Web Ring I include some links to other web ring sites on my home page, plus a banner.

Clicking some of the web ring links from G4ILO’s Shack and other linked sites today I found that many of the links were broken and most of the rest were pages of extremely poor quality. So I am considering removing the QRP Web Ring code from my site.

Whether you still use the QRP Web Ring to find other QRP-related sites, or if you have never used it and have no intention of using it now that you know about it, I would appreciate your comments.

This morning I worked Jos, ON6WJ in Belgium. He was operating with a homebrew rig that uses little pencil tubes like the one used in the original Sputnik. He was running 700mw!

This is the anniversary of the original beeping Sputnik. A group of QRP guys, lead by Michael Rainey, AA1TJ, built some replicas of the original transmitter and run them every year on 21.060 to commemorate Sputnik.

This morning Jos was solid copy in New Hampshire. In fact, he was 579 for a good part of our QSO. Here’s an audio clip of Jos calling CQ.

ON6WJ

After the QSO Jos and I exchanged emails. He sent me a photo of the little rig. Here it is:

I was running 8 watts to start and then I dropped my power to 1W. I was using an OCF dipole. Working a 700mw station across the pond is a major thrill! Thanks Jos.