AmateurRadio.com

Today is my 59th birthday. I opened my inbox to find several greetings messages from various websites and forums. Ah, you’re never without a friend in cyberspace!

Olga and I are not planning any special celebration today, though Olga is such a great cook that I prefer eating in anyway. I’m still off wine, despite still having a cupboard full of the stuff from when I was a member of a mail order wine club. At the moment I have enough trouble staying upright when sober. Surprisingly, I really don’t miss it (wine, I mean, not staying upright.)

But today deserves celebration as the birthday doctors told me I’d have a slim chance of seeing. Pah! Doctors! What do they know anyway?

There’s no reason why you, my loyal readers, can’t have a drink on my behalf, though. So here’s hoping I’ll still be hamming, blogging and beating the bugger in 365 days time, and many more days after that.

Thanks for all your support, and for reading my blog.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

And the winner of 500 free full-color QSL cards is…

Jyoti VU3BGI
West Bengal, India

Congratulations to Jyoti and thank you to everyone who entered. Keep a lookout for more great giveaways! As always, thank you to KB3IFH QSL Cards for generously sponsoring this contest. Don’t forget to check out Randy’s website (or visit him at Dayton North Hall #202) the next time you need new QSL cards!

73 Matt W1MST

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

Owain Glyndŵr, detection genius.

Rob Law, MW0DNK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Anglesey, Wales. Contact him at [email protected].

The horizontal loop antenna has been dismantled and I have to do all radio work now with the vertical. Although I heard a lot of “new” DX this weekend I was not able to make many contacts. It seems the propagation is a little low. I tried on various bands, but not much luck. At least 1 new DXCC has been worked finally with a bit of luck JX9JKA from Jan Mayen heard me on my second call, he was working simplex on 17m. I’ve been trying for 7O6T today on 10m for half a hour, but no luck although he had a good signal. The pile-up was still too big. I hope JX9JKA will upload his log to LOTW some day as he asks 3 USD for a direct QSL!!! I’m sorry but I’m the last one that is buying his QSL. There were some special event stations this weekend from the “mills on the air” activation, although I saw a few on the DX cluster I’ve heard no one!

Bas, PE4BAS, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Groningen, Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

It’s been nice weather this weekend for the first time in ages. Yesterday as I was working around the house and in the garden, I put the DVAP on DCS005B and made some nice QSOs including Barry, G8SAU who was on Sheringham beach. I could easily hear the waves on the shore.

In the Win-DV setup – I noticed an APRS tab. I added my callsign, lat/lon and a comment and now when I start Win-DV, it shows the DVAP on the APRS map. Quite fun! I don’t have the nice, but expensive, GPS microphone for the E-92.

This morning, I decided to go and see my Mum, in Cheltenham. I took with me one of the Kenwood APRS handhelds which I have on loan. Cheltenham is well served by a couple of great APRS digis so I wondered what would happen. Sure enough my position was digipeated which was fun to see. It was also interesting to see APRS packets from the Severn Beach rescue boat being digipeated.

On the way back home, I operated 145MHz simplex. It was interesting to hear some SOTA activity from the Long Mynd (2Q0YYY/P) as well was Walbury Hill (MQ6BQA/P – who I had a brief contact with). Also a nice QSO with 2E0ZVR between Evesham and Pershore as I climbed over the Cotswolds to Stow on the Wold.

Later on this afternoon, I thought I’d check 50MHz and was pleased to work LZ2DF at over 2180km. Pete, 2E0SQL heard an SV9 and I heard a YU in KN00 – so some good distances around today. Looks like there were some 70MHz contacts to be had too!

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

The plan this weekend was to get some new DXCC's logged for the Diamond Jubilee award I am working on. As the saying goes "things did not go as planned" it's now Sunday aftern with next to no radio time in and the time I was on it seemed the bands out this way were dead. So it was off to plan "B"..... enter all the contacts I have made into a great Excel program made just for the Diamond Jubilee award. My count was 74 contacts.....so I thought anyway. You see this is my first effort at the DXCC  award and it seems I was off with my contact count. For example lets look at Jamaica and Cayman Islands.......I had Jamaica, Turks and Caicos islands then finally Cayman Islands oh to be in the Cayman's now but that is another post I counted that as 3..... NOT......It's only one (blog world tell me I'm wrong) I also had the same problem with  the West Indies, Great Britain and so on!!! So my count went from 74 to 63 confirmed DXCC's. So with that good news under my belt it was time to enter the information into the Excel spread sheet. The info needed is Call sign, band, date and time. I did have some troubles matching calls to countries as they were special event calls, they are no where close to the DXCC prefix. For example Gibraltar is a ZB2 prefix but my logged call is ZQ2FK. The call is a special call in honor of the Diamond Jubilee in England. Some other calls were special contest call signs. For example Martinique DXCC is FM8 or FM the contest call from there was TO5X....not even close. It was a frustrating event matching these calls to the DXCC country list at times. Now my plans are for late afternoon and evening' I am going to sit at the computer once again (this time with a Guinness) and log more calls into the Excel spreed sheet. 


Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Thanks to Rob, G0JSO for letting me know about a charity event in aid of what I hope you’ll agree is an extremely good cause. Relay GB is a round Britain relay event attempting to break a world record and raise money for Brain Tumour UK, a leading charity committed to fighting and raising awareness about brain tumours. Rob organized and ran the leg from Caldbeck to Kirkpatrick-Fleming with some of his club mates.

Find out more or make a donation on the Relay GB website.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].