Winter Hill

On Saturday I did a SOTA activation of Winter Hill G/SP-010
I used 70cm FM from my FT-817 into a W50 colinear. The pole is so short because I brought the wrong sections, so I could only use the top one.
Afterwards it was tea at Taybarns, Wigan.






Photos taken on my HTC Hero phone camera.

80m noise

Flex 1500 on 80m on the wire, about -91dBm of noise in a 2.4KHz bandwidth.
It's what I've always wanted, a radio which displays proper signal levels (dBm).

Connected to the WSPR software using Virtual Audio Cable (2 lines) and Com0Com (WSPR using COM5 for CAT, Flex 1500 using COM15). PTT and frequency changing is via CAT, the Flex 1500 appears as a Kenwood TS2000.

I've been trying remote control of the radio using TeamViewer and Skype. Set up 2 different Skype accounts, one at home and one on my laptop. Set the home one to auto-answer and use the audio from the Virtual Audio Cable. So now I can tune the Flex 1500 and listen to it from anywhere.
TeamViewer has an Android app, so I can still check up on the home PC using my phone, even if it's hard work scrolling around my 1920x1080 desktop on a 320x480 phone screen.

Time for a new colinear

After 5 years on my chimney, it looks like my Watson W300 has had it. It had been used a bit before that as well, as I'd had it since 2000.
Recently I'd been noticing that received signals would be lower than normal until I transmitted, and then they would go back up, but when checking the SWR everything was OK. I thought this might have been a bad connection in the coax plug indoors, but after changing the plug it did exactly the same thing.
Then yesterday, which was very windy, the SWR was actually changing on transmit (between 1.3:1 and 4:1), and the received signals were varying without me doing anything.
It might just be the plug at the antenna but as the pole isn't moving it seems more likely to be the antenna. Either way it needs some work doing on the chimney. I think I'll go for a new tri-bander, I've got a 50MHz half wave vertical in the loft but it picks up a lot of noise.

Flex-1500

Ordered a Flex-1500 QRP Software Defined Radio yesterday.
Since I mostly use low power and digital modes from home, I thought I'd try something different to the usual HF transceiver. I'll use it with my LDG auto ATU.

PC Monitor

I've got PC Monitor installed on my main computer at home, which lets me check on running processes, event logs and hardware while I'm out of the house, using an Android app on my phone (also available for iOS and Windows).
It also lets me stop processes and shut down the PC, which is useful if anything has gone wrong and needs stopping.
The radio can be shut down automatically with the PC using one of the "standby saver" 8 way socket boards, which turns off all the slave sockets when the master socket current drops.
When I tried to put the PC to sleep with WSPR running, on waking up WSPR started transmitting and receiving at the same time, so probably not a good idea to remotely put a PC to sleep if its in the middle of doing something.

Got a RF Explorer (240 - 960 MHz handheld spectrum analyser) as an early Xmas present. One small problem with it is that the frequency displayed is about 40KHz too low, but apart from that it's a really good piece of kit.

2m Contest

Made a few QSOs in the RSGB 2m activity contest tonight, getting 263 points. At the moment, looking at the claimed scores table I'm second to last but don't expect to get much being vertically polarised.
I got locked out of my car earlier tonight after parking too close to a local amateur who was using 433.550 MHz, the remote control wouldn't work while he was transmitting. The car next to me (also a Vauxhall) was being affected too, the owner was trying to get it to open. I've had this problem in the past and even if I use the key in the door, the alarm sounds as soon as I turn the ignition.
At least it's not a 70cm repeater transmitting for hours at a time.

440 MHz data

The mobitex data network just above 440MHz (440.4625, 440.4875 etc.) seems to have been switched off completely. All the sites using the 453 MHz channels (453.2125 etc.) went off a while ago, leaving a few of the 440 MHz sites going.
They were useful as 'beacons' for testing antennas.
A recording of one of them

The frequencies that were in use around here were:
440.4125 Barrow Town Hall
453.2125 Langthwaite (Lancaster)
453.2625 Blackpool
440.4625 Windy Harbour (Brinscall, Preston)
440.4875 Billinge Hill
453.1375 Blackburn
453.3375 Hameldon Hill
453.3875 Waddington Fell, Clitheroe
453.2625 Sedbergh TV Mast? (or was it from the mast at Gatebeck?)
453.2125 Penrith Beacon
440.0875 Whitehaven TV Mast (moved from 440.0125)
453.3625 Great Orme, Llandudno
440.1375 Llangollen BBC FM mast
440.2625 Heswall, Wirral
453.1375 Carlisle
453.3125 Shap Fells
453.3625 Hazelshaw Hill, Dumfries