M1AVV

Winter Hill

2012-01-17T19:57:00.004Z

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

2012-01-12T20:21:00.005Z

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

2012-01-04T10:10:00.002Z

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

2011-12-17T23:05:00.002Z

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

2011-12-10T13:27:00.003Z

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

2011-12-06T22:48:00.004Z

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

2011-10-08T15:31:00.002+01:00

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

Comparing 20m antennas

2011-09-17T09:15:00.004+01:00

Solarcon A99 vs 10m long end fed wire (sloping down from base of A99).

A99 is 6dB down on transmit and 6dB up on receive (as long as noise level and M6AYY's antenna stayed the same). Both tests were done around the same time of day and the distance is short enough to make sure the propagation isn't going to change.

The SWR without a tuner of the A99 is very high (>5:1) but the LDG AT-7000 autotuner handles it OK.

Windows 8

2011-09-15T19:10:00.005+01:00

Installed the Developer Preview of Windows 8 tonight. Apart from the screen resolution being limited to non-widescreen settings of 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864 and 1280x1024 (none of which will scale up to the full size of my monitor, which is 1920x1080), everything so far has worked the same as in Windows 7.

I've tried installing some of my regularly used software and it has all worked. One program needed .NET but Windows downloaded it automatically.
The usual desktop and Windows Explorer are there behind the new tiled UI, and work mostly the same.

At the moment I'm running WSPR 2.0 and it's definitely transmitting and receiving somewhere so the sound card and serial port are working.
But will Windows ever have PDF support or have single-click turned on by default (it's only been available for 14 years)?

Holmfirth on 21MHz WSPR tonight (IO93CN, 111Km).

20m WSPR

2011-09-12T22:24:00.002+01:00

Some more 14 MHz WSPR reports by:
G0GSJ - Barrow (<5km)
G4FUI - Penrith (68km)
G0BZB - Newcastle (144km)
Sometimes I was receiving a "ghost" signal from G0GSJ 100Hz away, about 34dB below the main one. Maybe some distortion in the transmitting computer's sound card or in the transmitter.
The same thing happened once on my transmission.

Barrow to Kirkby on 14 MHz

2011-09-06T20:46:00.004+01:00

On 14 MHz WSPR:
M6AYY in Kirkby In Furness (IO84JF, about 14Km away)
My signal report -17dB S/N (10 watts)
His signal report -12dB S/N (5 watts)
And on the 7th September, M6AYY received me at -27dB S/N on 10 MHz WSPR. At exactly the same time (20:56 UTC), I got to W1BW at -18dB (FN42HL).

Other recent interesting ones are:
G1NXS on 14 MHz in IO83RK (Warrington)
M0RBY on 21 MHz in IO94DF (Masham, North Yorkshire)
G4OEU on 14 MHz in IO84XX (Hexham)
MW3DAO on 14 MHz in IO72XW (Porthmadog)

Watch Hill

2011-08-29T11:36:00.003+01:00

After 9 years of SOTA, I worked another new Lake District summit, Watch Hill G/LD-054.
This takes my chaser uniques total to 183 summits. I'd activated Watch Hill once, in 2004 and wouldn't have expected to get anywhere in the south of Cumbria on 2m FM. But I made a contact with Phil G1OPV who was there while I was mobile on Walney Island. For those hard to reach northern Lake District summits, Walney is a good place as there is a clear path as far as the Scafell Pike/Great Gable/Pillar area.

Last night I spoke to M6AYY who was portable on Burney Fell near Kirkby.

USB Power Supply

2011-06-29T23:07:00.003+01:00

110v - 5v USB power supply

US Broadcast Query

2011-06-29T20:41:00.002+01:00

To find the transmitter details for a broadcast station in the USA, use this URL
http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?call=WTMP (replace WTMP with your station letters), or replace 'fmq' with 'amq' for an AM station.

Some differences between US and UK broadcasters:
Anything below 10KW ERP is a small station
FM channels are always spaced 200KHz, e.g. 88.1, 88.3, 107.7, 107.9 so there is no real overlap between adjacent channels. Stations in the same city are usually spaced 800 KHz.
AM channels are 10KHz spaced, and the band goes up to 1700KHz

Florida Log

2011-06-29T14:46:00.007+01:00

List of WSPR reports I got while in Florida (Google Docs)
A total of 141 stations, best DX was 4X1RF in Israel (KM72LS) on 14 MHz
56 grid squares in the USA (Map of grid squares)
Spreadsheet to record US grid squares
29 US States
15 stations in the UK
I only received one station as the power supply was putting out so much noise. The noise was that bad, it was coming in through the ATU or FT-817's power socket, there was about S7 of noise even when the antenna coax was unplugged.

Now everything is packed up ready to go home tomorrow.
Round here, there are public safety and business radio users on the 850 and 935 MHz bands (both analogue and digital trunked systems).
East Central Florida Scanner Page

AM Logbook - list of all USA AM broadcast stations, with downloadable Excel spreadsheet
Florida Low Power Radio Stations - listing of past and present Part 15/Travellers Info/Pirate stations in Florida

Map Tools

2011-06-26T13:04:00.002+01:00

Draw a radius around a map location - FCC/Google Maps
Convert degrees/minutes to decimal lat/long
Show a lat/long position on Google Maps - uses decimal values

KC0PUZ

2011-06-17T12:02:00.007+01:00

Set up the HF station here in Davenport, Florida, using a horizontal wire in the garage, fed with a "long wire balun" and LDG Z-11 auto ATU.

At the moment I can hear nothing because of the very noisy switch mode PSU which I brought (a 4A 12v PSU, the kind used for a small LCD TV). But on transmit, these were my first reports:

The locator is EL98DG. I was surprised I got as many reports into Europe.
I've also got reports on 10 and 18 MHz around the USA.
The PC's clock is set using a USB GPS receiver, which works inside the garage. The software I'm using to set the clock from GPS is GPS Time And Test

USA

2011-06-15T18:14:00.001+01:00

Travelling to Florida tomorrow, taking FT817 with me for some HF operation, probably trying WSPR. I'll be using my US callsign KC0PUZ (took their exams in the UK).
At the airport Travelodge there's a charge for using their WiFi, through a login page, but the Google Mail and Maps Android apps on my phone still connected without signing in.

Samsung N150

2011-04-30T17:51:00.004+01:00

My Samsung N150 Plus netbook (Atom N550 1.5 GHz dual core, 1GB RAM, Windows 7 Starter)
wPrime benchmark. The Acer Timeline X is no more after drinking a cup of tea. I got a Samsung external DVD writer to go with it, and 4GB of RAM.

Benchmark run while on mains power.

Faster than my old Philips 11NB5800 laptop (72 seconds) and Athlon 64 3200 desktop (77 seconds). Faster than a Samsung N130 single core Atom netbook (130 seconds).

Although it's a dual core processor, it appears as 4 to Windows. Some older software (like MP3Gain) will only run on a single processor so never use more than 25% CPU.

The clock can only be synced with a time server when running as Administrator. That's what I was doing wrong. Once About Time is run as Administrator, it's OK.

SRC 9:1 UnUn

2011-04-27T21:44:00.005+01:00

SWR plot of Snowdonia Radio Company 9:1 UnUn, with about 7.5m of wire on a 5m fishing pole. The wire was coiled loosely round the bottom half of the pole to fit the extra length.
Fed with about 5m of RG58 coax, and no earth (except for grounding through radio power cable to car body).

Compare that to my own end fed half wave for 14 MHz which I have at home, using a similar transformer:

The basic SWR curve looks the same but there are some other resonant frequencies below 14 MHz where the SWR is not so bad. This might be because the wire is going across the back yard, close to buildings and telephone wires (also radiation from the coax). I shouldn't really be able to operate on 3.5 and 7 MHz with it but it works OK with a tuner.
Do "magic" short antennas like transformer fed wires/verticals just couple into other wiring when used at home?

Rooted my HTC Hero Android phone (Universal Androot) so the time can be synchronised with an NTP server. It's now accurate enough to be used as a WSPR beacon. Set up an alarm clock to play a recording of the correct WSPR tones at a certain time. Even if I'm away from network coverage, the time stays within a second as long as I've synced it in the last day.
Better than my new Samsung N150 netbook, which always says the clock is 5 seconds off when synchronising over NTP, but then sets the clock with a 5 second error.

Icom CAT/data modes cable

2011-04-10T22:20:00.005+01:00

I bought a data cable for Icom HF transceivers from the Blackpool rally today. It's something like the Icom IC-Cable-8 (cable 8 on this page).
The cable I made myself used the 6-pin mini-DIN socket on the IC-7000 but this one uses the 13-pin accessory socket and the 3.5mm jack (CAT interface). This replaces separate CAT and PTT/audio cables, freeing up a serial port.
PTT is possible via both CAT and serial port (RTS line). When using the 6-pin socket, there was no transmitted audio if CAT was used to key the radio (so there is no need for the hardware PTT circuit anyway). This doesn't happen with the 13-pin socket but there is one problem, the microphone sockets aren't disconnected. So when operating data modes using this cable, the mic gain needs to be turned to 0. If there is someone keying up with no modulation then it's probably me forgotten to turn the mic gain back up for voice.
The level of the PC Line Out also needed to be turned up from 10 (using my 6-pin cable), to 25 (using the 13-pin cable) to get the same output power.
I also got a Snowdonia Radio Company 9:1 Unun

Distance between OS grid points

2011-04-03T09:54:00.003+01:00

Online calculator of distance between 2 OS grid reference points

Chagos

2011-04-02T12:10:00.001+01:00

Just had both tx and rx wspr reports with vq9jd in Chagos Islands on 28mhz.10m is open to australia at the moment too. Chagos is in the Indian Ocean, about 10000km from the UK

Springer

2011-03-31T19:00:00.004+01:00

Got a 'Springer' CB antenna for the car. It's even in red to match the car.
Length 155cm, coil length 15cm, whip 136cm.
I thought I'd have to cut some off to use it on 29 MHz but when I tried it on a magmount it was resonant at 28.680 MHz, so it's just the right length to cover (UK) CB and the 10m ham band. Why such a high frequency? Maybe just where it is on the car or the magmount I used wasn't really big enough.

28 MHz is noisy, even when driving round, until you get about 100 metres away from the nearest house.

SWR plots for new car

2011-03-11T12:52:00.003Z

Here are the 2m and 70cm SWR plots for the Nagoya NL-77B dual bander on the new car. This is with a small Sirio magmount towards the back of the car nearside. There is less than a metre between the dual bander and the broadcast antenna.
For some reason the Nagoya doesn't give a very good SWR on 145 MHz, this was the same on the old car and with a different magmount. It's under 2:1 though.
At UHF though, it's very good if a bit high in frequency, there aren't the usual reflections on the coax, this might be to do with the magmount and coax being quite new.

New Car

2011-03-05T21:01:00.003Z

Some photos of the new mobile set up in Vauxhall Meriva VXR. I've not put the APRS tracker in yet but that should be able to go back on its sticky mat.
Yaesu FT-8900 main unit on passenger side. CRT extension speaker.

FT-8900 front panel fixed to air vent using some old air fresheners and clothes pegs. The CD player will play MP3 discs.

Nagoya NL-77B 2m/70cm mobile antenna on magmount

Kirkby Moor

2011-03-03T20:21:00.004Z

Activated Kirkby Moor (SOTA G/LD-049) on Sunday 27th February.
Used Alinco handheld on 2m and Wouxun handheld on 4m, with Garex whip. Summit to Summit with Alex G7RNX/P who was on Cracoe Fell (SOTA G/NP-032).

Soldered a new PL-259 plug on my 2m/70cm antenna coax at home tonight, because the weight of the LMR400 coax had snapped the inside of the plug (the brown insulator bit). I only noticed when I unscrewed the plug and the centre pin stayed in the radio.

For testing serial port radio interfaces, try ComTest, which can be used to control the DTR and RTS lines on your serial port. The DOS/Windows MODE command is supposed to switch DTR and RTS but when I tried in in Windows XP, nothing happened.

Shining Tor

2011-02-13T21:17:00.003Z

Shining Tor SOTA G/SP-004
Friday 11th February
FT-817 into dual band mobile antenna. Also made 3 QSOs on my Wouxun 70MHz handheld.
Did this summit while on the way to Derby (carried on through Buxton and along the A6 into Derby)
It had started to get dark while at the summit (after 5pm) and was raining.

SSTV

2011-02-10T12:57:00.002Z

Some SSTV images received today on 14.230

WSPR Stats

2011-02-06T10:48:00.005Z

Site with WSPR stats for the last month, sorted by grid square, top spotter etc.
Overall in the world I was 187th out of 1856 WSPR spotters, with 341 stations received.
I was top spotter in IO84 grid square in January, out of 6 people. I'm also the top spotter with an M1 callsign (there are 9 of us).
I've been sending spots to PSK Reporter a bit too, mostly on 80 and 40m PSK31, using Digital Master 780.
It's interesting to look at PSK Reporter to see who is active locally, on HF, especially with the data modes it's not easy to tell what is a local signal and what is just a strong distant one. Also, someone in the next town might be impossible to receive directly but are still getting thousands of miles. In the last 24 hours, there were reception reports for 7 stations transmitting HF PSK from the IO84 square (mostly Cumbria and Lancaster). These were:
2E0ZYF
G0LWU
G6LSO
G6WLP
M0MOL
M0ZIF
M6DXD

Antennas 2001

2011-01-27T21:03:00.005Z

Antennas when I was in Dalton, looks like about April 2001. Watson W300 dual bander on a 12ft pole. Dipole for 50 MHz on the side of the pole. I had a 50 MHz dipole up for a few years but never once had that band while it was up. I usually just had it plugged into a scanner.
In the background there is the Solarcon A99 which was also on a 12ft pole round the back of the house.
The W300 was fed with Mini-8 coax at the time, and everything else had RG-58.
Scanned in from an analogue photo. Found the photo this week while going through some old boxes of computer bits.

1st Chaser QSO of 2011

2011-01-02T14:25:00.001Z

My first SOTA chaser QSO of 2011 was with 2E0OCC/P on G/LD-050 Gummers Howe, on 145 MHz FM.

New Laptop

2010-12-29T14:54:00.004Z

Bought a new laptop yesterday (well it was the 'January' sales) - an Acer Aspire 4820T.
With a 14" screen, its just a bit more portable than the average laptop, without losing any of the features like a DVD drive. My last laptop had an 11" screen (and still had a DVD drive) and I think the medium sized models are best (11 - 14" screens), being someone who uses their laptop mostly away from home.
Netbooks look nice and easy to carry around but there are many times when I need to burn a CD or DVD away from home, or even just watch a DVD.
I've had an Acer laptop before, a Travelmate 4101 which I had from May 2005 - March 2008.

Also today I got 2 new handheld antennas (Nagoya NA-701 and NA-702) which are SMA-M fitting 2m/70cms. These are about 21 and 28cm long, somewhere between the standard antenna supplied with the handheld and the largest 'Super Gainer' whips. The 40cm long whips are a bit big to use when carrying a radio inside my coat or bag.
The biggest improvement is away from the amateur bands, increasing the length slightly has given a much wider bandwidth because a smaller loading coil is used. I recently got a Watson WSMA-7000 (18cm long) and that was no better than any of the original handheld antennas.
The shorter of the 2 new antennas (NA-701) seems slightly better on UHF.

Puxing PX-2R

2010-12-22T18:01:00.004Z

I recently ordered a Puxing PX-2R handheld and it arrived today.
This covers 400 - 470 MHz, with 2 watts RF power.
The battery is a 3.7v mobile phone type and charging is through a Nokia type 2mm power connector at 5 volts, so it will charge from a USB port (cable supplied) or Nokia phone charger.
It has a female SMA antenna connector (unlike other Chinese handhelds).
The manual has no information about how to store frequencies into the 128 memories or connect to a PC for programming, but there is programming software available on the Puxing website and the 2.5mm speaker/mic socket must be used for the PC connection. There is no mention of 6.25KHz steps either, the menu allows only 12.5 or 25 KHz channel steps, but if you type in a 6.25 KHz offset frequency (e.g. 446006) then it tunes in 12.5 KHz steps from that frequency (446.00625, 446.01875 etc.)
As usual for this type of radio, the S-meter is useless, taking about 2 seconds to respond to any change in signal and showing either full or nothing.
For £28 including postage this is worth the money though.
Forum discussion on this handheld
Instructions on storing memories

Old Stuff

2010-12-14T18:39:00.006Z

Some old radios of mine:
Fidelity CB3000 homebase. 40 UK channels. I don't think I've ever talked to anyone on this, probably got it off someone giving up and left it in a cupboard for the last few years.

AOR AR1500 scanner. 0.5 - 1300 MHz AM/FM/SSB, 1000 memories.
I used to have one of these from 1994 - 1996 (first scanner I owned) but bought another 2nd hand in 2007 just to remember what it was like. It doesn't have a lot of the features you would get on a more modern receiver but at the time it was one of the best. This one is probably in better condition than my old one before I lost it but my old one was an AR1500EX, whatever that meant. I've got the case for this, just took it off to take the picture.

Realistic PRO-50 scanner. 20 memories. 68 - 88, 137 - 174 and 406-512 MHz FM only.
I bought this in November 1996 after my AR1500 was stolen. It was the cheapest scanner at the time and cost about £50. It was an 'American style' scanner, with only 5 KHz steps on VHF. It was enough to last me until January 1998 when I got a 2m/70cm ADI handheld. It looks a mess because it's not grey plastic, it's black plastic painted grey and the paint started coming off soon after I bought it.

Nokia NetMonitor

2010-12-09T20:41:00.006Z

I've got an old Nokia 3310 phone which I've had for nearly 8 years. I don't use it as my main mobile any more (not since December 2004), but after I got a new phone I unlocked it and enabled the Network Monitor functions. The unlocking was through a serial port cable which goes to a special connector underneath the battery.

The Network Monitor screens show lots of data about the phone's battery, software and radio transceiver. The best ones are tests 3,4,5,11 and 17. The current channel number and Cell ID are shown, as well as the channel and signal strength of nearby cells. Signal strengths are in dBm, how can a cheap mobile phone display signal strengths in 1dB steps but on the amateur bands we still have to have meters in S-units which may or may not be about 6dB per unit except when we're using FM?

Other phones often have some kind of Network Monitor screen (there's an Android app which can show the Cell ID but not the channel number, at least on my HTC Hero). On my Sony Ericcson K750 I could get Cell ID and channel numbers on a built in test screen.

The most interesting test of all is number 17, BTS Test. This locks the phone to a single radio channel, so it can't look for the nearest base station. The channel number is selected by storing it as a phone number at address book position 33 on the SIM card.
You can go up a hill and get a base station far away (over 50km), as long as there is nothing local on that channel. At home in an upstairs room I can get the Vodafone base station at Lancaster (the same site as the GB3LD repeater), which is on channel 77 (950.4 MHz).

The base stations are identified by the country code, network number, LAC and CID. LAC is the region of the country where the station is. This helps give a rough idea of where an unknown base station might be if there are none nearby.
For Vodafone, the LAC in this local area is 170.
The CID is the Cell ID. It could be used more than once in the UK, but with a different LAC. Different networks have different CID numbering systems. O2 has the most meaningful.
For O2, the CID is usually a 5 digit number.
The first digit is the sector (the direction of the base station antenna, where there are usually 3 different antennas on separate frequencies, spaced at 120 degrees round the mast). The sector number is 1, 2 or 3.
If the CID is less than 5 digits for an O2 site, an omnidirectional antenna is being used or only a single panel. This might be because it's an old site which has been around from the analogue days or it only has to cover a small area like inside a tunnel.
Sector numbers usually go clockwise starting with 1 as the most northerly pointing antenna. So a CID of 15432 would be base station 5432, beaming north. 30439 would be base station 439, probably beaming towards the south-west. If this was simply CID 439, it would probably be an old site with a single omnidirectional antenna.
If the last 4 digits are 0001 to 01499 then there's a good chance the site had been used for the analogue cellular system, but not always, some newer sites use numbers in that range.

Some older Vodafone cells use a similar numbering system but with the sector number at the end. If the last digit is zero then it is omnidirectional. Newer sites don't follow this system and the numbers mean nothing.
Example:
The Lancaster Langthwaite site I get at home has a CID of 1643. This is an old site, which was in use for analogue phones. On the Sitefinder website, this is shows as being site number 164. I'm roughly west of Lancaster, so sector number 3 will be mostly directed towards Barrow.
At the railway station in Barrow there is a Vodafone site with 2 omnidirectional antennas. This is site 3753 on Sitefinder and the CID is 37530.

Channel numbers on the 900 MHz band (O2, Vodafone) are 0.2 MHz offsets from 935 MHz. So channel 75 is 950 MHz.
O2 normally use 37 - 59 and 101 - 124.
Vodafone normally use 65 - 99
On the UK networks, only the odd channel numbers are widely used, except for channels 123 and 124 (for some reason channel 123 is missed out and 124 used instead).

At 1800 MHz, T-Mobile are using the channel 575 - 715 range and Orange in the 750 - 870 range, but that might change now it's the same company.

Some local sites:
O2
Morecambe Bay
CID 10439, channel 109 (North)
CID 20439, channel 101 (towards Ulverston)
CID 30439, channel 57 (towards Barrow)

Lancaster TV mast
CID 10210, channel 53
CID 20210, channel 55
CID 30210, channel 124

Vodafone
Morecambe Bay
CID 2930, channel 91
omnidirectional

Langthwaite
CID 1643, channel 77
2 other sectors unknown channel numbers

Dalton TV mast
CID 8334, channel 65 (Dalton town centre)
CID 8335, channel 93 (south-west)
CID 8336, channel 97 (north)

All except Dalton TV mast used to be analogue sites.
Old analogue control data channels:
Morecambe Bay Vodafone = 935.8375 (omni)
Morecambe Bay Cellnet = 943.5125 (omni)
Langthwaite Vodafone = 935.6875 (sector 1), 935.8625 (sector 2), 936.0375 (sector 3)
Lancaster TV mast Vodafone = 935.7375 (omni)
Lancaster TV mast Cellnet = 943.0875 (omni)

2m Activity Contest

2010-12-09T20:27:00.003Z

I had a go at the 2m UK Activity Contest on Tuesday night. I'm not quite last in the claimed scores. Best DX was 129km. This was from home using 50w SSB to a vertical.
If only someone else in IO84 was on, then I would have more than doubled my points because all 6 QSOs were in IO83.

The 13s

2010-10-24T17:23:00.008+01:00

Old Man Of Coniston G/LD-013 - 21st October
Used FT-817 into mobile antenna taped to a broom handle. Rained on the way up.

Also used the 70 MHz Wouxun handheld to work G4RQJ and G7RNX.
The FT-817's voltage was dropping from 11.1 to 8.9 on transmit. The LiPo battery wasn't flat (after putting about 1Ah into it afterwards it was fully charged) so there must have been some high resistance joint in line, could be the power connector because there isn't much contact area between the socket and the board where I re-soldered it.

Gun G/SP-013 - 24th October
Used Icom IC-E91 handheld and the battery kept going flat, even though it hadn't been used on transmit since I charged it a few days ago. Maybe it was the cold? The battery meter was reading full but when going back to receive, the radio would switch itself off (never halfway through a transmission). In low power, this never happened. I've had this happen before. I know the battery will discharge after a couple of weeks of non-use but not this quickly.

Summit to Summit with G/WB-007 Heath Mynd

APRS tracker now on a sticky mat instead of a taped up mess

Badger

2010-10-17T15:43:00.002+01:00

4m handheld experiment

2010-10-12T20:35:00.003+01:00

I'd got my new Garex 70 MHz flexi whip for the handheld but it still didn't seem that good compared to a handheld on a higher frequency. So I tried a few different lengths of wire and other cables as a counterpoise.
A data cable plugged into the speaker/mic sockets on the side made an improvement in my transmitted signal, this cable was around 90cm or just under 1/4 wavelength on 70 MHz. Other cables such as plugging the speaker mic in made little improvement, so the length was quite important.
In the end I went for 90cm of insulated wire, with a few cm bare wrapped round the SMA connector. This wire was left to hang down behind the radio.
I then tried using the original Wouxun rubber duck with the wire counterpoise and the result was better than the Garex whip + no counterpoise. I'm guessing about 6dB improvement from the longer whip and 10dB difference from the wire counterpoise. It meant the difference between signal or noise to G7RNX who is about 5Km away, while I was stood indoors.
On a different handheld such as an ex-PMR one where there will be a bigger area of metal (battery pack, metalwork on the case) there might not be as much of an improvement but it would definitely help.

The lift conditions are still there on VHF/UHF and have been for over 2 days. Today I left my APRS station receiving on 144.800 all day and there were packets being received from France and Belgium, as well as some in the south west of Ireland.

Last night I fixed the power socket on my FT-817, the centre pin of the socket had been pushed back inside (this might have been because of a damaged plug) and this had broken the solder connection with the circuit board. I put the centre pin back in place and soldered it. The rest of the socket was OK.

2m WSPR

2010-10-11T06:11:00.003+01:00

Last night, conditions on VHF/UHF were really good. I was hearing stations from the Midlands and south east England. I tried 2m WSPR, even though there weren't many stations active on there.
Here are the reports from last night, I received and got a report from DL1DBC in JO31, 762Km away. That was me using 10 watts to a vertical.

PSK Reporter

2010-10-04T22:31:00.001+01:00

40m (7.035 MHz USB) PSK31 reception tonight using Digital Master 780. List of countries:

Mynydd Y Cwm

2010-09-28T16:27:00.002+01:00

Mynydd Y Cwm (GW/NW-076)
All the equipment worked properly this time but I only made 3 contacts in 45 minutes. This was at 11am on a Tuesday. The hill isn't in a bad place, it was just quiet this morning.
Got G4ZRP, GW0WTT and MW0IDX/M on 2m FM.

Breakfast from some cafe in Colwyn Bay

Halkyn WSPR

2010-09-28T16:16:00.003+01:00

18 MHz WSPR from the car at Halkyn Mountain. Used the laptop line out into FT-817 mic socket (VOX and some resistors to drop the level). Set the PC clock before going out as there wasn't a decent mobile internet connection up there.

The antenna was Watson Multi Ranger 200.
From near there I got into the APRS gateway MB7UL-10 at Keighley (same site as GB3TP), as well as MB7UXB (Liverpool), MB7UCW (Crewe), MB7UBN (Bolton) and MB7UWC (Warrington). Going further west along the A55, the APRS activity dies off.

Failure

2010-09-27T23:37:00.003+01:00

Things didn't go as planned today - after I thought I'd got the FT-817's power cable sorted (it was working last night when I tried it in the car), it stopped working again on the summit of Tal Y Fan (GW/NW-040). I'd carried the Watson W50, poles and 9 element 70cm yagi up there, and now that the FT-817 wasn't working, they were useless. If only I'd not left the SO-239 to SMA connector in the car...
Well I managed to do the activation with my 2m/70cm and 4m handhelds. The 4m handheld is definitely better with its new Garex flexi whip. Probably not as efficient as a 2m handheld though.
When I got back to the car I tried the 817 with a different power cable and it still didn't work, the plug wouldn't even stay in. Time to change the FT-817's power socket I think.
Next stop was the Great Orme where I set up about 5pm. Not having a working FT-817, I tried running the FT8900 from the car on my 11.1v 4Ah LiPo battery. The mobile rig worked with no problems, I kept the power at 10 watts but even with 35 watts on 70cm nothing bad happened. I might start using a 50 watt mobile rig out portable with 2 of these batteries (one for standby). As long as you don't spend lots of time calling CQ with no reply, you only need about 5 minutes of transmit time to make the minimum 4 QSOs for a SOTA activation. You might not need the full 50 watts for each contact either, only a couple of difficult ones. It's a light way to get 10dB more transmit gain as something like an FT1500 doesn't weigh much more than a handheld and will fit in a large pocket.
I set up the 9 element 70cm yagi and W50 at the Great Orme summit (western end of the car park). This was the first time I'd tried the yagi. I called CQ a bit and put a spot on Sotawatch for myself. There were no replies. Monday teatime isn't a good time. I plugged in the W50 and had a tune around. GB3MP at S1? Something wrong there. No I hadn't plugged the 70cm antenna back in by mistake. I took the coax plug out so the braid was disconnected, MP was now up to S5. The coax had been damaged inside, when I moved it about the signal was changing and actually went up to S9 for a second before going back to S1.
... so even had the FT-817 worked or I'd brought the SMA adaptor up Tal Y Fan, I would still have carried the antennas up there for nothing as they wouldn't have worked.
The 70cm yagi was working properly at Great Orme because it was on its own 2m long N - N cable (both antenna and rig have N connectors). With the FT-817 I'd have used the 5m long RG58 cable I used with the W50.
As it was only a 20 second walk back to the car, I went back and got a 2m long PL259 - BNC cable which could go from the W50 to a BNC-N adaptor on the FT8900. This cable and adaptor is part of my mobile antenna system, so I wouldn't normally have carried it up a hill.
The cable was a bit short but I just taped the FT8900 to the fence to get it above the ground. I had the remote head on a cable so it didn't matter where the main bit was.
I couldn't tell any difference between the yagi and the W50 on 70cm, even in the proper direction. Maybe the extra height (it would have about 80cm more average height above ground than the yagi) made up for the difference in gain. I'll have to check the SWR of the yagi when I get home. Both antennas were on similar lengths of RG58 coax and the yagi had only N connectors in the signal path.
On 145 MHz I managed to get the 4 QSOs I needed before I'd had enough and went to get some tea.

Tomorrow I plan to activate NW-076. What could possibly go wrong?

I'll get some pictures from today on another time, but here are a few from yesterday:

Sandpiper 23cm yagi on summit of Foel Fennli

Moel Famau from Foel Fennli

Moel Y Parc TV mast, taken from Halkyn Mountain.

Beef curry, boiled rice, chicken & sweetcorn soup. From somewhere in Mold. For 20% less than Barrow prices. It's like £5.60 in Barrow for an average meal and £4.40 round there. I went to this place in Ellesmere Port and it was also in the £4.40 region.

FT-817 power plug

2010-09-23T20:54:00.002+01:00

I found out what the problem was with the 4/1.7mm power plug I was using with my FT-817. The barrel of the plug (-ve) was not making contact with the solder terminal. I'd bought 3 of these plugs and the other 2 checked out OK with a meter. You can't see that the 2 parts aren't touching. I put a bit of solder between them.

CT17 interface

2010-09-23T18:52:00.003+01:00

I bought a Icom CT17 CI-V interface cable from G4ZLP for my Icom IC-7000. This is a 9-pin serial port to 3.5mm jack plug cable. At first it would not work in Ham Radio Deluxe but it needs the DTR and RTS flow control/interface power boxes checking when connecting to the radio.

4m Flexi Whip - Photos

2010-09-22T22:09:00.002+01:00

70 MHz Flexiwhip

2010-09-20T12:19:00.002+01:00

I've ordered a 'tuned flexiwhip for 70MHz' from Garex for use with my Wouxun handheld. The Wouxun's own rubber duck gets nowhere but switching to a 50cm long (50% of a full 1/4 wave instead of 20%) antenna should make some improvement. It will help when I want to operate on 70 MHz portable but can't bring an antenna for every band.

WSPR this week

2010-09-19T22:36:00.001+01:00

Furthest 10

Nearest 10

Pendle Boulsworth Rombalds Cracoe

2010-09-19T20:06:00.004+01:00

Pendle Hill from Boulsworth Hill - 12th September

War memorial at the top of Cracoe Fell - 13th September. I stood next to this on the East side to shelter from the rain. So if you were to the west, that may be why you never heard me

Had to make do with only handhelds for this trip, the FT-817's power plug suddenly stopped fitting properly (it had worked OK before) and I hadn't brought any SMA to PL-259 adaptors. I thought the 817's power socket had been damaged or just worn out but that night I tried the 9 volt PSU which came with my Eken M003 Android tablet (also using a 4/1.7mm connector) and it worked OK.

I made a QSO on 144.6125 MHz D-Star from Boulsworth Hill with G0DFO who wasn't very far away. I was a good signal except it was a windy day up there and there was a lot of wind noise in my microphone. Which reminded me of the limits of voice communication over radio.
1)Everything we needed to know could have been transmitted in the data which is automatically sent with each transmission
2)No matter how noise free and spectrum efficient digital voice is, it's still only as good as your microphone and loudspeaker
3)Somebody still has to be there to talk to you

Nagoya UT-108

2010-09-05T11:37:00.003+01:00

Don't buy a Nagoya UT-108 dual band mini magmount antenna. They're available on Ebay from a few places. There are a few other in their range of mini magmount antennas, which are smaller or have different connectors.
On my car roof, it was a lot worse on 70cms than the proper mobile antenna (Watson W-770 copy) which was mounted quite close to the ground on the tailgate. Probably the RG-174 coax being so lossy but it didn't seem to be resonant on any amateur band at all. Even when the car body was in the way, the W-770 was much better.
The mini magmount was OK around 165 MHz, compared to other antennas, but none of the others were meant to work on that frequency anyway.
Other mini magmount antennas are probably the same, but the last one I had (I think it was from Moonraker) fell apart soon after I bought it. Other stuff from Nagoya looks like it's a direct copy of the Diamond/Watson antennas.

Cash Machine

2010-08-21T09:43:00.003+01:00

Is this Windows 98 on a cash machine? This was at Barrow Asda.

WSPR Report

2010-08-16T18:30:00.002+01:00

7.04011	VK6BN	OF88ac	14696
10.1402	W4AEJ	EM60sm	6885
10.14021	W3HH	EL89vb	6736
10.14023	KC0BMF	EN31be	6461
10.1402	AK4T	EM74vb	6451
10.14021	N8NM	EN82hp	5727
10.14021	AJ4FA	FM17tq	5669
10.14021	W3CSW	FM19kd	5605
10.14021	K1JT	FN20qi	5356
21.09611	4X1RF	KM72ls	3814

My furthest WSPR reports this week

PSK Reporter

2010-08-12T21:02:00.003+01:00

I installed the latest version of Ham Radio Deluxe (Version 5) and tried PSK Reporter.
There was a problem with my USB CI-V cable to the IC-7000, Windows 7 doesn't like it and as soon as I tried to change frequency using Ham Radio Deluxe, there was a Blue Screen Of Death. It seems that this happens sometimes when using USB adaptors which are based on the Prolific chip, the other sort which have FTDI chips in aren't as bad.
Digital Master 780 still works without a CI-V connection to the rig, it just doesn't know what frequency it's on.
After leaving Digital Master on for a while on 14.070, receiving PSK31 signals, I had 100 received stations and 25 countries. I put a few CQ calls out myself and some stations received me (I saw them through the PSK Reporter site, as well as having one Russian station actually reply to me over the air).

I like these 'automatic' modes, they might not be proper contacts but you still need to be able to transmit some kind of a radio signal for anybody to be able to receive you so I think it's still proper radio. You don't need loads of power just to be louder than the person you're trying to shout over the top of to work that DX station.

WSPR top 10s

2010-08-06T14:06:00.003+01:00

This week's furthest reports:

Freq	Call	Grid	Km
14.09707	9V1AL	OJ11vh	10985
14.09712	VU2LID	MJ88lm	8601
10.14021	W3HH	EL89vb	6736
14.09714	N0UR	EN33iu	6216
14.09711	AI4WV	FM05	6010
14.0971	WA4OSS	FM05rt	5952
18.10615	AB4SF	FM17el	5764
14.09711	NB3N	FM19ki	5589
14.09708	WA3DNM	FM29fw	5445
14.09711	K1JT	FN20qi	5356

This week's nearest reports:

Freq	Call	Grid	Km
28.12615	MW0GRJ	IO83kf	97
14.09714	G0MJS	IO93br	97
14.09713	G4YTM	IO93gl	134
14.09711	G6LUG	IO93sr	185
14.09707	G0IMX	IO92ao	186
14.09709	GI6ISW	IO64sl	215
14.09713	GW6PXW	IO81gq	269
14.09712	GW0UHO	IO81hq	269
14.09713	GW3TYI	IO81ao	283
28.12611	G4IKZ	JO02af	301

Yarlside

2010-08-01T21:29:00.004+01:00

Yarlside (SOTA G/NP-019) which I activated today. Even though it's over 600m, it's one of the worse hills to get out from because it's behind other higher North Pennine hills in the direction that most people are.
Used the FT-817 into a mobile antenna (half wave) on 2m FM and SSB.

The view south with Baugh Fell NP-012 in front, Aye Gill Pike NP-023 in the middle distance and Great Coum NP-011 in the background. I walked up from the main road at Cautley. There is an Orange phone mast at Cautley but once at the top, there is also 3G mobile coverage from 3. Not many hills of that height have decent phone coverage at the top, but this one might be better just because it's screened from anywhere else so no co-channel interference from other cells.

A better 70cms

2010-08-01T10:18:00.002+01:00

Now that the data on 440.4125 has gone off in Barrow, I've got a better 70cm band. It used to be strong enough to cause problems on my Icom IC-7000 at home with it appearing at various frequencies in the top half of the amateur band. This was a problem when I was trying to hear D-Star signals which are in the 438 - 440 MHz area.
There are strong local signals in the 453 and 456 MHz bands but these don't cause any problems as they are only on-site business radio users so using a bit less power.

Multi Ranger 200

2010-07-28T22:54:00.002+01:00

Watson Multi Ranger 200 on the car. I've not tried this at over 30mph but probably won't be driving very far with a HF mobile antenna on.

Boot Mount

2010-07-27T21:23:00.006+01:00

I've just put a Watson boot mount on my car but I've had to put it in about the worst possible place because the car just doesn't have any edges which you can clamp something to. The top of the tailgate has an edge but when the boot opens it goes down underneath the roof so if I put something on there it would get stuck.
In the end I tried it on the left side of the tailgate, just below the back windscreen (just below the lights in this picture - that's not my car, I'll put a photo on soon!). This is about halfway between the floor and the roof but with my Watson W7900, I've still got quite a bit of antenna above the roof level. The radiation pattern is going to be weird but I can get a decent SWR with it there. Not had much chance of comparing it with anything yet, I've only been driving round town.
Being lower down, I should be able to put a HF mobile antenna on without it falling off or hitting stuff. I checked the SWR with the MultiRanger 200 and it was OK on 10MHz and upwards, but lower bands were no good, probably because it's fixed to the tailgate and not straight onto the car body.
Coax is 5D-FB which is 7.6mm so won't go through gaps in doors etc. so the boot mount has a bit of thin white coax crimped onto the end of it to stick through the gap.
I've got a Nagoya UT-108 mini magmount antenna coming too, so that'll be something to compare it against.

Why are laptop DVD drives so slow at reading discs? I'm trying to make an ISO image of a DVD and it's taking forever, doing about 2.5X.

Is the data network on 440/453MHz being closed down? Half of the base stations seem to have gone off round here, a few went off maybe about a year ago but recently more have gone including the one in Barrow on 440.4125 and Hameldon Hill on 453.3375. They were good 'beacons' for checking antennas and UHF propagation.

Arnside Knott

2010-07-25T20:23:00.006+01:00

Went up Arnside Knott (SOTA G/LD-058) this afternoon. I took the half wave for 50MHz and also the Sharmans mobile antenna for 2m/70cm but after changing my coax, forgot I needed the SO239 coupler to connect it up, so ended up with nothing but the handheld except on 6m.
Made 2 QSOs on 51MHz FM with G1CCL and G1KLZ. 6m isn't really enough to qualify a summit unless it's further south (like Kinder Scout).
This was another of the G1-only activations - every station I worked had a G1 callsign:
G1OPV/P on NP-016 Dodd Fell Hill (145 MHz)
G1CCL, Morecambe (51 MHz)
G1KLZ, Ingleton (51 MHz)
G1LAT, Wennington (145 MHz)
G1OHH, Lancaster (145 MHz)

I could hear a repeater faintly on 50.800. And the Diversity FM link on 48.525 was S9, even though I was vertically polarised. Some baby monitors at S9 too.

Did some more tests on how efficient my mobile set up was, and the results weren't good. My magmount (Sirio ML-145) was giving about 7dB loss from plug to socket (it has 3.5m of RG58 coax on it) at 435 MHz. I remember measuring it 6 years ago and it was something like 3dB on 70cm so the coax must be going bad. Disconnected the coax and put a plug on the loose end. The loss of this piece was about 3dB which isn't right for 3.5m of RG58.
Yes the cable had gone bad. There was no sign of water in it or breaks in the insulation but it was getting lossy at UHF.
I'd got this magmount nearly 10 years ago at the CB shop in Lymm services while going away on holiday (to Ironbridge). At the time it made a big difference going from a 3/8 type magmount to one with a proper connector on, signals on 70cm were a lot better. I'd started to suspect that 70cm mobile wasn't what it used to be though, but not got round to actually measuring the losses.

I've got the bigger Sirio SO239 magmount which I bought in 2006, which I'll test sometime.

SWR graph of the coax (open circuit at the far end) that I removed from the Sirio magmount (3.5m of RG58). This should be a flat line near the top of the graph:

SWR graph of the magmount with no antenna plugged in (and sat on the carpet at home):

5m of RG58, straight off an old reel, with a PL259 on each end:

On 144MHz the cables look nowhere near as bad as this, it's usually a straight line around 5:1.

Coax update

2010-07-23T12:03:00.000+01:00

Made a 5 metre pl259 cable this morning from some old rg58 which i'd
had for years - i got given 2 x 100m reels. on 70cm, I was getting 6
watts out for 9 watts in so the loss was under 2db or 0.4db per metre.
That's better than the 0.6db for that rg8-mini.

--
Sent from my mobile device

RG8-Mini

2010-07-21T21:58:00.003+01:00

RG8-Mini (or RG-8X) is the 50 ohm coax size which is somewhere between RG58 and RG213, 7mm diameter. You might use it where you need flexible coax but where RG58 isn't good enough. But is it really any better than RG58?
It seems to be sold more as a high power HF cable than for use where low loss matters, and I first saw it being used on CB. There were red and grey versions of this cable.
A few years ago I made up a cable of black RG8-Mini, about 11 metres long with PL259 plugs on and sometimes used it for portable operation. I thought it would probably be better than RG58 so wasn't too worried about the loss. But this week when I was on Muncaster Fell I had a listen around 433 MHz and didn't hear very much. I could hear more on my handheld's own antenna than on the 2m/70cm mobile whip that I had set up on a pole.
When I got home I measured the loss of this 11m of RG8-Mini on 2m and 70cm. With a very short piece of RG58 I was measuring 9 watts on 70cm. Replacing that with my coax cable reduced that to 2 watts! That's about 6.5dB loss or 0.6dB per metre. RG58 is supposed to be better than that on 70cm. At 144 MHz, the loss was about 2dB which is more like RG58 should be.
The official figures for RG-8X are better than this but it doesn't seem as much of a standard as RG58 or RG213. I think I bought mine at a rally and I had some on a 2m/70cm dual bander at home before I put decent coax on it so that might have been the same piece of cable.

70 MHz WSPR

2010-07-07T23:03:00.002+01:00

There's some activity on 70 MHz WSPR now, on 70.0286 MHz. I can receive G0MJI from Liverpool, using my Icom IC-7000 and the dual band 2m/70cm colinear on my chimney. On the proper 70 MHz dipole in the loft, there is no improvement in S/N because there is more noise indoors. I've nothing to transmit on 70 MHz SSB though.
Alex G7RNX in Dalton was also on 70 MHz WSPR on Sunday and could be received by G0MJI and G3ZOD (Stockport).

Made a PC to radio interface for an FT-847 before finding out it wouldn't work properly because...
On the Yaesu FT-847 there are separate connectors on the back for FM and SSB data modes. The 6-pin mini DIN socket can only be used to transmit on FM (there seems to be receive audio on SSB through it though). On SSB, transmit and receive audio are through a 3-pole minijack socket. The tip of this jack is for transmit audio and PTT (ground through a resistor to transmit).
The 6-pin socket can be used for the PTT on both FM and SSB.
Connecting a cable directly between the headphone socket on a PC and the FT-847's SSB data socket made the radio stay on transmit. There needs to be a capacitor to block any DC current path which might key it up.
It seems a bit of a strange thing to have 2 data sockets but when the FT-847 was designed, people weren't using a PC sound card for data modes so would have had a standalone packet TNC.

White Hill

2010-06-28T18:09:00.003+01:00

Made my first D-Star simplex QSO yesterday, on 144.6125 from the summit of White Hill (SOTA G/SP-006). From there I made 3 D-Star contacts, so not quite enough to qualify the summit digitally but maybe next time. I was using the Icom IC-E91 handheld with UT-121 D-Star board, and a Watson dual band whip antenna.
D-Star QSOs were with:
G3LWK Harold, Banks (near Southport)
G0BMH Ian, Oswaldtwistle
2E0VEK Kevin, Nelson

On the Icom handheld, the digital voice was still OK when there were no s-meter bars showing.
I only have a handheld with D-Star so it's not much good on an outdoor antenna at home but another time I'll have a go from a hill top with some external antenna to try and get 4 digital QSOs.
I also made some 70cm FM contacts from White Hill using the same radio and was trying my Sandpiper 19 element 23cm yagi (with no success, the only thing I could hear was the Stoke repeater on 1297.075 which transmits constantly).

1980s Design

2010-06-13T18:11:00.002+01:00

Not long ago I saw a new CB radio (or should I say single band 28 MHz mobile as they can't be sold as CBs in the UK) for sale, the Superstar Force One
This looks about the same as CB rigs did in 1981 except it has a small LCD screen and USB/SD connectors for external memory (to play music and show photos on the small screen, which is also a large s-meter).
For £300, you'd expect it to have SSB but no, it only has AM and FM so apart from being an expensive digital photo frame, is pretty useless in this country.
They've just kept adding stuff to the old Cobra 148 (there is still a Cobra 148 being made but it's not exactly the same as the original) without making it much better, first the Superstar 3900, then a frequency display with LEDs, next this. There's nothing wrong with the idea of memory card slots in a radio or even one which can play mp3s but does it really have to look like it was made in 1977?

Calf Top

2010-06-13T17:24:00.003+01:00

Today I walked up Calf Top (SOTA G/NP-022). I'd been meaning to go somewhere else but it started raining this morning so I went there instead. Walked from the Barbondale road (SD665840 at the boundary of the unfenced road) , up the very steep side of the hill. The rain got worse as I climbed up and at the top the rain was heavy with visibility of about 20 metres.
What I was going to use was my new Sharman's NR-770H mobile antenna taped to a fishing pole. This would have worked because it's a half wave on 2 metres. But I never put it up because the weather was so bad. Instead I just used the Alinco handheld (which is OK in the rain) with it's own rubber duck. With that I made 5 QSOs in about 5 minutes, including G1OPV/P on Ingleborough.
All 5 QSOs were with stations who had G1 callsigns. There was G1OPV and then the 4 local G1s who are quite likely to answer any CQ SOTA call on 145.500. These are:
G1OHH Sue
G1LAT Stephany
G1CCL Dave
G1KLZ Doug

Some Wprime 32M test results for various PCs:
Acer Aspire 3004WLMi laptop (Sempron 3100) = 104 seconds (XP)
Home built AMD Athlon 2400+ desktop = 93 seconds (XP)
Compaq CQ61 laptop (Celeron 900 2.2 GHz) = 83 seconds (Windows 7 64 bit)
The Compaq is the one that 3 supply with their mobile broadband package.
My own AMD Athlon X2 2.6 GHz desktop = 27.7 seconds (Windows 7 32 bit)
My own AMD Phenom 9550 2.2 GHz desktop = 18 seconds (Windows 7 32 bit)
All these are more powerful than one of the netbooks using the single core Atom CPU (about 140 seconds).
The Acer laptop is quite old (the Sempron 3100 was released in July 2005) but if it wasn't for its 448MB of RAM, wouldn't be that bad. The AMD 2400+ machine is from 2003 and could also do with more than its 512MB RAM.
The Compaq might have been a few seconds faster if an internet browser hadn't been left open while doing the test but it's not really that fast (a dual core processor would have cost how much more?).

Ofcom Tech Parameters

2010-06-02T18:54:00.004+01:00

For a while, Ofcom (and before that the Radio Authority), have published a spreadsheet of technical parameters for all UK commercial radio and community radio stations. Now they've added all the BBC transmitters so it's a complete list of UK radio broadcast transmitters (AM/FM/DAB).

Stations which have come on air recently in the north west:
Rossendale Radio (Haslingden) 104.7 - Don't look at their website, all it does is show a fake 'virus scan' page!
Manx Radio (Ramsey) 89.5
Point FM (Rhyl) 103.1
Moorlands Radio (Biddulph) 103.7
Alive Radio (Dumfries) 107.3
Peace FM (Hulme) 90.1
North Manchester FM (Moston) 106.6
KCC Live (Knowsley) 99.8
Bolton FM 96.5
Drystone Radio (Sutton In Craven) 106.9

It looks like BBC Radio Cumbria are now using an antenna at the top of Kendal mast on 95.2, instead of the one much lower down which is used for the BBC national stations. The height and radiation pattern are the same as The Bay and Lakeland Radio so probably the same antenna (slanted yagi pointing towards Kendal).

LS120

2010-06-01T21:06:00.003+01:00

I recently added another item to my collection of probably useless computer hardware - a LS120 SuperDisk drive, complete with some brand new (well they might have been sat in a box for the last 10 years) unopened 120MB floppy disks.
I installed it in my main PC using its ATA interface and it shows up as drive A: in Windows 7. Write speed is about 250KB/s, I think this is slower than a Zip drive but faster than 1.44MB floppies.
I've also got a USB Zip drive so if someone discovers a load of Zip or LS120 disks then I might be able to help them. It also reads/writes normal 3.5" floppy disks so I replaced the floppy drive with it.

6 metres

2010-05-24T22:37:00.002+01:00

There were good 50 MHz conditions today, I worked 9A2PT (JN75JD) and E76C (JN84MX) on SSB using 50 watts to the loft antenna. These were the first long distance contacts I've made from this house on 6 metres. When I tried WSPR though I wasn't spotted by anyone but only 10 stations were listed as being active, and most of them couldn't receive each other.
28 MHz is also good at the moment, probably the best it's been for a long time.

Yesterday G7RNX and myself activated Seat Sandal (SOTA G/LD-022). Alex was on 70 MHz and I used 144 and 1297 MHz. Didn't hear any other SOTA activity in the Lake District but G1JTD and M3XJV were activating Wainwright summits just across the valley from us near Grasmere.
I tried putting a call out on 144.6125 using my Icom IC-E91 handheld (through the amp and dipole) using D-Star but got no replies, even after putting a spot on Sotawatch. Is there any simplex D-Star activity on 2 metres?
I had a look at the SOTA database and in the activator roll of honour, DV or D-Star isn't an option in the mode field. It would be either Data or Other. Out of all activators in England, since SOTA began, 7 have used Data and 9 have used Other.

EI2MLP

2010-05-20T19:02:00.002+01:00

Got to EI2MLP at Mount Leinster (IO62OO) on 2m APRS from home tonight. That's nearly 180 miles so 2m conditions must be good.

Billinge Hill

2010-05-15T16:16:00.004+01:00

Activated Billinge Hill (SOTA G/SP-017) today. I was just stopping on the way south so I didn't stay long, using the Alinco handheld with its own antenna.
Billinge Hill has a few radio masts on it so there is a problem with strong signals overloading but I managed a few contacts on 145 MHz and also 2 on 23cm (G7IEI in Westhoughton and MW1FGQ in Holywell). There is a stone building at the summit with a metal door which is some help in screening from the masts if you stand right next to it on the south side. I've been up there with an FT-817 before and that was OK.

Wythenshawe FM's link from studio to transmitter is on 52.750 MHz wide FM.

Seatallan

2010-05-12T18:06:00.007+01:00

On Sunday (9th May) I activated Seatallan (SOTA G/LD-025)
Made 30 QSOs from the summit, on 144 MHz SSB and FM. Used my FT-817 into the 30 watt amp which I'd bought at Blackpool rally. This was powered by its own 4Ah 11.1v battery so was putting out around 25 watts when driven with 5 watts from the 817.
The antenna was a slanted dipole like I used on Harter Fell last month. It had been over 5 years since I'd last been to Seatallan.
The relay in the amp doesn't have enough of a delay before it switches back to receive, but it still worked OK, I can't have sounded that bad. The furthest contacts were to G0TRB (Tamowrth), G0NES (Birmingham) and MM0RWJ (Motherwell), all using SSB.

After using the amp for about an hour, I put it on charge and it took 1000mAh to charge it back to full. I've got a Imax B6 charger which shows the amount of charge put into batteries.

The FT-817 and 4Ah battery all fit into a plastic food box.

Horizon Graph

2010-05-11T23:18:00.003+01:00

Graph showing the elevation angle to the horizon from my roof. The flat part of the line is where there is a view out to sea. There is a 180 degree view out to sea from 140 to 320 degrees. The steepest angle is to the top of Black Combe around 335 degrees.
Between 340 and 40 degrees is the hill right behind me, with the horizon about 2km away at the top of Hawcoat.

2 Easy North Pennines

2010-05-02T21:27:00.003+01:00

Lovely Seat (SOTA G/NP-030) and Great Knoutberry Hill (SOTA G/NP-015) today.
Both take about 30 minutes to walk up, and less going down, and are worth 4 points.
Left home about 1pm and parked at the top of Buttertubs pass. Today I used a 1/4 wave ground plane for 145 MHz, made from 4 telescopic antennas and a BNC socket. This was taped to the fishing pole. All contacts were made on 145 MHz FM today.
From Lovely Seat (at about 3:30pm) I got 2 summit-summit QSOs, G4ZOI on LD-049 Kirkby Moor and G1JTD on NP-010 Pen Y Ghent.
As well as the usual chasers G6LKB and G1CCL, I worked M3ZSV in Thirsk.

1/4 wave ground plane antenna at Lovely Seat

Great Knoutberry Hill from Lovely Seat

From Great Knoutberry (at about 5pm) I got:
G4OWG
G1KLZ
G7SKR
2E0HRD
G6LKB
G1OHH

Summit of Great Knoutberry Hill

Lovely Seat from Great Knoutberry

Old car parked where I walked from

Got a total of 4 chaser summits today because I also worked G0HIK on Whitbarrow Scar (LD-056) and G1OPV on Pendle Hill (SP-005) this morning, both on 145 MHz FM.

6m Contest

2010-04-27T22:07:00.003+01:00

Tonight I had a go at the 50 MHz activity contest. Drove to my favourite spot in IO84KE and set up a horizontal dipole about 3 metres above the ground, facing south east. Using 5 watts SSB from my FT-817 I made 11 QSOs. The furthest was G0LGS/P who I think was in the Cleeve Hill area near Cheltenham (IO81).
All the other stations were in IO83.

It seemed like most people were using horizontal polarisation so it helped using the dipole rather than my usual half wave vertical.
Diversity FM's link on 48.525 MHz (narrow-ish FM) was S8 at my contest site, and there were some quite strong signals (>S5) off various baby monitors (where can't you receive at least one baby monitor signal?). Some other 48 and 52 MHz broadcast links could be heard but very weak. An odd thing I heard was on 50.370 MHz with what sounded like morse in FM, about S2 with some fading.
The Buxton beacon on 50.000 was S0 in CW/SSB and S2 on the FM meter.

Morecambe Bay mast from the contest site

On Sunday I went up Harter Fell (SOTA G/LD-028). For this activation I'd decided I was going to try mostly 144 MHz SSB QSOs so I made a dipole which could easily be set up to be slanted polarisation. This was to give both vertical and horizontally polarised stations a chance to hear me. Often people are limited to either one or the other. It did work OK and I made around 20 QSOs on 2m SSB, with only a couple of people on FM. For those horizontal signals I had to move the dipole around a bit because it was directional but for vertical ones it didn't really matter.
From Harter Fell I got a summit - summit QSO with G4MD and G4OIG who were both on Dent (G/LD-045). This is a chaser unique for me, and a summit which isn't activated a lot. Probably because it's out of the way for anyone who is a visitor to the Lakes.

On 28 MHz WSPR tonight I was received by G0MLC in IO83VJ (Stockport) at -25dB SNR.

HF Vertical

2010-04-18T19:17:00.005+01:00

I'd bought some ferrite rings at the rally last Sunday so decided to have a go at making a transformer for use with a HF vertical antenna.
Wound 9 turns on the ring with a tap at 3 turns for the coax. The wire goes to the other end of the coil. Connected about 7 metres of wire, taped to a 7 metre fishing pole. This had a low SWR at about 28 MHz, and also around 7 MHz (why 7 MHz?).
Went to Kirkby Moor (SOTA G/LD-049) this afternoon and tried it out. On 28 MHz I talked to G6MZX (Thornton In Craven), G6LKB (Ulverston) and G4TUZ (Lancaster). G4BLH and G1KLZ couldn't hear me so it might not have been working very well, I'd expected them to be stronger on that band.

Worked G6LKB and G6CRV (Heysham) on 18 MHz, both were strong signals.
Transmitted some WSPR using the recording stored on my phone, on 7 and 18 and 50 MHz. There was only one report on 7 MHz but on 18 MHz there were a few from the USA. On 50 MHz, I got -28 and -24dB reports from G3ZOD in Stockport, which was about the same as I get from home. As Kirkby Moor is a much better site, the antenna was probably not working that well on 50 MHz either.
Made another 2 QSOs on 145 MHz with other summits (Gummers Howe and Lambrigg Fell) before packing up.

On the way home I parked above Marton and did a test to compare my new vertical with the Watson Multi Ranger 200 on the car. Sent some WSPR on 18 MHz (using the fishing pole) and the reports weren't much different to what other UK stations were getting into the USA.
On 7 MHz I transmitted once from the Watson and then from the fishing pole, 4 minutes later. 2 stations received me both times and there was only 1dB or less difference between the two. A 1.2 metre long mobile antenna isn't going to be very efficient compared to a full size dipole but it was good to know that the home made vertical (which shouldn't work on 7 MHz anyway) worked about as well.
To check the 28 MHz performance against the Watson, I listened to someone in the Liverpool area on 27.800 MHz (CB channel UK21). With the Watson they were S4 but with the fishing pole they were 0.64 wavelengths at 28 MHz).

Another time I'll have to compare my transformer with the red 'long wire balun' and the same length of wire.

Watson HF Mobile

2010-04-18T10:43:00.003+01:00

Tried the Watson Multi Ranger 200 on the car yesterday using WSPR. Got 23 reports (18 on 10MHz and 5 on 7 MHz) using 5 watts. Compared to reports of other UK stations at the time, it didn't seem that bad.

In the photo, the antenna is tuned to 7 MHz by shorting out the lowest section of the coil. The whole antenna is only about 1.2m long.

The trackpad on the laptop is affected by strong RF and stops working while transmitting. I couldn't upload any of my received spots because the mobile broadband hadn't got a good signal.

Mull Hill

2010-04-18T10:10:00.003+01:00

Mull Hill (SOTA GD/GD-005). Wednesday 7th April 2010.

The 4m antenna fixed to the top of the dual band colinear. Not the right way to do it because the twin feeder is next to metal objects, but nothing else to fix it to. It must have worked a bit though.

Energy FM transmits from Mull Hill.

A view north east from Mull Hill, towards Castletown and Douglas.

6m wspr

2010-04-15T16:52:00.002+01:00

I got my first ever report on 50mhz WSPR today, being received by
G3ZOD in IO83WJ (Stockport) at -28db S/N, a distance of 106km. I received nothing
back though, probably because I get a lot of noise on my loft antenna.
-28db is only just scraping through

Blackpool Rally

2010-04-12T18:43:00.006+01:00

Went to Blackpool rally yesterday. I mostly bought antenna stuff, including:
Sandpiper 19 element 23cm yagi (link is to a video)
Watson Multi Ranger 200 HF/VHF mobile antenna
4m/6m dipole
7 metre fishing pole
Also got a 30 watt amplifier for 144 MHz, which I've not tried yet but if it works I'll use it with my FT-817 portable.
Last night I tried the Watson Multi Ranger on my car to check the SWR. To get the resonant frequency within the HF amateur bands, the whip has to be pushed down to its minimum length. But this moves the 2m band resonance up to about 160 MHz.
I've got the 23cm yagi for portable use, with a short piece of RG58 coax to connect between it and my handheld.

GD-003

2010-04-09T21:42:00.001+01:00

1 x 70cm
About 13 on 2m
1 x 4m
I think the 4m antenna wasn't working properly as it seemed a lot
worse than snaefell.
Summit to summit with G6LKB on Kirkby Moor.
That's all 5 GD summits done now, home tomorrow. Not one single
station worked in Scotland or the Isle Of Man.

GD002 and GD001

2010-04-08T20:36:00.001+01:00

Activated summits GD-002 Slieau Freoaghane and GD-001 Snaefell today.
GD-002 : 6 stations worked, 6 on 2m, 2 on 70cm and 2 on 4m. This hill
is behind higher ground to the east, with a few gaps through. Got
G6MZX/M near Skipton on all 3 bands. G6LKB and G4BLH needed SSB for a
proper QSO on 2m.
Vertical SSB might be useful on these more difficult summits as not
all chasers have anything decent for horizontal at home.

GD-001 : A mini pile up on 2m, with 21 QSOs all on FM. Moved onto 70cm
and made 10 QSOs.
On 4m I made 6 QSOs, including a summit to summit with MW0MYA/P on NW-007.
I'm writing this as an email on my Nokia E63, using the Google Mail
app. I've usually got internet access through the phone but here there
are roaming charges (£1.25 per MB!) so I'll send this when I find some
free WiFi.

Mull Hill and Bradda Hill

2010-04-07T16:25:00.001+01:00

Went up Mull Hill and Bradda Hill today. On 70 MHz I worked only Nigel
G0MEJ in Barrow from both hills. On 2m Mull Hill seemed the best of
the 2, with 7 QSOs, only 3 2m QSOs from Bradda Hill. This might have
been because Bradda Hill is closer to the other local hills, with a
worse path to the east. I got to Northern Ireland from both hills, and
to Wales from Bradda Hill, including a summit to summit with GW4YSS on
the Great Orme. Snaefell and the one with the funny name to be done
tomorrow.

Isle Of Man

2010-04-06T17:34:00.001+01:00

I'm over on the Isle Of Man now. Flew from Blackpool where I had a
roll of insulation tape confiscated by airport security. Tomorrow I'll
be starting on the summits.

Lambrigg Fell 2010

2010-04-04T21:17:00.006+01:00

I had a walk up Lambrigg Fell today (SOTA G/LD-046). As it was Easter weekend, I didn't want to go anywhere that might be popular with tourists so Lambrigg Fell it was. This was a really simple SOTA activation, I only took the Alinco handheld with me (with WSMA-270 antenna) and made 5 QSOs. 4 on 2m and 1 on 70cm. The furthest I got was Morecambe and the 2m QSOs were with the 'regulars' G1OHH, G1CCL, G1KLZ and G6LKB. On 70cm I got G1HIB in Morecambe.

On the way back I drove round by Kendal TV mast and Oxenholme, where I had another walk along The Helm.

Kendal TV Mast

The TV RBL antennas are the the vertically polarised troughs pointing at Lancaster. DAB transmit and FM RBL antennas pointing towards Morecambe Bay. The slanted dipole with reflector is for The Bay (103.2) and Lakeland Radio (100.1).

BBC FM antennas (nationals and Radio Cumbria on 95.2) are lower down the mast, above them are the 3 colinears for Airwave.

The GB3LF 70cm repeater is just a bit further north from here, at the same height.

Ofcom Frequency Search

2010-04-02T15:43:00.005+01:00

Want to know the frequencies and locations of business radio users in your area? Once upon a time you had to buy a scanner frequency book but the nice people at Ofcom now let you search online.
Ofcom Spectrum Information System

Make sure that "Business Radio" and "Technically Assigned" are selected if you want to filter out all the on-site paging and UK General users (otherwise you'll get a list of everyone in the UK who has a UK General licence)

Results for the whole of Cumbria

Antennas at home

2010-03-31T20:03:00.006+01:00

I took some photos of the antennas at home last weekend while the weather was nice.

Where the HF wire comes down to the back yard. The wire is tied on to the clothes line hook with some rope and then hangs down to the ground. There is about 10 metres of wire in all, making a half wave on 14 MHz.

The Solarcon A-99 with the transformer for the wire below it. The pole is 8ft 2" diameter steel.

View from the top of my street, looking south. In the background is the south end of Walney Island and Piel Island (on the left). The mast is at the United Utilities depot in Barrow, with antennas for their 139 MHz system on it, as well as some mobile phone networks.

Tried wPrime on a Samsung N130 netbook (on its battery) and the 32M test took 137.4 seconds in Windows XP. That was about the same as I got when trying another laptop which had a 1.4 GHz Pentium M processor (which have been around since 2003).

Vietnam

2010-03-31T19:49:00.005+01:00

I was received by XV9AA in Vietnam on 20m WSPR today. Never received them, probably because there was loads of noise today on 20m.
I was having a look at the manual for my first ever 2 metre handheld, the Rexon RL102. That cost me £100 in 1996 and that was very cheap for a 2m handheld. It only had 20 memory channels and no CTCSS. Cheap handhelds like the Puxings and Wouxuns are better than that.

My main PC - AMD Phenom 9550. Yes, that's a floppy disk drive in there!

Old PC - AMD Athlon 3200+ (I'm using it to type this blog post)

10m Mobile

2010-03-28T16:24:00.004+01:00

I tried shortening the 10m mobile antenna as far as it would go (last time I tried it was resonant about 32MHz). The resonant frequency went down to around 28.8MHz which is around the middle of the 10m band.

The bottom section on its own is resonant at 53.5 MHz and the top at 57.5MHz (both have 3/8 thread fittings on them)

Yesterday I was up Stoney Cove Pike (SOTA LD-018) and could hear 2 repeaters on 6m. The best was on 50.800 (GB3ZY near Bristol - up to about S1) and the other one on 50.770 was very weak and probably GB3FH in Somerset, unless it was GB3DB at Danbury.
50.800 MHz is also Huddersfield but the stations using the repeater were all in the South West.

wPrime

2010-03-28T12:05:00.009+01:00

I'm using my old PC (I built it in April 2006 and used as main PC until October 2008) for now until I get some new parts for the other one. I ran wPrime 2.0 on this one (AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2GHz) and got an average time of 77.314 seconds for the 32M test. That was in Vista Home Basic.
This PC has a real serial port on baord, something it's hard to find on a motherboard these days.
The case is not the original - when I built a new PC in October 2008, I kept the old case for the new motherboard because it was a good case (Lian-Li PC-7). This black case was very cheap. There's a 550w Colors-IT PSU in there, from the old system.

My laptop, a Philips Freevents 11NB5800 got an average of 71.2 seconds in wPrime for a 32M test, so slightly faster than the desktop. That has a 1.2 GHz Intel Core Duo processor so slightly faster than a single core 2 GHz.

Pc power supplies

2010-03-26T12:48:00.001Z

The faulty PSU in my PC is a 700w Arctic Power and I've ordered a 530w
Be Quiet Pure Power to replace it. That power rating should be OK, i'm
only using the onboard graphics.

Pc power supply

2010-03-26T06:56:00.001Z

i think i need one new pc power supply - last night while i was in the
middle of encoding a video, something started smelling of burnt
electronics. everything was still working but after switching
everything off in the room, i had a sniff round and it was definitely
coming from the back of the pc. I've swapped over to my old pc for
now, but that has something wrong with the motherboard - i put a new
cmos battery in a few weeks ago and its already dead. Still works
though, just needs the clock setting when started. It's a 2 ghz Athlon
64 3200 with 1gb ram. my main pc is a quad core amd 9550 with 4gb ram.

QSL Letter

2010-03-23T21:19:00.003Z

I got a letter in the post from a German SWL today (Frank from Scheibenberg) to report reception of my WSPR signal on 7 MHz. The report was for the 18th of March and he was using a 1 metre diameter active loop antenna (Wellbrook ALA1530) indoors.

I was surprised to get a reception report by letter because reports are usually uploaded straight to the internet by WSPR but he must not have been online because there is no record on wsprnet.org that anybody in that location received me (I was being received by other German stations at the same time).

Here are the stations less than 500km away who received my 14 MHz WSPR signals.

How are these short distances being covered? Are they short skip of the type you would get on 3.5 - 7 MHz or a more direct path?

G3SZU IO84oc 27

G4YTM IO93gl 134

G4APO IO93ik 146

G4PEC IO95ga 152

G0IMX IO92ao 186

G0NNF IO92al 199

G8MKE IO92al 199

G4EFS IO82vj 201

MM5AHO IO85dw 206

GM0NBM IO85ax 214

G4NJW JO03dh 247

G3RMD IO81xv 258

G0KTN IO81ti 311

G0TTV JO02rn 354

G4CAO IO91si 357

1.8 MHz

2010-03-20T15:05:00.006Z

I've managed to get somewhere on 1.8 MHz from home, by plugging in just the centre of the coax that goes to my HF wire. The Z-11Pro tuner will tune that and I was received on WSPR by G6WRW in IO82UJ (Kidderminster, 200km). I was -26dB S/N, with 10 watts, so I only just made it.
There's S9 of noise here on 1.8 MHz and I'm receiving nothing. I thought the computer might have shut down or something with that much RF only a few centimetres from it but it wasn't affected.

Found a site with circuit diagrams for the Ham International/Hygain/Tristar SSB CB rigs.
Stalker IX CB with circuit diagram (this is the AM/SSB only model, not the one with FM but it's mostly the same). Lots of other information on CB rigs on that site.

HF mobile

2010-03-20T13:42:00.003Z

I got my new ATU today and have been testing it at home. This one is fully automatic so just needs to have some RF for it to start tuning. There is a control socket (3.5mm jack) too which can be connected to the Icom so it can be operated by pressing the tune button on the radio. But I'll be using this tuner mainly with the FT-817 so it'll be fully automatic.
There are some SWR LEDs on the front of the tuner, on some bands it would not try and tune for a 1:1 SWR, giving about 2:1 at the first attempt. It will probably learn after a while to get a lower SWR, with a few changes at the start of each transmission. Like the AT-7000 tuner, it won't let me use my wire on 1.8 MHz but I'm not surprised with it being 8 times too short on that band. I'll have to try and get some signal out on 1.8 MHz, maybe just using the centre of the coax. For receiving on that band I've been using the A99 because even though it's so inefficent at 1.8 MHz (it'll be like a short circuit with hardly any coupling to the radiating element either), background noise is still what limits the receiver.

Tried some HF mobile whips on the car, I've had these for a few years but not used them much because I only have a smallish magmount on the car. The roof of the car isn't flat enough to hold the larger magmounts. So there's no way I'm going to drive around with a large HF whip on the car.
I found 4 HF mobile whips. I wasn't sure which top sections went with 2 of the bases but 2 were marked up.
28 MHz? - this one was resonant at 32MHz and didn't have many turns on the coil. Probably 28 MHz with the top section too short.
24 MHz? - this was resonant about 26.5MHz so I'm guessing it's meant to be 12 metres.
18 MHz - here is a graph for the 18 MHz whip -

14 MHz - this one looks OK, even with the small magmount -

I don't know why the 12 and 10 metre antennas were so far off frequency, I must have tuned them some time, probably on my old car but the 14 and 18 MHz ones were also tuned on that car so why was it just those? Unless I've mixed up the top sections but if they were swapped round, they couldn't both be too short?

Portable auto ATU

2010-03-18T19:00:00.005Z

I've just ordered an LDG Z-11ProII auto tuner. I was wondering whether to get the Z-817 instead but you can fit an internal battery to the Z-11 so the Z-11 is better because it can handle more power.
My other tuners are an LDG AT-7000 which only works with my Icom IC-7000 and a Zetagi M27 CB matcher (it works above 20 MHz).
Below is a view inside the M27:

I've also got a Zetagi B150 CB amplifier, had it for many years but not used it for a while. It never worked well on SSB, the original circuit is actually running in Class C (there's a DC short between base and emitter of the MRF455 power transistor, through a ferrite bead inductor, in parallel with a 10 ohm resistor). Mine now has some bias current because the ferrite bead has been removed and the bottom of the switching relay coil has been connected to the base of the MRF455. This gives some bias current only when transmitting.
Circuit diagram for the B150
Why build an amp with an AM/SSB switch (changes the delay on tx/rx changeover) if it won't work on SSB? The B300 uses a totally different circuit, still using MRF455s but in a pair.

29.600fm

2010-03-16T06:16:00.001Z

There are a few people using 29.600 FM in the Lancaster and Morecambe
area, usually around 10pm each night.

Google Maps

2010-03-14T20:12:00.002Z

Here I am on Google Maps Street View
Most streets and roads are now on there, it's really good for checking out what antennas someone else has up!
I walked up Black Combe (SOTA G/LD-030) this afternoon. Just took the Alinco handheld with its own antenna. Made QSOs on 23cm, 70cm and 2 metres. Most were on 70cms which was unusual, and 2 were on 23cm (MW1FGQ and G7IEI). It was a bit cold and windy on the summit but not bad on the way up/down.
I was also trying some APRS on 28MHz FM, just to see how it worked on that band. I was receiving at home on some frequency towards 29 MHz and using the FT8900 in the car with 20 watts into a Sirio ML-145 CB antenna. The best DX was from the car park at Whicham (spot the radio mast in the background) back to home, about 9 miles. But later in the afternoon I couldn't make that distance (the car was in the same place) so the noise level must have gone up at home.

Yesterday I worked G7OEM/P on Arnside Knott (SOTA G/LD-058) from home, on 7 MHz SSB.
Useless SOTA fact - in 2009 45% of English chasers used 7 MHz SSB.

Data modes interface

2010-03-13T13:21:00.003Z

Here is my data modes interface, connecting a serial port, sound card and the 6 pin data socket on rigs. It uses an NPN transistor, resistor and diode in the keying circuit.