Tuesday 26 April 2011

International Marconi Day/Royal Wedding.

A few of us from the Watcombe Radio Club here in Torquay are off to Dartmoor on Saturday to work the bands !

G(R)2DXU and myself, with the help of Martin, M0IME, Dave, G4OTU and Keith, M0PAW will be running two stations working on HF and 2m from around 1030 UTC through to around 1600 UTC.

With our new NoV callsigns we will be celebrating the Royal marriage and also International Marconi Day, we are having some special QSL cards for the event.

Look forward to hopefully speaking to some of my fellow blog friends on the bands !






QRZ.com page.

Our location for the day.

Saturday 23 April 2011

G2DXU: Dartmoor DXpedition Recce

G2DXU: Dartmoor DXpedition Recce: "Good Friday 2011 It was a good way to start the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. A trip to Dartmoor with M0PCZ and his XYL, SWL 'SXM' to find..."

NoV 'R' Royal Wedding..

Just received this email earlier, so check your inboxes !


Royal Wedding Nov: M0PCZ : APPROVED by Ofcom

Greetings.

We are pleased to inform you that Ofcom has APPROVED your application for a Notice of Variation which will allow you to use a special temporary callsign in order to commemorate the marriage of H.R.H. Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton.

Attached is a PDF document of your NoV; please use Acrobat Reader or similar to view and/or print this document.


Should you have questions or concerns, please address these only to EMail address:-

     RoyalWedding@etcc.rsgb.org

Thursday 14 April 2011

New 'notes' page on QRZ.com

Just noticed this new feature on arguably the most popular Ham radio site, whereby you can post notes to other users, a bit like sending a PM to someone's inbox.

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?292896-Note-Board-A-new-QRZ-Database-Feature

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Further tests to the homebrew 2m band Moxon Rectangle..

It turns out that I do have an SWR meter suitable in a Zetagi meter that I bought for HF, I checked the specs, and it's good for up to 200 Mhz !

In the shack I use a colinear antenna for 2m, this is up in the loft, the shack being in the front upstairs box room, so I tuned around to find activity on the Plymouth 2m repeater, around 30 miles away, signals were coming in around an S5.

I plugged in the moxon and could receive the same signals around an S7, turning the antenna made a noticeable difference, as did turning it horizontal, it was fun making the signal come and go at will, having only ever used dipoles and verticals.

Upon checking the SWR, I got the following readings -

144000 - 1.6
145000 - 1.5
146000 - 1.9

This was with the antenna hanging vertically from the top of the shack door !

I did some extra checks and have concluded that the antenna has a bandwidth for a 2.0:1 SWR of about 5Mhz !

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Homebrew 2m Moxon.

Thoughts have turned (no pun intended) to directional antenna's, having looked at the Yagi and Quad antenna designs, I then stumbled across the Moxon Rectangle, this 2 element antenna offers similar gain figures to a 3 element Yagi, with better F/B ratio's.

I am quite active on the 2m band, but mostly on FM, you know chatting with your radio club pals etc, however in the vehicle I have the Icom 706, which has 2m SSB, I have made a few calls, but with little success, knowing that most use horizontal polarisation, myself using a dual band Watson 2m/70cm vertical.

For the Moxon I used two  3/4" 'tee' piece's and some scrap plastic pipe, along with some bare wire found at work, an SO239 socket and some cable ties, the most useful item ever.

Following dimensions found in the internet (link at the bottom) with use of a hacksaw, side cutters and tape measure, knocked it up in about 1/2 an hour.

I am unable to check the SWR properly, as I don't possess a VHF meter, and for some reason the 706's meter shows 1.2 even with no antenna connected, I did try it with an old cb twin meter, swr meter, checking on the cars vertical first for a 'sanity check' reading, against that it showed an SWR of around 2.5:1, so some adjustment required.

Initial test's showed it has directional properties, it opened a repeater 11 miles away, then did not when I turned the antenna around, I also found a continuous signal around 145.000 which I could alter the level of signal with the moxon, managed to find the direction and the signal was also better with the antenna in the horizontal.

The signal was an S9+ 10dB on Moxon horizontal, in the vertical position it was S9 with little noise, the Watson 5/8 vertical was then tried, S9 again, but slightly noisier.

Further tests to follow..


Typical radiation pattern.



Monday 11 April 2011

10m FM..

My blog posting is a bit like buses, nothing for a while, then two at once, yesterdays opening on 6m was too good not to blog, and then the day got even better..

I use the Kenwood TS-480, as shown on my blog page, this radio has some up/down buttons for changing bands, so starting on top band, you can click up the bands, when you get to 10m mine then shows 28500 USB, then 29600 FM, then 6m, 50150 USB.

As mentioned there was a lift on 6m, and being a big fan of 10m, you can imagine these up/down arrows get a lot of use, so earlier I flicked from 10m USB and normally on the 10m FM portion hear nothing, well not today, for booming in at 5/9+ on 29600.0 was WP3UX.

I was fairly sure this was a station from Puerto Rico, as I've worked there before on 10m SSB, mindful of the way FM propagates I didn't want to waste time, but still I needed to be sure, so a flurry of fingers on the keyboard (well two actually) on QRZ.com confirmed my suspicions.

A few calls was all it took to receive a 5/9 report back, though the QSB was pretty bad, next came EC8ADS in the Canary Isl's.

Finally, and this took some working, as he had quite a pile-up, was PY2WC, from Sao Paulo, he was at times 5/9 +30dB, though again subject to heavy fading.

This is my farthest FM contact at 5735m, it took me back to a time when as a cb'er I worked into New York on the local FM calling channel.

10-4 !


The antenna array at PY2WC.


eQSL from Willem, WP3UX..


Sunday 10 April 2011

First 6m opening of the year.

I have a routine when I get in the shack, main pc on the internet, load up qrz.com, dx sherlock and the dx cluster pages, switch on the radio then load up HRD on the laptop for the cat control.

Have a listen around the bands whilst checking the cluster, I use the cluster primarily as a tool for propagation, (as often by the time good dx has been spotted, the pile up has started), and so this morning at around 1130z, it was nice to see lots of spots for 6m.

What may of helped was that there was a contest on, so managed to work some inter 'g' along with a new square IO81, thanks to G4JFK/p, however the band started to open to the south, with two new squares, IM87 and IM86, with EA7RZ being my best and farthest south DX at 944 miles.


I have found that the ZS6BKW to be around 4-5 's' points up from the Sirio 827 I used for 6m last year, the 827 being resonant for 10/12m, though it tunes for 6m, the ZS6 offers in excess of 6 dBd gain, with a multi lobe pattern, so looking forward to some fun on the 'magic band' this year.