I forgot you existed... Again...
OK, 2024, will do better.
Posts
Forgot you existed.
I've had adventures all through the last year. I will update them.
Edit: No I did not.Ignoring here...
I've left here quiet for too long. Instead I'm shouting to the void on Twitter. Let's do some retroactive updates...
Seaside trip to Bognor Regis with no FM
So, we went to Bognor Regis.
 |
| Not a good day for a radio adventure |
It's been on our list for a long time, we passed through it once but after watching the utterly brilliant dark sit-com Don't Forget the Driver where Toby Jones plays a tourist bus driver dealing with unexpected immigration and human trafficking issues we had to go there. It was nice, we had a nice coffee & cakes, walked around and came back as the sun was getting out of the clouds.
I had my radios with me but in the end didn't do an expedition because it was pointless.
I'm not enjoying this hobby
So, day off. I had taken two Mondays off and this was one. The plan was to go up the hill and do some antenna testing.
Put everything down to the picnic bench and the skies opened up. I was completely drenched but the equipment stayed dry.
 |
| The Radio Sheep really enjoyed this outing |
Once this was gone I could see I had a window so I started to set up the antennas.
Everything. Went. Wrong.
 |
| A rare sight that day |
Hanging the long wire took approx 45 mins and I cut myself twice. Then the wire from the PC to the radio broke. Then the cable from the tuner to the radio broke. Then the rain started again. I quickly packed everything and as I was walking back to the car the skies opened up once more.
Overall I hated this day.
Yet another failure
OK, today we went out to the usual stuff with Ms B and put up the random wire. The antenna worked beautifully. The noise levels of the LiPo was low too.
 |
| The Radio Sheep is really enjoying itself. |
What failed was the audio interface. I quickly ordered some and tried some SSB work. No luck, so we went back home. I came back the next day but that's a different story.
ISS SSTV passes
Today ISS was transmitting 12 different pictures continuously so the aim was to capture at all 12. I managed to capture 3/4 in total as below. Because it was a work day I missed most of the passes due to meetings.
2nd pass was worse.
I couldn't coordinate myself to try the next day.
Playing with Yo-yos!
Inspired by someone on the Twitter, I ordered two cloth hanging wire spools from China and with a bit of speaker cable I managed to build a Yo-Yo dipole under 10 minutes.
 |
| The Radio Sheep is impressed! |
So I took it up the hill. Measuring the dipoles and setting them up was... Errm... A challenge. I should have measured the length of the wire for each freq at home, not up there. I couldn't get it tune perfectly and at 20m it looked like an arrow, not a V.
I lengthened the cables with the orange clothes line wire and it was much better. I tried 40m and it was quite usable.
Overall this day was a bit of a challenge but it ended up successfully. This was literally the last time everything went fine for a long while.
Insane antenna project #138742
Soooo, these tent poles were dirt cheap.
I drilled through two of them and put a wire across the lot. Now I need to create a coil for the bottom and somehow make everything solid & stable. After that it should become a very nice tunable antenna.
I'm ashamed to say this project haven't got any further since that day (almost 2.5 months later!).
I have a problem with starting and finishing projects. Motivation is a problem.
Wittering Beach: Sand and Radios don't mix
So, Ms B, a friend of us and I jumped into the car and went to Wittering Beach.
We arrived at 11 just after the rains stopped. Setting up the antennas and the beach tent took a while but in the end we spent a very relaxing and joyful time. I wasn't very successful with the end-fed and FT-818 and sand got everywhere but I truly managed to let go under the shade of the tent and relax. I wasn't stressed when something didn't work and I wasn't annoyed with anyone. Just me, Ms B and the sea. Perfect.
 |
| The Radio Sheep is scouting for some 6m contacts. |
Yo-Yo antenna build time
Parts arrived, antenna built. I was hoping to use this the next day but it had to wait for a couple of weeks before I could actually try it.
 |
| Before... |
 |
| and after. |
Brecon Beacons walk
Today I might have destroyed my feet, but it was a nice day out.
Ms. B and I went for a long walk, 14km, 8h walk up the Brecon mountains on very rocky paths.
I had a massive 10kg+ backpack with all radio equipment, water and food. It was one of the hottest days of the year, literally in the middle of a heath wave.
 |
| I love this view |
I also had brand new walking boots which literally destroyed my feet. After 7w they're still just healing and as I walk it hurts very badly.
 |
| Another sheep wants to become a Radio Sheep, very interested in our equipment. |
We set up for picnic at 1 after 3h of climbing and walking. We played with the radio for an hour, made some 6m FT8 work, I yelled for CQ on 2m FM but didn't hear anyone replying although I could hear the occasional contact someone else was making.
As we walked around the mountain ridge then we realised how long our path is. As we came down I realised we weren't anywhere near the end of the path but at the middle yet, and we had run out of water, overheating and my feet were already destroyed.
Finally we managed to come back and slept through the next day.
70cm SSB activity
Ms. B and I, along with our Radio Sheep, took the old ex-mil pole and ZL special 70cm up the hill and set it up for the SSB contest. This was quite a success for the antenna, we could hear really distant stations but our mic cable developed a fault and would only transmit voice intermittently. The cable was a short and portable Cat-5 network cable so that was annoying but not the end of the world, I have plenty of replacements.
The Radio Sheep was very happy.
Day off - random wire test
 |
| Cloudy but what a beautiful day! |
I had the day off but Ms B was working so I went up the hill again with the equipment, spent most of the day tinkering and relaxing. It was a beautiful day.
 |
| Way too much equipment to carry around. I didn't learn my lesson. |
So I had two poles, the satellite hand-held-yagi, two pairs of wire antennas (end fed & random), one slim-jim for the 6m, coffee, water, two ATUs and other assorted equipment that might be useful.
This was also the first time I used my MFJ random wire tuner (almost after 15y!) and our latest random wire antenna. It worked flawlessly. I could make contacts in 40 and 20, and hear plenty on the rest of the bands. The wire is measured to be usable in all bands 40m up. This was beyond my expectations.
Finally I did some FT8 work on 6m, strong SSB signals received too.
 |
| A ladder to the heavens |
The antenna was definitely working and there was a 6m opening, I could be heard from South Europe loud and clear.
So after this packed up and went back home.
CB radio?
Picked up a CB base station from 80s from another amateur from our town.
This thing is HUGE. Shame it's only 4W and FM only.
I've heard some people on it very faintly but the 11m antenna is almost resonant on 10 after some changes and that made a very good monitoring station on the OpenWebRX with an RTL SDR dongle.
Long wire build day
Ms B and I built a long wire antenna. It tool a while to measure for the length! It's way too long for a small flat.
Design was based on this: https://udel.edu/~mm/ham/randomWire/
"A standard recommendation (see QST, March 1936, p. 32, "An Unorthodox Antenna") is an 84' long end fed and a 17' long counterpoise (6.5' for 20m). While these lengths have been shown to work well on many bands, which is helpful if you're in a hurry to get on the air, read up on the topic and experiment."
We managed to test the antenna in July - it works very well!
Dipole build day
Ms B and I measured and built a 20m dipole to hang between the front door and the kitchen door in our corridor.
It works flawlessly. SWR is < 1.5 w/o a tuner, it receives reasonably well and it has revolutionised my 20m here. We also built another one which was measured incorrectly but I'll be measuring and cutting that for 17m at a later day.
10 Dipole revolution
When I was demonstrating Ms B how to measure and build a dipole I did't realise it'd dominate my usage!
This was before we built the 20m which also made a massive impact. It also helped that we had built the dipole just as 10 openings were starting. Right now in early September 10m and 6m are slowly dying so 20 is truly dominating my ratings. It is still the 2nd most popular band here.
6m activity
It's so nice & exciting. I broke records this week.
This is with 20W with FT-847 on the folded-dipole 6m antenna I was trying to throw away last year this time!
10m, 5W and Brazil!
Bagged a Brasil station on 10m! That was the highlight of the radio year so far.
Magic Band: When it is open, it is open.
This is on the SDR, with no antenna plugged in. It's being received by just the coax cable to the antenna! It's truly incredible.
Subsequently I made two 1800+km contacts that day!
/P with a difference
It's hard to see but there's a 9-band HF/VHF/UHF antenna tied to the back of the bike. In the end I didn't use this, just used a 2/70cm dual bander, that worked well too. Then on Sunday's ride we chained Ms B's bike onto a rail and then I realised I left the keys at home - 70 miles away. That was my day on the bank holiday Monday.
Bulk update from this day
Between early Sept and now I entered everything in one go, with appropriate dates...
Listening to ISS and astronauts
So, today this happened.
We took the FT-818 up the hill next to the church and with the magmount and 2/70cm dual-band antenna on top of the car managed to catch the ISS part of this call for about 7 minutes, with M7 controlling the dial. It was very exciting!
Bicycle Wheel Mag Loop
A while back I stumbled upon VK3YE's excellent video about building a mag loop antenna out of a bicycle wheel.
Building some type of loop like this has been in my mind for a long time so I shopped for variable capacitors that could handle this on eBay and got some junk. They weren't cheap. Overall I spent way too much money on this antenna compared to something off the shelf like a number of Am-Pro sticks could have been bought but that's not the fun (or frustration) part of it.
I have had some MTB wheels in the garage for years, collected from bikes that have gone to the Rust section of the Silicon Heaven.
So finally this Saturday I got off the couch and wandered down to the garage.
After checking out the two front and two back spares, I picked the one that's in worst shape, a front wheel with scored rims which came out of an old Raleigh bike i had picked up from Freecycle which was beyond any meaningful repair. The rim was in a relatively good rust-free shape and the spokes were mainly OK so I removed those carefully, losing only a couple of spokes in the process, lots of spare parts were generated as a result which is good.
Then I cut the wheel into two using my little hacksaw. These two steps were the most time consuming parts. Using a wire brush I cleaned the inside of the wheel which was very dirty, and it was ready to be taken upstairs.
Since this was just a test, I didn't solder anything, in any case soldering a metal to such a large piece of metal definitely requires a blowtorch, you can't do this using a normal soldering iron so physical connections were done using screws. I put my capacitor that came out of an ECM into a box and created a dial using some cartoon out of an ice cream pack, linked that to the wheel using crocodile clips. It's not ideal but it's OK for a little QRP work around 1-5W.
Then I screwed the ground in the middle and created a gamma match as VK3YE described, built out of a spoke which was screwed back into the wheel.
Overall this gave a reasonable match. It was close but still needed an ATU on most frequencies. I could hear a lot of places but 28MHz and similar upper HF bands were dead so I left it like this.
In this setup it is basically a folded very short dipole with a capacitor to make it in tune. It's efficiency is very low but works.
Later in the evening, I tried the "magnetic" part of the loop, which is actually caused by a magnetic coupling. I put a thick wire in place with the help of some wires and also created an ugly balun since I wasn't sure how balanced this thing was. Both helped and also 28MHz opened up.
On the other hand when I tried it on Monday, it wouldn't work. Hearing is fine but causes way too much RFI and the USB interface to FT-818 shuts down, which terminates the radio TX. I need to figure out why it's causing so much interference with anything over 0.5W - and with that no one can hear me.
Inflatable HF Antenna Update
Better, first ever proper contact.
So, what's going on?
I finally plugged the antenna on 26 in the study to the FT-847. Good reception.
But no spots.
I struggled very badly, 20W, antenna nicely balanced, receives well, no signal
After three days I gave up and moved it to the other room where FT-818 is. It received somewhat better, but not stellar. Then suddenly I started to have "RF in the Shack" issues with the USB interfaces and the radio. I gave up.
Today after work I tried again, no luck.
Then it dawned on me, neither radio have a good earth. I did the worst possible earthing on the FT-818, replied a CQ message, and bang got a contact.
Since them I'm still struggling to make a contact, that's normal with QRP, but I am being spotted and I am hearing quite well as well.
Moral of the story? Earth matters.
Inflatable HF antenna
So - we hit the buy button for an inflatable HF antenna. It arrived last Monday and I procrastinated for a week. Finally it's been inflated, hanging off a curtain rail.
I haven't really tried it with TX, I called a single stream of CQ into 14Mhz FT8 but didn't pursue, I had to get on with work.
It is receiving well enough:
Seaside portable HF and bicycle mobile VHF work
We've been to Hayling Island, walked around, and then set up an HF station.
First I made the mistake of leaving the radio on USB instead of Digi. That wasted half an hour.
Then we switched to the right setting and immediately did a QSO but our luck dried after that. We tried some FT4, no luck. Antenna tuned onto 17m band as well but it was empty.
14MHz was VERY busy and we really couldn't cut through with 2.5W so I brought the big battery from the car and still with 5W we suffered. We could see that we were being heard on the PSK Reporter but no one was answering. People don't want to work with low signals, which is weird since FT8 is inherently a weak signal mode. We should seek for those with lower signal values.
Regardless, we had fun. Finally we were too cold so we packed up.
Then I switched to pushbike mobile. That's a very cheap 2/70cm antenna attached to the bike. I cycled around and tried to have contacts back to the car. The FT65 couldn't make a contact with the rubber duck clearly but with this it was crystal clear. Still the other end did suffer so we should have switched antennas at the top of the car but giving instructions over the bad link was too cumbersome so I cycled back.
This is the antenna, 14MHz end-fed with a 49:1 UnUn. Works very well.
Sheeps try out the satellite mode.
We didn't hear anything but the woods was perfect.
