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. 

First, it was raining. The Met Office claimed I'd be free of any downpours so I should have paid more attention to the real skies. It was sunny at home but after 8 miles and 15 minutes I was sitting in my parked car waiting for the downpour to end. So it did, and I picked up all of the gear and walked for 10 mins to my target. 

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.

Worse - I arrived at the car to a racket. I had left the FT-65 on top of the roof and it was soaked in all of that downpour. Positive side? Yaesu didn't lie when they said their radio was waterproof. 

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.

Another busy day on 10m

 It's hectic, it's exciting!

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.