Ham Radio

Monday, November 16, 2009
Graduation

As well as Ham Radio, Work and Life in general, I have been studying in service with the University of HUDDERSFIELD.  This has meant that I have spent the last two years teaching, writing papers as well as reading and researching many different types of Theorists. It's been lots of hard work, self discipline and commitment but well worth the effort when I graduated earlier receiving a Certificate in Education (PCET).

I took my YL – Louise and Mum – Janet, to the Award Ceremony, where it was a proud moment for all.
MUM and Myself

Louise took some nice pictures to put up for you to see - 2E0HTS, washed, scrubbed and gowned, which is a once in a lifetime experience!
Louise and Myself However after seeing myself in the Cap and Gown I wouldn't be at all surprised if I am found to be appearing in the next Harry Potter, Hog-warts adventure, as a Wizard or something? Hope you enjoy these pictures…

The day was extra special as the Chancellors blessing was on screen from Professor Patrick Stewart, OBE, better known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

The actual moment of Graduation

Group photo of my Tutor and Class 2007 - 2009 after our Graduation

Right thats it, time to get some Zs. Til next time....
posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 9:42 PM   14 comments
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Bands

The past couple of mornings have been a bit frosty so I decided on the Car rather than Motor Cycle to get to work which worked out well as I've heard some great signals coming in on 20m from VK - Australia and  JA - Japan. The distant DX Stations usually start coming  through well up here from now until around late February time. I use the trusty little Toyota 4 X 4 to get through the winter months and at the same time I get more radio time in to operate my FT-100 mobile Ham Station. For the time being, the Motorcycling will be used solely for pleasure when the WX is more reasonable avoiding any unpleasant accidents.

Back in the Shack, the past two evenings have been a different story as by the time I get back from work the 20M band has closed down and 40M has not been particularly exciting either. So I have been tuning down on 80M instead and having fun working European Stations on SSB using the recently made home brew 130 ft dipole. I have been getting good reports from the dipoles performance which consists of two equal legs at 65 ft made from 2.0 mm multi stranded copper wire, which is fed with 25 feet of 350 Ohm ladder feeder, terminating at a home made choke into 50 Ohms Coaxial cable (RG58 Heavy). The radio that I have been using with the dipole on 80M is the FT-767GX from Yaesu, I worked some nice Ops such as German Club Station - DL0WER with Andy (DL1BI ) behind the Mic. Other 80M QSOs included, PA3FAO, HA6FQ & ON100PES . ON100PES is a special event Station that is celebrating 100 years since the first Belgian expedition/research station made it to the Antarctic. I always enjoy working the Club Stations and special event Call Signs that are found on the 80M band. 

Thats all for now hope to hear you somewhere on HF soon, I will be active on the SATs also as usual. 73 thanks for the visit.

posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 7:51 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
PSK-31 Contacts
The past couple of nights have seen quiet conditions on 20m so I've concentrated on working a couple of satellites as well as listening around on the LF bands. I had some fun last night on PSK-31 working stations up and down Europe. Using my home brew 130ft Dipole, FT-767 interfaced to my PC and Nomic rigblaster I worked quite a few stations on 80m running qrp (30w).

Stations were coming in well on 80 meters around 3.582 lsb and I worked stations from Norway, Sweden, Germany and the UK including SM6AMU and a fellow Twitterer M0TZO - Paul. For a full transcript of the contact with Paul you can read it here on MØTZO's Blog. Twitter is proving to be a lot of fun and I'm managing to bag a few Twittering followers into my log.

Thanks to all my followers so far, hope to get many more. If you're not on Twitter you can join up here feel free to add me to find out when and where I am active on the bands.
posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 12:30 PM   0 comments
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Roof Mounted Mobile Antennas
I have always used fixed mounts on my vehicles for both HF and VHF antennas which are the boot mounted grub screw type to ensure a good ground is obtained. The only snag is the corrosion that an take place beneath the mount and not forgetting the wibble wobble whenever I opened or shut the back door.

I decided to fabricate my own mounts which would bolt to the roof bars giving an extra 5” (127mm) height above the existing mounts.
To prevent any further corrosion problems I decided to use 3mm stainless steel as the material which took a bit of drilling but easy enough at a very low RPM using a radial drill. Once I removed any burs I bent the mounts into a right angle and mounted the stainless plates as far apart as possible on the roof bar. Each of the mounts is drilled in line to match holes in the roof bar (2 holes each mount) which I bolted up tight.

The antenna mounts went on to the stainless mounts nice and straight, I fixed a short grounding wire to the locking nut on the antenna mount which I fed to a close by bolt that was connected to the vehicles chassis. The SWR was 1:1 on 20M and whilst mobile earlier this morning I made QSO with Roy – VK6MV beaming long path. Roy was 5/9 at times from Cuballing, in Western Australia coming in very well to Yaesu’s original Field Commander more commonly known as the FT-100. I recieved a 5/5 report which was excellent as I was actually mobile. I also made QSO with Estonia and Italy whilst operating /mobile with the new antenna mounts. The final result looks a lot better than the commercial mounts you see, the new mounts are solid, well grounded, neat, as well as very strong.

The Antennas pictured are 145/433MHz and 14MHz, The Vehicle is a Toyota Rav-4
Mount Is Grounded To Chassis With Short Wire
posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 5:54 PM   2 comments
Monday, October 26, 2009
CQ WW DX
Over the weekend I celebrated 4 years of romance with my lovely YL Louise M3TLL. I first met Louise at work during the 2005 CQ World Wide DX Contest when we were involved with the STAR Centre project. Louise and I hit it off during the contest and I have managed to continue to catch the yearly contest ever since. I look forward to the CQ WW Contest every year as Louise always supports me by encouraging me to take part in the contest; it reminds her of when and how we met. I guess I am the lucky one when it comes to how we celebrate our anniversary playing radio during the CQ WW DX contest. I sure did get lucky and picked a good one there! Thanks for putting up with me Lou!

This Years CQ WW results gave me, 48 DXCC and 15 Zones.

14MHz, 21MHz, & 28MHz were worked using the FT-847 and Hustler 6BTV Vertical. Both 3.5MHz & 7MHz were worked using the FT-767 and a 135 ft Dipole. I made just over 100 QSO and gave away lots of points. Thanks to all participants and for all of the effort you all put in every year, once again I thoroughly enjoyed my anniversary.

See you next year and for those that are interested, here are the 48 DXCC and 15 Zones I worked over the weekend.

V26B- 21 MHz- ZONE 08- Antigua & Barbuda
LQ0F- 21 MHz- ZONE 13- Argentina
P40A- 21 MHz- ZONE 09- Aruba
OE5UAL- 28 MHz- ZONE 15- Austria
CU5CQ- 21 MHz- ZONE 14- Azores
8P5A- 21 MHz- ZONE 08- Barbados
OT5P- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 14- Belgium
AA4V/VP9/P- 21 MHz- ZONE 05- Bermuda
E73M- 28 MHz- ZONE 15- Bosnia Hercegovina
ZV5E- 21 MHz- ZONE 11- Brazil
LZ9W- 21 MHz- ZONE 20- Bulgaria
VE2IM- 14 MHz- ZONE 02- Canada
VY2ZM- 7 MHz- ZONE 05- Canada
VC3O- 14 MHz- ZONE 04- Canada
EA8MT- 21 MHz- ZONE 33- Canary Is
EE9K- 28 MHz- ZONE 33- Ceuta & Melilla
9A7A- 28 MHz- ZONE 15- Croatia
P33W- 21 MHz- ZONE 20- Cyprus
OL7R- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 15- Czech Republic
HI3K- 21 MHz- ZONE 08- Dominican Republic
RM3Q- 21 MHz- ZONE 16- European Russia
DF0HQ- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 14- Federal Republic of Germany
OG5B- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 15- Finland
F8AKC- 28 MHz- ZONE 14- France
FY5KE- 21 MHz- ZONE 09- French Guiana
4LOA- 21 MHz- ZONE 21- Georgia
OX2A- 21 MHz- ZONE 40- Greenland
HG1S- 7 MHz- ZONE 15- Hungary
IR4X- 21 MHz- ZONE 15- Italy
UP6P- 21 MHz- ZONE 17- Kazakstan
HB0/HB9AON- 7 MHz- ZONE 14- Liechtenstein
LY8O- 21 MHz- ZONE 15- Lithuania
CR3L- 7 MHz- ZONE 33- Madeira
ER4DX- 21 MHz- ZONE 16- Moldova
CN3A- 21 MHz- ZONE 33- Morocco
PJ2T- 21 MHz- ZONE 09- Netherlands Antilles
PI4DX- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 14- Netherlands
SP3GEM- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 14- Poland
YR1C- 21 MHz- ZONE 20- Romania
GM6NX- 7 MHz- ZONE 14- Scotland
YT7R- 28 MHz- ZONE 15- Serbia
YT7R- 7 MHz- ZONE 15- Serbia
OM8A- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 15- Slovakia
S53S- 7 MHz- ZONE 15- Slovenia
ED5T- 28 MHz- ZONE 14- Spain
V48M- 21 MHz- ZONE 08- St. Kitts and Nevis
FS/K1XM- 21 MHz- ZONE 08- St. Martin
HB9AAP- 14 MHz- ZONE 14- Switzerland
9Y4D- 14 MHz- ZONE 09- Trinidad & Tobago
W9RE- 21 MHz- ZONE 04- U.S.A.
K1TTT- 3.5 MHz- ZONE 05- U.S.A.
posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 10:38 AM   4 comments
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Model Tower 2
I had a go at making a slightly different mini tower and yagi out of TIG welding wire and this is what I came up with.



The tower is two sections with a six element yagi antenna that can be rotated 360º simply by hand. The model is made by myself from 3.2mm TIG welding wire which has been built using the MIG welding process. As usual it was fun making it and there is no doubt that I will be fettling up some other project soon. Hope you like it!
posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 6:27 PM   2 comments
Thursday, October 15, 2009
IO-10Ele Performance Test On AO-51 & VO-52 Satellites
Since I last blogged about the latest tweak with the modified IO-10Element 145/435 dual band Sat Yagi, I've been watching out for AO-51 and VO-52 in order to continue testing the latest antenna. The performance is proving to be excellent both the AO-51 & VO-52 down links have been coming in loud and clear, I have made plenty of QSOs this week after work in the evening. Its been a lot of fun, I am addicted again h.i.

List of Stations and which Satellite was worked to make the qso with latest
IO-10 dual band Sat Antenna.

VO-52 * 2M1EUB/P *11/10/09 * 1950 * 432 * J3E * 59 55 * Scotland
VO-52 * SP9UNU *11/10/09 * 1954 * 432 * J3E * 59 59 * Poland
VO-52 * SP5MG *11/10/09 * 1956 * 432 * J3E * 59 59 * Poland
AO-51 * MWOBBU *12/10/09 * 1825 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * Wales
AO-51 * MOITF *12/10/09 * 1827 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * England
AO-51 * EB1HBW *12/10/09 * 1828 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * Spain
VO-52 * EB1DGH *12/10/09 * 2147 * 432 * J3E * 59 59 * Spain
AO-51 * MOJMO *13/10/09 * 1748 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * England
AO-51 * GOFGX *13/10/09 * 1750 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * England
AO-51 * LX1BB *14/10/09 * 1710 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * Luxembourg
AO-51 * EA4CYQ *14/10/09 * 1844 * 144 * F3E * 55 59 * Spain
AO-51 * EA1BAO *14/10/09 * 1847 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * Spain
AO-51 * EA3LX *15/10/09 * 1807 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * Spain
AO-51 * EA5SR *15/10/09 * 1807 * 144 * F3E * 59 59 * Spain
AO-51 * FOFIG *15/10/09 * 1810 * 144 * F3E * 59 55 * France
VO-52 * EB1BAO *15/10/09 * 2105 * 432 * J3E * 59 59 * Spain
VO-52 * IW6OVD *15/10/09 * 2108 * 432 * J3E * 59 59 * Italy
posted by 2E0HTS Simon @ 10:49 PM   0 comments
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Name: 2E0HTS Simon
Home: Baildon, west yorkshire, United Kingdom
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