Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

 Another year almost over once again but what a great year its been. The Solar Cycle 25 is at its peak and we have been enjoying regular openings on all of the HF bands with superb DX opportunities. One of my most favourite DX surprises of the year has to be when I worked into the big Island of Hawaii KH6/F4VVC on 29 MHz AM with 50 watts output power and my Cushcraft MA5B Antenna. So lets hope we all continue to enjoy the great radio propagation for a little while longer yet and I would like to thank you all for watching the videos and following the blog despite it being a little slow for posts this year. The video side has been quite full on and I have enjoyed experimenting with the Satellites and the Chinese handhelds. I have not made much of an appearance live streaming as there are plenty of others on that. Maybe I will do more next year but I am now at a point where I believe I have produced an awful lot of ham radio material to try my best to encourage others to join our hobb...

The past couple of months have been extremely busy but I have been really enjoying myself with our fantastic hobby Amateur Radio. I have been making awesome DX on HF using AM, FM and SSB (phone/voice). The results have been phenomenal with solar cycle 25 so far. My HF Station has been working great 👍. I have also been really enjoying the DMR side of Ham Radio as well as the Satellite 🛰️ bands.  Over the summer I set up a DMR hotspot at home as I had just picked up my first DMR radio which is the RT-3S from RETE✓IS. This model is the one that has GPS which is needed when you upgrade the firmware to be able to accurately track the Satellites.  I didn't use it with its original firmware set from the factory, I did infact download the openGD77 firmware and CPS (programming software). This was straight forward enough with the YouTube videos that are found alongside the program files and instructions on the   openGD77 page  . The RT3S is a good bit of kit, well buil...