Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!! Sometimes even when its raining you end up helping out.... AS you can see here i am helping Ron 2E0DOG get that antenna to stand out a bit more

Greetings once again to all Radio people and Bloggers,this post is about operating Radio and Computer with a device connected to my Com-port on my P.C which connects to my Yaesu FT847. Last weekend i bought a Rig-blaster off a fellow Ham operator G1YPQ-Karl a good friend of mine. Ive had the Nomic Rig-blaster for a while on loan but had not got round to using it,Karl G1YPQ asked me if i wanted to buy it so i dropped off the cash and decided to give it a go. The Rig-blaster was fairly straight forward to connect,it fitted directly to my Com port1 and came with a couple of of output leads with mic plugs fitted. The mic lead went into the 847,the Rig-blaster has different jumper connections inside which are quite simple to set for most Rigs microphone wiring. The audio out of the 847 went to the line in on my p.c sound card. You then connect your p.c speakers to the audio out on the Rig-blaster. Hey presto! that's the connecting done, the next stage was to transmit some data and get t

Sunday evening is radio night for me I usually chat to my friends who are local however this week none of my locals were on air so I spent some time trying to works a few stations up and down the HF bands. I listened on 20m and found there was no-one on until I came across PT7CB Barreto from Brazil. We had a quick 5 and 9 on 20m I have worked him many times in the past and we have exchanged QSL cards. I went on to the other HF bands it was very strange as again there were only a handful of stations from Europe so I headed down to 80m and worked a British and German station and heard a VK at the top end of 80m. Back up to 40m where it was still fairly quiet and to my astonishment I cam across Barreto PT7CB for the second time this evening. And amazingly managed another 5 and 9 on 40m using the good old G5RV. Who says G5RVs don't do DX?! Especially amazing as propogation is very poor. It just goes to show you should never give up hope when the bands are poor.

Tonight I have been operating on 80M in QSO with John F4AWH whilst waiting for a Contact with my YL M3TLL Louise who was operating from the STAR CENTRE with some SCOUTS on 2M. The SCOUTS were working with Louise in the Radio Shack Logging Stations, learning Q codes and radio Knowledge to obtain the Scouts Communication Badge.

Hello Radio People and Bloggers, I wonder what the HF Bands have been like in your neighbourhood? Here in wet and windy West Yorkshire it has been extremely poor propagation for the last two weeks, infact ive not heard any Stations on 20M after mid afternoon and by the time i get in from work its been totally flat. Early morning has not been much better on 20M, however i did here a ZL Station this morning whilst operating on my mobile-Toyota Rav4,Ft100 DX machine. I have worked a few Stations in Europe whilst been /M, last weeks best contact from the home QTH was 5A7A from Libya operating on my FT847 with 50watts through the Hustler 6btv i managed a 5/9 report both ways. The Hustler Vertical still seems to be an excellent performer for working DX stations, My antenna is ground mounted to a solid steel bar 1 &1/2 inch diameter by 5 feet long this is hammered into the ground. I do have a great take off of 1000ft above sea level and no QRN from mains powered households as i am out in