Radio, Radio and More Radio Please!

Since last week I have been busy playing radio making some great contacts on many different bands. The week started off on 40m where I was in company with local Hams Adam - 2E0LXA and Phil - M1PAC. We were working as a group on the now QRM free part of 40m and managed contacts from G - land to Stateside. We had lots of QSOs with many stations calling in. I don’t think I’ve had quite so much fun on 40 in a long time. We will be active throughout the week once again as a group, if you do hear us please call in it will be a pleasure to get you in the log. We’re usually found around 7.130 +/- QRM from around 20.00 UTC.

Other news was when I worked Steve DL1YAL “The Yorkshireman in Germany” via VO-52 for the first time. Steve has recently acquired a trusty old Yaesu FT790r and was coming through great during the pass. We have yet to work on FO-29, AO-27 and SO-50 as well as the ISS repeater.

I have also had a lot of fun contacting a lot of my Ham friends and arranging skeds via Twitter, it sure is fun to Tweet, keep an eye on my Tweets to find out where I’m active.

With the field day activities and various contests that have been taking place my radios have been busy up and down the bands all weekend. I was fortunate to catch the back end of some terrific ES taking place on 144 ssb, this happened on Saturday evening where I worked 2 brand new DXCC on 144MHz. The stations I worked were; CT1HZE - Joe, at a distance of 1191.9 miles (1918.2 km) and EA7TL - Juan, at a distance of 1210.6 miles (1948.2 km).
Following on from such a good weekend on Sunday AM Louise (M3TLL) and I set off on our way to the York Rally. It was an exciting drive as we ended up driving through torrential rain but the old mobile shack got us there safely.
The rally was held at York racecourse, approximately an hour’s drive away.
We weren’t there long before we bumped into fellow Craggies and other Ham friends and after a bit of chatting we were off to find some bargains.
Adam - 2E0LXA & Phil - M1PAC, pleased with there bargains!
Myself & Kevin - M0XLT, In deep conversation.


Whilst I was hunting for something for 435Mhz in the form of a Yagi Louise spotted my all-time favourite QRP Satellite radio the FT-470. Louise knew I already had one and rated it tremendously so she quickly alerted me so I could grab this bargain one at the rally. I won’t tell you how much I paid but it was a third of the price I paid five years ago for the one I already have. After comparing it to the modern transceivers I know I’ve got a bargain, I will be testing it out some more tomorrow. The other bargain I managed to gain was a nice 10 element 70cm yagi beam which I’ve already installed and it has been grafted to the IOio to make the ultimate satellite antenna hi hi.
You can see a picture of it here. I’ve already tried it on VO-52 and FO-29 with some good signals coming through. I am looking forward to tomorrow night so I can catch AO-51 and SO-50 on the new IO/10-ele satellite buster.