M0YKS Active OnThe Bands Over The Easter Holidays

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M0YKS - Active Throughout Easter:
 Spring is in the air and I am about to start my two week holiday away from College for Easter. I have already worked some nice DX as well as European amateur stations and my radio equipment is working well and is in fine fettle. I tuned the length on my Carolina Windom 80 earlier this afternoon, I shortened the long end by 100 mm and it is now operating at a SWR reading of 1:1 on 40m and 80m. Yesterday I trimmed my hedges and cut the lawn and got the opportunity to tidy up the radials attached to my HUSTLER 6BTV, I made sure they were fully stretched out and I also cleaned the connections at the antenna base. My Cushcraft MA5B is also doing a superb job since I increased its height a couple of months ago, I have been much more successful in getting into distant stations during pileups. Finally regarding the station my FT-1000 is working well on 10 Watts into the KL405 amplifier giving me around 200 - 250 Watts out which seems quite adequate for now. I had a look at some recommended audio settings online for the FT-1000mp and then I accessed the extended menu on the YAESU Transceiver which allowed the adjustments to be carried out quite easily. The results with the HEIL GM5 studio mike inline have been pleasing with a lot of stations remarking on the nice sounding audio coming from my station. One last station upgrade this month that I nearly forgot to mention was a new usb to serial adapter (FTDI Chip Set RS232 BT232 Win 7, & 10 DB9) which connects my windows 10 PC to my RIGblaster Plus solving my recent problem since upgrading computer and windows 10. My old chip set usb serial adapter is not supported by windows 10 pretty much like the majority of amateur radio software that I have previously used and downloaded, but that is something I may blog about in a future post probably called - software for Hams that actually works on windows 10. Anyway on with the holiday and hope to catch some of you on the bands especially over the next two weeks. If any of you want to make a sked I shall try my best to work you, leave a comment or drop an email, G+, or Tweet. Have a lovely Easter!
Best 73 happy DX.

 


Our new Pup Finn is growing and is already very fast as you can see him playing with two other pups and my daughter.

 

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