Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Its been a while since my last post which is quite strange as I have had plenty of time to blog but not really been in the blogging mood, probably because of the world pandemic which we are all suffering. As it is for most the way of life has changed considerably at the moment but thankfully we are all holding out well and keeping healthy. The radio however has been in use and I have been busy making DX on 80, 40, 20, 15 and even 10 meters. My new fan dipole pictured below is performing spot on with great reports into the US on 40 and 80 meters. I thought a close up of the centre might help you see how easy it is to construct this amazing performing 80/40m antenna. My Fan Dipole is 1:1 to 1:3 across both 80 and 40m without any ATU required I definitely should have built one years ago! With such a good result regarding the 40/80M Fan Dipole I was back playing around with the Hustler 6BTV. This excellent 6 band trap vertical has been subjected to many storms over the last 15 ...

I have been wanting to try something new for 40m and today I decided to add two elements cut for 40 meters to my 80 meter mono band dipole making it a FAN Dipole. The end result for today was, the 40/80m Fan dipole is resonant without an ATU on both bands and works very well on my first test. I put a video together operating on 80m using 50 watts during a RSGB 80m contest. I wanted to be sure that the extra elements would not have any detrimental effects on the performance on 80m. I found that the low power did not matter the dipole is still working really well on 80m. I checked it on 40m and I heard signals slightly stronger with the new Fan dipole over the vertical. Japan was coming in very well and later I made a nice QSO using the Fan dipole on 40m with VE9FI - Russ over in Canada. A good result so far! Sizes of each leg is 80m - 2 x 67 ft lengths and 40m - 2 X 33 ft lengths. Here is the video which will help you to pass 20 minutes, Stay Safe! Stay In! Save Lives!

Its been quite a busy week so far as I am able to work from home using my chromebook and currently have been in communications online with a lot of our welding students. Every morning I have been on video conferences with my work colleagues. Its been very interesting and quite surprisingly good fun at times as we all keep up to date with a little humour to help keep a bit of sanity at the same time. One of the biggest positives I have noticed during this pandemic, is that we all have improved our use of apps and general IT skills, especially video calling on platforms like Whats App and Hangouts. These trendy apps and latest technology are actually quite useful at times of need and so far our infrastructures in the UK seem to be holding up well. As for personnel well being, my family are all doing well and keeping me busy and fully engaged in fatherhood, which I am happy to say is also extremely nice to get in all the special family time which would not normally be possible. I hav...