Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Greetings friends and followers around the World! 73 Seasons blessings and good will and health to each and all! Merry Christmas! I received a nice diploma on Christmas day for receiving SSTV images which commemorate 20 years of onboard amateur radio activity. It was easy enough to obtain via  ARISS SSTV Award  link.  Here is an earlier one from the Sputnik series. Its great fun receiving images from ISS and can easily be decoded using MMSTV free software on your pc. There are a few apps for phones and tablets that work well also. Check out my latest video as I decode ISS SSTV images if you want to see how easy it is.  Also if you like that you might want to decode weather satellite images which is a very similar method apart from you need a slightly more complicated decoder which again is free and is called WXtoImg Above is a recent image from NOAA 18 below is a video showing how I successfully decoded the weather image. Keep yourself amused this Christmas as we al...

What a year we have been having with little sign of any significant change as of yet. Some of the  Positives of this year for myself  Have to of been Ham radio. I have  met many new amateurs and SWLs since lock down began on the air and online, I formed a Facebook group and doubled my YouTube subscription. Also I carried out maintenance on all of my antennas and made a new one along the way.  Ham radio has been a great choice of passtime this year and I would like to thank all of you guys and girls, new friends and old friends for all comments and encouraging feedback that helps keep me going. HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone ❤. This week was my last working week at college, I'm finally on holiday for two weeks and hope to get on the bands. Earlier and through the week I have been active and I was also able to make a few videos of some of my qso and radio fun. Catch up on my YouTube channel . This week I worked some mobile and base HF, Satellite and ISS. I...

I noticed a swr variation when I switched between my dipole and vertical hf antennas. The swr reading on my Hustler 6btv was 1:6 and I noticed that when I switched back to it sometimes it was up to 2:0. I played around with the switching mechanism and sure enough it was back to 1:6. The next step was a quick inspection of the internal contacts and switch housing. I noticed that the central spindle was worn and this was allowing the switching pole to lean slightly towards the dipole pick up point. The slight movement rectified the closeness but the switch was well worn through years of operation. So I treated my station to a new better quality replacement as seen below.  my old switch has served me well but the new high power Avair switch has better isolation and is much nicer to operate.  I hooked it up and to my pleasure saw the SWR fall to 1:4 which is even better. Let's hope this nice neat upgrade has a good long lifespan as it seems pretty cool on day one of op...