Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

I am enjoying my new call sign and have been using it mainly on the HF bands which has been very enjoyable and surprisingly I have not made any mistakes so far. Yankee Kilo Sierra rolls of my tongue quite easily and seems to be heard on my first call by most of the stations that I have worked using my new call. I decided to tweak my new M0YKS logo as seen above, I changed the layout slightly and added a different Yorkshire rose as well as some colour to represent the spectacular Yorkshire Countryside. I hope to catch some of you soon somewhere on the amateur bands. best 73 _ . _

Today's NOAA 19 weather satellite image recieved at my ham radio station in Yorkshire UK at 13.55 UTC. Equipment Used: Yaesu FT-847, Radiocom 5.2 Decoder, 5 element Yagi, G-5500 Elevation/Azimuth Rotator. The UK can be seen with lots of cloud cover at the middle right hand side of the decoded image.

It's 54 years since the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik. Launched on Oct 4, 1957 Sputnik paved the way for satellite communications which has been enjoyed by many radio amateurs around the world. Named after the Russian word for satellite Sputnik was 22 inches in diameter and thanks to heavy batteries weighed 184 pounds. According to Wikipedia: "The satellite had a one-watt, 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) radio transmitting unit inside, developed by V. I. Lappo from NII-885, that worked on two frequencies, 20.005 and 40.002 MHz. Signals on the first frequency were transmitted in 0.3 sec pulses (under normal temperature and pressure conditions on-board), with pauses of the same duration filled by pulses on the second frequency. Analysis of the radio signals was used to gather information about the electron density of the ionosphere." The satellite travelled at a whopping 18,000 miles an hour. Its elliptical orbit varied from between 584 miles and 143 miles from the Earth which it...