OSCAR Satellites AO-51, VO-52 & HO-68

Since I settled for the 10 element 435MHz and IO 145MHz loop antenna (IO-10EL) I have been getting into the OSCAR Satellites with ease. I have been making lots of QSO's with the home built beam fixed at 30º elevation for the past year or so on FM and SSB.

Earlier this evening I made QSO's on AO-51, HO-68 and VO-52. On AO-51(FM) I worked ON5NY, on HO-68(SSB) I worked IZ7JXJ, DJ8DT and for the second time this evening ON5NY. On VO-52(SSB) I worked IZ5AVK and DK1IE, all were good signals and all Stations could hear me at 5/9. I was running approximately 35Watts from my Yaesu FT-847 and managed to still get in to HO-68 at a total distance of 2500 miles as the the Satellite headed over North America.

I am always amazed how well my homemade antenna performs and I still get the biggest buzz when the "birds" pass over, in fact my hard done by YL - Louise M3TLL thinks I have a problem and calls me a "Satellite Junkie".

Unfortunately for Louise, there doesn't seem to be a cure available on prescription yet!

Holiday In 2M Land

We spent last week relaxing at the Galloway Coastline in the south west of Scotland. We had a very enjoyable stay at The Isle of Whithorn just 7yds from the sea.
Our accommodation was excellent on the Harbor row, which was only a stone’s throw away from the historic landing place of St Ninian
We visited this area for the first time three years ago when we stayed at the Galloway Astronomy Centre and have been revisiting as regular as we can, ever since. The area has lots of historic sites not to mention the stunning views, large empty beaches and plenty of wild life which for us makes up a great holiday.
One of our favorite beaches is at Monreith where there is one of Scotlands best kept secerets The Church of Kirkmaiden hidden away but easily found along with St Medana’s Well.

The Church of KirkmaidenSt Medana's beach at Kirkmaiden
During our many visits to the beach I was able to get some HF Mobiling done with the trusty Yaesu FT-100 on 20m, 40m and 80m with some great contacts worked with my recently acquired Hustler mono band antenna.I enjoyed the many QSO's and managed to get a few of the stations I worked in my log thanks to my YL Louise (M3TLL). Thanks! to all of you guys that came back to my call.

I also took my telescope and I spent some time watching the Buzzards look for their lunch. I tried to catch some pictures so you can see what I was looking at.
The little Ft-817 also got some use when I was walking around the Isle of Whithorn with Louise and our Dog Dudley. I could hear many Stations on the HF bands using the Miracle Whip however I think I would need some kind of miracle to actually get some kind of a signal out.
I did manage to make a local QSO on 2M FM with the FT-817 and Miracle ha ha Whip, which was fellow holiday maker 2M0IOB, who was about 10 miles away. Once again a good time was had by all and I got a few heads turning in dismay I as bellowed into the little rig whilst sat on the top of a large rock.

I returned home just in time for the IOTA Contest and managed to log 146 Stations during the 24hr contest from back home in the shack in Yorkshire. It was the first time I have taken part in the IOTA Contest and I really enjoyed the experience, the Set up at home worked well over the weekend as I managed over 70 Islands On The Air running low power 50 watts.

I am hoping to be fairly active on the HF bands over the next week as I continue to enjoy my Summer holidays. 73 have fun!

Working The Satellite's From The Shack

Over the weekend I worked a few amateur satellites using my Yaesu FT-847 radio and home made IO-10EL Satellite antenna.

Satellite & Station worked

SO-50 - EA1JM .

VO-52 - G0FGX, HB9OAB, G6NQO & SP3GAD .

HO-68 - N1AIA & KB1RVT (FM Mode) .

AO-51 - LY1R .

HO-68 - M0ITF (SSB) .

I still prefer working via the SSB transponders rather than the FM birds, however its all extremely good fun with plenty of fellow Satellite ops that are always very friendly and happy to work you.
As usual AO-51 was the busiest of the birds with plenty of activity on each pass. I was especially pleased with my QSOs across the pond using FM via HO-68 which is proving to be a fantastic Satellite both on FM and SSB. I cant wait until HO-68 has been fully commissioned and is switched on all of the time.

Check out the Oscar Satellite Status to see which Satellites are operational and have been heard recently by fellow Hams and SWLs all over the globe.

TREE Band Antenna

I just got out of my mobile ham shack and noticed that something was different about my dual band antenna? I soon realised it had been modified into a Tree-bander or perhaps a "Twig" (for all of you that can remember the old CB slang for antenna).

So here is what happens when you drive down small country lanes with plenty of green scenery everywhere.

Luckily no birds nests were harmed in any way and the antenna is still good.

ICOM Competition Win

I am very pleased to have recently found out that I had been chosen as a winner of a competition I had entered after visiting the Icom Web Site. I signed up to Icom's news letter a few months ago and have been enjoying reading the latest news from Icom and entering some of the competitions found on their web site.

I didn't expect to be the lucky winner of the last competition prize, which is a well presented logbook & diary packed with lots of useful pages and an Icom pen to fill the pages with Call signs and DXCC.

Thanks to Icom for this great prize that I won, I now can begin ticking the boxes of all the many different Pre-fixes I work whilst on the air.

I hope to get some of you in my new Log soon!

/ Motor Cycle?

In 1984 I obtained my full motor cycle licence as soon as I turned 17, I had been riding dirt bikes and mopeds since the age of 11 and had developed a mechanical mind early. I have been interested in motor bikes for about the same time as I have radio and I can remember fitting my Honda C-50 out with a Binatone Speedway 40 channel CB and DV-27 antenna back in 1983.

These Days I still have four motor cycles that I ride and maintain regularly but since I have been a licensed ham(2004), I have not yet operated amateur radio from any of the four machines.

I might try something with the FT-817 on one of my bikes soon, but at present I'm enjoying the ride whilst the warm dry conditions last!

For now the Toyota Rav-4 "Mobile DX Machine" & Yeasu FT-100 are both on standby.

Right, where's my helmet and gloves........

YAESU FT-470 Battery Modification

I have owned my trusty FT-470 for over 6 years and have worked many DX with it whilst working through the FM Satellites.
I’ve used it whilst out and about Mobile as well as lots simplex and repeater use for years with excellent receiving capabilities compared to the more modern Hand held’s. I have been running with AA, NiMH 2.300mAh 1.2V Rechargeable battery’s housed in a Yaesu FBA-10 Battery case, which still works very well with hours of quality operating time.

About a year ago I managed to acquire a second FT-470 from a local rally for a bargained down price. The latest FT-470 came with an original FNB-10 - 7.2v 600mAh Ni-Cd Battery pack that held its charge for about 15 minutes whilst receiving and a lot shorter when transmitting.
To get around the faded FNB-10, I have been using the latest FT-470 with the PA-6, Dc Car Adapter/Charger, fed with a 12v Motor Cycle Battery and the original FT-470 on the FNB-10 Ni-Cd pack whilst hooked up to the Arrow Sat antenna.

I like the performance and look of the paired FT-470’s strapped to the boom but found the trailing power lead into the second FT-470 unit awkward and cumbersome. I had a quick reminder of the specs in the FT-470 Operating Manual where I read the unit would work from as low as 5.5VDC up to a maximum of 15VDC.

I had recently been given a box of 12, 9V PP3 Type Battery’s and I had a couple of old dead FNB-10 battery cases I wanted to open up and fiddle around with.

I cut out the original rechargeable cells and soldered in a couple of quick release battery leads which would fit the PP3 9V Battery’s. The new leads can also be used later for a future plan which will be to find and fit a cradle to house some more AA, NiMH 2.300mAh 1.2V Rechargeable cells into the old FNB-10 case.

I decided to connect two 9V batteries in parallel circuit to the old battery case connection point. I can now power up the second FT-470 to receive the Satellite down link frequency for a lot longer without fading allowing the use of the original FT-470 for the Transmit uplink Frequency running my Rechargeable Ni-Cd Battery pack. I can now get a few days of use out of the two PP3’s as opposed to 15 minutes if I’m lucky or a power lead and adapter wrapped around my legs. Hurray! I now have two FT-470’s working well!

As usual I enjoyed getting the soldering iron out and having a play, I am pretty pleased with the result and I will be looking out for some kind of cradle to house 6, AA Battery’s to be used for my next FT-470 job.

In the meantime I can use my long battery life Kenwood TH-F7 for dog walking and when I fancy a few more bands the FT-817 is always fully charged and ready to roll.

The QRP side of Amateur Radio for me is what its all about, I have had some superb Satellite and SOTA contacts operating with the minimum amount of power that I need which is often less than 5 Watts. Long live my exceptionally good pair of old, but still up to date performance wise - Yaesu FT-470 UHF/VHF FM Handie Transceiver’s.

Chinese Porn!!!!!

Just a quick post to inform any readers regarding the abundance of Chinese comments that have been appearing here at my Ham Radio blog. They seem to be just another source of spamming in the form of porn enthusiasts rather than radio ops/ engineering fans.

Although I am quite open minded and allow all comments good or bad to be seen on my site I've decided to enable the feature that asks to Show word verification when commenting. This should filter out the Chinese Pornsters unless of course they are truly passionate about Ham Radio.

For all those interested in Chinese porn, see the previous comments. For those who like myself will get battered by there YL's for going anywhere remotely near those dubious dodgy sites, I apologise for any unsuitable links they may have attached with the seemingly harmless if not slightly puzzling comments left by my new Chinese followers?

Have a great weekend, hope to catch some of you on the bands!

10 and 12 Meter Verticals

Whilst having a sort out I came across some old mobile whips that I had stashed away. I found my old 9 foot stainless 1/4 wave 10M whip, a base loaded 10M whip as well as a 6M whip and a 2M whip. After playing around with the various 5/8 threaded antennas I decided to erect one antenna with radials for 10M and a second for 12M by joining two antennas (6M & 2M) together.
Here is the 10M whip with radials.

Here is the 6M joined with the 2M whip which is perfectly resonant on 12M

I have been hearing some nice signals on both bands earlier today whilst using the FT-857 to listen on 12M as the FT-847 was listening on 10M. I will be TXing on both bands soon with more to come on the results of each antenna.

The new mono band verticals join the rest of my HF antennas which still comprise of a home made delta loop for 80M, another home made delta loop for 20M, and one I bought which is the Hustler 6BTV.

On The Bright Side

After a week of holidaying at home in the glorious sunshine, our last day was spent watching the much needed rain falling hard up here on the moor top. During our travels I had managed to pick up some replacement 12V Lilliput LES lamps for my "in darkness" favourite old HF radio, the Yaesu FT-767GX.

Once I removed the screws I managed to get the iron in and replace a couple of rather short wires that were soldered to the lamp housing close to the meter. The job was tight for space (for a welder) but easy enough once I got stuck in and as you can see from the above picture the meter has two new bright lamps shining once again.

I have enjoyed using my regular Satellite radio The FT-847 on the HF bands but I have been missing my old mate the FT-767. Now that I have re-illuminated the good old fashioned mechanical meter, I am looking forward to many more hours of HF fun with the old beast.

Is This Frequency In Use?

The past few days has brought interesting conditions to most of the HF bands. I spent some time checking up and down the bands to find:
50Mhz - SSB Open
29Mhz - FM Open
28Mhz - SSB Open
24MHz - SSB Open
21MHz - SSB Open
18MHz - SSB Open
14MHz - SSB Open
Its great to hear plenty of radio activity coming in on the higher portion of the HF bands, its been a while since I struggled to find a clear and empty frequency.

Happy DXing have a great weekend!

Live feed from the shack

Over the weekend I was tuning around the HF bands from my shack when I came across quite a few special event stations. I decided to have a go at streaming the received signals live from my shack via the internet using Ustream.

I started off with the odd viewer and once I announced my live stream feed on Twitter it wasn’t long before I had a reasonable audience (47 in total). I began streaming the live signals I was receiving on the HF bands which turned out well and allowed other operators to compare my received signals to the signals that they were receiving at their locations.

I was pleased to hear that many signals were coming in on my amateur radio equipment very well compared to the sigs received at the viewers end as I was quickly informed by one of Ustream live feed viewers.

I was then asked by Twitter pal and software designer Scott “Satscape” Hather to stream some live Satellite operations via Ustream demonstrating how to make qso with amateur satellites. This worked out very well as I made qso via AO-51, SO-50, VO-52 and HO-68 whilst streaming live over Ustream.

I had another go last night and caught HO-68 via my web cam whilst streaming live.
Here is the video of myself making qso with many stations from Europe through to Greenland via last nights HO-68 pass.

Watch out for more Youtube videos and live video stream via Ustream.

Mobile DX

This morning was excellent propagation whilst driving to work in my Toyota 4X4. There were many VK's coming through very strong with 5/9+ signals all over the 20m band.
At around 7.15utc I heard Ian VK3MO calling CQ around 14.178MHz, Ian was 5/9+30db in signal strength. I managed to get back to Melbourne and work Ian for 10 minutes as I drove to work giving him a 5/9 signal back from my FT-100 and Maldol HFC-20 mono band antenna.

I love the early morning openings and I am always amazed how well the mobile set up always seems to perform.

NOAA-19 Over N.W Europe

With Iceland's Volcano Eyjafjallajökull causing so much controversy, I decided to track NOOA -19's latest pass with the help from Satscape.

I wanted to see if I could spot the Volcanic ash that everyone is hearing about for myself.

The equipment I used today was my good old Yaesu FT-2600M and a 137MHz vertical whip. NOAA-19 transmits APT on FM at 137.100 MHz.

There are more NOOA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite(POES) which transmit images of the Earth and are simple enough to receive and decode. I am still using Radiocom 5.2 to decode the WX images as seen below.

Image of UK captured by NOAA-19, Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite(POES) received at my Amateur Station at 12.38 utc today.

Back From A Long Walk

Dudley says "Sorry I have been absent, I've been playing"
The past couple of weeks I have been enjoying Easter break from the College where I work, it has been a fantastic holiday but unfortunately all good things must come to an end, as I will be working again next week.

Despite my lack of posts here, I have been fairly active on the bands making lots of impressive DX both from the mobile and QTH.

Conditions at times have been very interesting as well as totally flat because of the solar activity. One of the days when the propagation peaked, I was fortunate to be driving back from the East Coast when I made QSO with 9M6TMT - Tom, and HS0ZIN - Paul, both booming in 5/9+ signals.

I shall be back to my usual blogging over the next few days as I adjust back to normality but in the meantime have a great weekend and hope to hear you on the bands.