ISS School Contact With Sir George Simpson Jr. High, Canada RX 2E0HTS

Earlier this evening ARISS participated in another successful  International Space Station school contact with Sir George Simpson Jr. High, Canada. The qso took place at around 20,00 utc,  I received a good signal from the ISS crew which can be heard in the video below.

Back To The Hill Top Retreat!

I have been enjoying my Easter break with the family and getting about as well as playing radio in between. Finally the sun has been visible throughout the weekend which was all that was required to enthuse us all to venture up to our moor top holiday home. When we got there the snow drifts were still hanging around despite the pleasant temperature of 8 C. Dudley our dog enjoyed sniffing out the many rabbits to be found as we walked around the moor top retreat.

 Inside the shack (B) the amateur radio gear was thankfully still working very well. I dusted back the sheets and I enjoyed playing radio on my good old FT-767 HF transceiver & delta loop antenna. My little FT-2600M & the rest of the VHF kit that I have set-up was also still good including the home brew IO-10 Sat beam and rotator. I worked some nice stations on 17m, 15m and 12m throughout the afternoon and had a good time hanging out with my lovely family with some juice, hot drinks and chocolate biscuits.

Hope to catch some of you soon either from home, shack-B or possibly mobile.Have fun on the bands, G L happy DX & 73 

Perfect Band Conditions

The HF bands have been quite good here in Yorkshire of late.  I was surprised just how good 15 meters is right now during a nice long qso with a US West Coast ham station KU7O - Jerry, from Washington.



Jerry was calling CQ on 21.290 MHz at around 21.30 utc with a cracking signal to my cobweb antenna &  FT-1000mp transceiver when I answered his call. Our signals were strong enough to maintain a reasonable exchange of information throughout the qso, it was definitely an armchair copy! Jerry was 5/8 - 5/9 and my report back was 5/4 which was pretty cool. I am impressed with the performance of 15m band tonight and shall be getting back to it after this post to catch the rest of the signals I am hearing during this nice opening. 73 Happy Holiday!

Vk3MO Ian busting the Sunday Morning Contest qrm

Tweeking The Feed Line

I finally got around to re running the carolina windom feed line to try and gain an improved/optimum arrangement. The previous arrangement was temporary as the feed line intercepted the balun at around 45°. The new feed line installation is now at 90° and allows the feed line to terminate at the choke with much more of a straight drop. As an idea to try cut down unwanted QRN, I  added a short ground wire to a copper stake which is attached to the base of the choke via the plug connection. This is a simple experiment that I have been pondering over for a while. So far I have noticed signals received seem much quieter with very low noise levels on 80M as well as improved noise levels on 40M. I shall be once again comparing and experimenting as I switch between my other antennas as I conduct some tests. It will be interesting to see if the different feed line route changes the direction of the radiated RF field from the antenna and hopefully help it work even better.

Shack B - QRT Till Spring!

Shack - B locked down for the winter!

Snow Covered Antennas

When I got in from work I grabbed some camera shots of my antennas handling our first significant snow fall since moving into this QTH just over two years ago.

My Satellite Array for 145/435MHz

 Here you can see the wire antenna which is a Carolina Windom 80M - 10M.

 Its up at around 25ft and is 131ft in Length.

 The picture below shows my CobWebb and Hustler 6BTV looking upwards.

 The view in horizontal gives you an idea of how well my garden is elevated

The nearest chimney can be seen in the lower part of the image.

Finally a picture of my Tri-band Snow-linear, I mean Co-linear vertical antenna.

The next thing to do is to see how the SWR is before any transmitting takes place, snow can cause undesirable effects to SWR.

 These two don't really care about the SWR they just like to play out in the snow!

73 de Simon 2E0HTS

QSL Gallery Update

Follow the link to see if you card has made it to my QSL Gallery 2E0HTS - Latest Received eQSL cards

73 and thanks!

The EUropean AMateur SATellite reflector

The Eu AmSat Forum has recently migrated to a new web address. The forum is well worth a visit and will be particularly interesting if you are a satellite fan or operator!

80 Meters & Beyond!

The holiday was great fun with the family and we all had a wonderful few days of pure enjoyment. Our daughter experienced her second Christmas which proved to be very exciting indeed. Dudley the DX hound also enjoyed the festive fun especially the part which included a 2 foot marrow bone treat!
Louise and I were kept busy throughout the week and unfortunately for my blog and transceivers, I did not manage much radio time until the new year kicked in. More recently, I have been  operating in the evening after 10.00 utc and have found conditions fairly quiet, the higher end of the HF bands have been more or less completely closed down but 40 meters and 80 meters have remained open.

My FT-1000 MKV and Carolina Windom antenna are still doing a great job along side my CobWeb and 6BTV. Up to press, the Winter WX has not troubled them to much and I am hoping to get away with minimum antenna maintenance this winter h.i. (All hell will probably break loose now I've said that).

Over the next few weeks I expect conditions will improve especially now that we have passed the half way mark of the dark nights. Until then I shall continue operating the twilight shift down on 40m & 80m during the week and as the saying goes "the sky's the limit" come the weekend!  Have a good one, happy DX and a late but sincere Happy New Year!

Have A Ham Merry Christmas!

Tomorrow is the last working day of the year and I am looking forward to enjoying the Christmas and New Year holiday celebrations with the family.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas and happy new year!

80M Path Open To NP4

Earlier this morning just as daylight broke I managed a nice QSO down on 3.793 MHz with Pedro - NP4A. Pedro was booming in at 5/9+20dB at my end as I used my Carolina Windom off set wire dipole (131 feet long) to work him. I received a 5/9 report back from Puerto Rico to my trusty transceiver - YAESU Mark V field.

NOAA-19 WX Image RX at 14.30 utc On 10-12-2012

NOAA-19 WX Image RX at 12.50 utc On 10-12-2012

NOAA - 19 Satellite Weather Received at 13.00 utc by 2E0HTS

 Today Sunday the 9th of December at around 13.00 utc I managed to receive a good live image from Earth orbiting weather satellite NOAA-19.  In the received transmission, the UK can be found close to the centre of the image which shows the forecast for the next 48 hrs. It doesn't look so good, cloud can be seen rolling in off of the Atlantic.

I received the weather satellite signal 5/9+60 from NOAA-19 using my satellite antenna array and YAESU FT-847 transceiver which are hooked up to my PC. The software I used to track NOAA-19 is Satscape and the decoding software is RadioCom 5.2.