RS0ISS SSTV Reception 14.15 utc

A successfully received image from space using my FT-847 and satellite array

 Using MMSSTV software I received images directly from the International Space Station as it passed over my region a few minutes ago.

DX MACHINE Mobile On The West Coast

Today was a good day! I decided to take the family to the sea side for a little adventure. We left Yorkshire and headed west into the neighbouring county of Lancashire ending up on the west coast at Cleveleys which is very close by to the world famous Blackpool. As we arrived it was the peak of high tide and the waves were splashing nicely over the sea wall. I fired up my Coleman petrol stove and made a warming brew to compliment the stash of sandwiches Louise had knocked up before we set off. Even Dudley our trusty hound had his lunch by the sea side and a fun time was had by all.

DX MACHINE M0YKS Mobile

As well as having a superb view ahead the view behind wasn't bad either, in fact it was perfect I could see a playground/park directly behind the van which the kids would enjoy for 30 minutes. I decided I would take a look at 20m whilst the family were playing where I heard a lot of contest stations coming in strong to my mobile station. I have recently reinstalled my YAESU FT-857 after finding some of the hidden menu settings to be incorrectly set which I carefully set up in my shack to my preferred settings which have been working out pretty well over the past few weeks of testing with the Maldol mono band antennas.

I made some QSOs with non contest stations which was quite tricky as the band was almost full up of contest stations. I also got some of the 20 meter band activity on video as seen above where I make a QSO into HA land. 73 have a good Sunday!

New Ham Radio Video's Out - HF/LF Antenna Comparison Tests & NOAA 19 Satellite Weather Reception

Reception of todays weather image directly from NOAA 19 Satellite. 

I am running some different software to decode the image called WXtoImg. Satellite tracking software is gpredict. Radio is YAESU FT- 847. Antenna 5 Element Yagi YAESU G-5500 elevation and rotation controller.   

Late Night Activity
It was another late night back in the shack of M0YKS. The family are all tucked up cosy in bed fast asleep as I take a listen up and down the HF & LF bands in the hope of hearing some rare and distant stations.

Guest Book Tribute & Thanks!

Just a quick Thank You to all of you for passing by and supporting this Blog as well as my Ham Radio Main Site and a special thanks pictured above as a tribute to the first 20 entries to my main site visitors guest book.

Its half term at my local college which has allowed me to enjoy time with the family as well as play some day time radio. I have been enjoying calling CQ and will try my best to continue airing the new call whenever its possible especially throughout the next few days.  This week you will be able to catch me on HF as M0YKS throughout the day as well as most evenings operating from the shack from around about 22.00 utc. Also some daytime activity is planned as M0YKS/M from my HF mobile " DX Machine" as seen below now running a couple of extra watts... 73!

Weather Satellite Decoding Of NOAA 19, NOAA 18 & NOAA 15

I am still experimenting with WXtoImage and caught some earlier satellite passes to try out.

 NOAA 15 Today at 17.23 utc

NOAA 18 Today at 16.36 utc

 NOAA 18 Today at  14.56 utc

NOAA 19 Today at 13.26 utc

First Summit For My YL s

Beamsley Beacon North Yorkshire

Today was our first trip up the to the top of Beacon hill near Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire. It was a bit chilly at the top so I couldn't hang about for to long, but we did hear a few stations on my handheld Kenwood THF-7e transceiver. Well done to my girls on their first ever trig point summit.

Weather Satellite Decoding - NOAA-19

Weather Image Received From NOAA-19

I recently changed my computer and replaced it with the acer Aspire XC-115 mini tower. The PC is very fast and has all the required bells and whistles with the latest windows 8.1 operating system. The program that I normally use for decoding (radiocom 5.2) was designed for XP and is a bit old for the latest operating system so I decided to try another well known satellite decoder known as WXtoImg.
 I downloaded the latest window 8 version which seems to be working quite well as I caught a pass earlier this afternoon from NOAA 19. The decoded image above was received via my FT-847 and satellite antenna, the frequency used was 137.100 MHz.

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 _ . _

Google Draw

I thought I would try out google draw to create a handy reminder in my shack of  my new Call sign.

Advanced Amateur Radio Exam

Greetings to All!

Its been a long time since I blogged, this is because I have been very busy studying for the advanced amateur radio licence examination. I am extremely pleased to be able to share with you the fantastic news which I received earlier today which is....... I passed!

My new Call sign is M0YKS.

YO HO HO..... Its That Time Again!

Late Night Opening On 80M

During the last hour of the day just before bedtime I like to tune around the bands to see what stations I can hear coming in to my amateur radio station. The past couple of weeks most evenings have found the majority of the bands have been closed and the little bit of late night activity has been mainly on the lower bands such as 40m & 80m. On the lower bands late on I have worked and heard many US Hams coming in well up on 40 meters and I have heard one or two good ones coming in great on 80m at around midnight local time staying open throughout the night until I am back up early for work listening over breakfast.
Last night before I hit the sack I heard CU7MD at 11.50 utc on 3.790MHz who was up at 5/9 with very few takers responding to his CQ call.

I listened for while and decided to give Jose - CU7MD from Azores Islands a shout back where I was heard at his end with a matching 5/9 report. I was running my FT-1000MK V MP and Carolina Windom 80m antenna system which is only up at around 25ft above the ground. I was pleased with the Windom's performance as was I pleased with my YAESU radio which always serves me well. Later I looked Jose - CU7MD up on QRZ.com and was chuffed to find my callsign logged on Jose QRZ page in a log containing the last 10 stations to be worked by Jose
.

Hope to work some more late night wintery DX openings on 80m and 40m over the coming months before we head into spring. 73 Happy Ham'ing!

G4KQJ "King, Queen, Jack"

As I listened to the weekly GB2RS news broadcast I heard the sad news that Bill - G4KQJ had passed away last week at the age of 87 and a half after he had recently been poorly.
G4KQJ had read the RSGB news for over twenty five years and was always a 5/9+ signal up on 145.525MHz from his amateur radio news station GB2RS which was located in Brighouse, West Yorkshire. Bill known as King Queen Jack, was a first class amateur radio operator and a very good news reader who always had time for a rag chew before and after the RSGB news broadcast. Bill had a wealth of experience in many topics but the ones that I remember the most and had the many pleasures of discussing and listening about were of his many years of service in the Royal Air Force. Bill was originally from the south of England but fell in love with a northern girl from nearby Bradford, He settled up north and he became a respected fellow Yorkshireman. G4KQJ was a amateur radio friend who I spoke almost weekly with for over 10 years, we never actually met but I will miss hearing him on the air as will lots of other local radio amateurs. R.I.P Bill, our thoughts are with Bill's family and friends.

The Return Of The FT-100

Since my YAESU FT-100 came back from the rig docs I have been itching to change it back over into my mobile station. The FT-100 had a technical issue a couple of years back which turned out to be a number of dry joints. I have had my FT-100 in service since 2004 /M and really like this particular radio, I prefer the FT-100 screen size over the FT-857 especially the signal meter which is much better on the FT-100 in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I have to say that the FT-857 is also a good mobile rig and has served me well as my spare whilst out and about in the DX Machine. But the FT-100 is my preferred radio of the two for every day mobile operation, so my FT-857 is better off back in the shack coupled to my Tri band vertical next to my other lovely YAESU Radios. In the DX Machine I have already been working stations loud and clear with the FT-100 earlier today during the work journeys on my favourite mobile band which is 20m. I will be back in the mobile and on 20m again in the morning at around 8.00 - 8.30 utc and then at around 17.00 utc homeward bound.

The weekend gave us all the opportunity to get outside in the great outdoors where I got to demonstrate my old YAESU FT-470 "handie" in action to my lovely daughters and faithful hound. We listened in to a qso on a local repeater hooked up to IRLP where two Hams from the US were coming through nicely. I should be out and about and active on the Air over the weekend again WX permitting.
It was also my lovely camera woman/YL Louise (M3TLL) birthday, so we had plenty of visitors, cake and fun.

 In the meantime the family are all sleeping and the clock is ticking, its shack time where my FT-1000MP is pulling in some nice signals from across the Atlantic up on 40m, it is time for me to have a play! 73 Happy Ham'ing

Engineering and Electronics Class

ICE - Industrial Centre Of Excellence
One of the courses I am delivering at the College where I work comprises of Engineering and Electronics (ICE). The ICE students on this course are into their second year of having me as their tutor and so far they have developed skills in MIG, MMA and TIG Welding, Metal craft and Fabrication, Plasma arc cutting, Sheet metal and are currently focusing on Electronics. So far my students have built basic soldered circuits using boards, resistors, diodes, and LEDs, as well as Morse keys which work with buzzers. The students have also been learning about amateur radio and responded well to sending messages to each other in Morse on their home brew kits. Over the past few weeks they have come on very well with their soldering ability and have moved onto the final project which is a Digital FM receiver. The FM radio receivers are quite nice kits and it was very exciting when the first student to successfully complete the receiver had radio 1 coming in loud and clear earlier this morning.

Building A Multi Band Dipole
As I mentioned, I have been trying my best to promote amateur radio into the syllabus and have had a good response form the ICE students towards the hobby. In today's lesson the students finished assembling a home brew multi band dipole which had elements cut for 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, 10m and the 2 meter band.

The students rigged the dipole up as a temporary installation about 2 meters above the ground, I had brought my antenna analyser allowing the students to check the elements were resonant on the dedicated bands, the rest was up to me. I hooked up my YAESU FT-817 which had been recently repaired with a new bnc socket fitted and two new PA finals, all courtesy of LAM Communications.
As soon as the little FT-817 was powered up we heard lots of stations coming in great up on 20 meters. We didn't have enough time to try all the bands so I concentrated on 20 meters and soon came across a Belgium  station calling CQ, I explained to my students that it would be unlikely that we would make the trip into Belgium using only 2 watts but I was determined to try and would have a good go! Amazingly I was heard on my first call /QRP and I was able to maintain a qso into Belgium for over 15 minutes using the antenna built by my students who were totally impressed by it all! I promised them I would take in my Cushcraft MA5B mini beam and a bit more power (FT-890) but that's only after they design and build a portable tilt over mast to support the antenna. Are target date for the completion of this project will be for National Science week March 2015 when we will hopefully be active on the bands from the college. 73