M0YKS/M HF operating

As we all now are getting used to being spoiled with regular band openings I have been making the most of my daily commute to work. Most mornings I make at least one QSO whilst mobile on the 20m band. Today was very good as I managed three QSO along the way. The band was very busy with DX and short skip signals coming up and down to the trusty YAESU FT-857. The past months morning mobiling has brought me some good surprises as I keep hearing the west coast of The USA. I managed to bust a pileup into Oregon which I was very pleased with as I ran about 80 watts into the mono band MALDOL HFC 20 antenna which is still effective after over 15 years of daily mobile use. 

Solar cycle 25 is definitely interesting so far, especially early morning mobile, by lunch I have noticed a lull with just a couple of signals and then its back wide open again at my finish time. 

My home-based shack is slightly down on action as the pleasant WX on an evening has caught my attention just lately but it will be business as usual once the cold creeps back again. For now it's good to be operating my Ham station out and about enjoying both good propagation and good long days with occasional sunshine. I hope you are also having a nice mix of what life has to offer. Listen out for M0YKS/mobile at approximately 7.15 utc on the 20m band. 73 good DX

 

M0YKS/motor cycle 

Still Decoding NOAA

 

Now receiving with a new INNOVANTENNA 12 Element LFA YAGI (X Pole) innovantennas x-pol-yagis

software used ..

WXtoIMG

M7ELC - CQ WW 21 Youth Contest Result First Place In England

Today started well with the awesome news that M7ELC managed a truly great first Contest result. Elsie M7ELC created a new England Record operating on all bands running low power in the Youth category and hit the podium position as Number 1 in England! Go Girl! We are all proud of her great start to her amateur radio participation and lets hope her future experiences on Ham radio continue to develop. Well done Elsie M7ELC England's No 1 Youth on Low Power!

As for myself (Elsie's Dad) I did quite well as usual and came 5th in England as a High Power All Band Classic operator. I did better than usual with the Zones but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Have a fun on the bands! Thanks for passing by. 73.

 

Solar Cycle 25 - HF DX Heaven

 

What a difference a few weeks have made, cycle 25 has definitely woken up! A slightly delayed start due to an overlap of cycle 24 causing disturbance to the new born cycle 25 and keeping the flames quenched. But now the its out with the old in with the new as we experience some fantastic DX openings on all of the HF bands. Enjoy! My Fellow DX Friends!

I have been racking up lots of DX as I operate some late night DX, my station has been hitting all over the globe and the bands have stayed wide open until late and often all night long. It has been really addictive and I have found myself active every day from my radio shack in the search of DX stations that are currently booming through. Morning activity /Mobile from the van has also popped up some nice surprises with  JA, VK and ZL signals and a QSO into Brazil whilst on the move with 80 watts. On my return journey I have heard YB and HS 5/9+ whilst driving and listening on the 20m HF band.

A lot of you will be also experiencing the amazing band conditions and loving it I suspect, but for anyone that hasn't yet had the opportunity to get on the air recently now is the time to dust off the equipment and get the wires, beams, verticals or whatever you fancy trying out back up because things are alive and kicking once again on the HF bands. I have kept up with the video streams and uploads and you can catch the band wide open right here as I make some noise across the pond.

The new solar cycle should now continue to propagate the HF bands and we can expect improvement into the next couple of years taking us up to the peak and then dropping back off on the decline. The full cycle is usually around 7 years of peak conditions and 12 years to complete. Below is an image from the space weather prediction center outlining the current position in the cycle and predicted level of sunspot activity which is just what us DX chasers need plenty of. 

Well that is my update from the shack of M0YKS, hope to catch some of you on the next live stream on my YouTube channel. I recently added a BHI DSP Noise eliminating extension speaker to my HF station and its absolutely the bees knees! The quality of received audio/signal out of the BHI DSP is incredible and I am very pleased with it. Again my latest videos on my channel have the speaker inline so you can take a listen for yourself. In the meantime get on the radio and call CQ DX, I have worked tons of operators that run 100 Watts with big signals. I hopefully will catch you soon on the HF bands! 

Until next the post, Thanks for visiting! Stay healthy! Have FUN! 73 Happy hunting, Good DX, de Simon M0YKS  

Cycled Out?

Well I don't know about you but here in Bradford the band conditions on an evening have been absolutely terrible with high QRN levels and little activity. 

 

I have made the odd DX contact on 40m but overall the shack has had a lot of noisy AF and very little RF generated  I'm looking forward to getting on during the daytime over the weekend, so let's hope that the solar cycle starts peddling again and gets a bit of speed up offering some decent band conditions.

My Ameritron amplifier with its GI7BT valves has helped me have some fun thankfully. The current band conditions certainly favour QRO operation but even with 400w it's been quite tough to fill my log the way I like to  Not to worry I am sure it will not be long before I am back up on 20m Late night DXing. In the meantime I'm battling it out QRV on 80m and 40m with a terrible high noise level. Boo 👎 

Catch you again soon. Keep a watch for Aurora and vhf band openings as this week's forecast looks interesting. The information is supplied from William Hepburn's DX Info centre.

Tropospheric Ducting Forecast

Best 73. 

Ham Radio In 2022

Greetings to one and all! I hope you had a good Christmas and you are having a great new year so far.

We are enjoying one or two decent DX openings when they occur but overall the bands have been average to poor at my end. 

However I have had a few good DX contacts on HF and worked down on the lower end of HF operating on the 40m and 80m bands. 

My mobile activity has been slightly better than from the shack, mainly due to the time I get on air at home. When mobile I'm hitting the long path DX to VK and ZL on my morning work run. The other day New Zealand was booming into the van as I pulled up into the college car park. Today I worked into Brazil, Iceland and Italy using 80- 100w from the FT-857 and Maldol HFC 20m antenna. As you already know that combo has been an excellent mobile station for me and is still effective 18 years later. Lol,  the durability and robust build of both antenna and transceiver has definitely been outstanding. I have made thousands of DX /M using the same setup in many vehicles and still hammering it out in 2022. Happy DX folks let's hope this latest solar cycle starts to play nice and provides a bit more propagation real soon. 

Nice to hear the 40M awake with Ham radio activity once again on an evening here in Yorkshire.

Just thought I would drop by and have a quick catch up with you all. We are all back at work and school after a couple of weeks of having covid and other than been very tired on an evening nothing too bad to report, other than its a slow comeback.

As for the radio activity I have recently spent a considerable amount of shack time working the satellite bands. Since I carried out the antenna work on the satellite array over the summer I can say my satellite operation has been awesome. The signals are much improved both on TX and RX and I have made many excellent QSO on SO-50, AO-91, ISS, RS-44, XW-2 Sats. I definitely cannot wait to be back on the satellites over the Christmas holidays as the passes are now more frequent in the day time when I am usually working. The good news is there are only two days to go and the holiday period at college starts! Yay hay!

I have checked the 40m band out most evenings and although I have been tired and not feeling like calling CQ I have worked a couple of decent DX and heard a few JA signals as well as YB and VK along with North Africa so things are stating to pick up at my end. Quite often I am hearing plenty of Europe and they seem to be working lots of DX on 40m but here in North England the signals are not quite reaching my antenna the same. I have tried both vertical and horizontal and have found that for 40m the Hustler Vertical with radials is the better performer by far. With the Ameritron AL-811 and its two GI7BT ceramic valve upgrade I can power up the vertical nicely and get out quite well, I just need to time things right and catch a decent opening on the band.  

So folks I will continue checking the band conditions this evening and tomorrow as I run up to the weekend and once again then the late night DX can happen lol. 73 good DX have a great Christmas holiday and hope to work you soon. Stay well!

 

Looking Forward to 2022

As we say goodbye to another weird year of disruption caused by the ongoing pandemic, ironically everyone has caught Covid In my household including myself. The good thing is we seem to be not too ill just temperatures, aching and fatigue so far. As for ham radio it has been a good year for sure. I have enjoyed the next solar cycle starting up and have had plenty of good DX on HF. My activities via Space has been good with great results into the Satellites and ISS as well as improving the reception by moving the antenna array. I would say my /M operation has been less than I would have hoped for which of course is down to the fuel prices being unreasonable here in the UK. Our Government is determined to limit our travel one way or another. I will be glad when this year is finished with for sure, let's hope 2022 heads us all in a much more desirable direction. The best thing for me of 2021 is M7ELC Elsie my daughter getting on the air and not much else can beat that happy feeling. Have a good Christmas holiday all and a much better New year! 

M7ELC Raw Score CQWW 2021

 

M7ELC - Elsie Operating In Her First CQWW Contest.

This years CQWW managed to get the attention of YL Elsie M7ELC and I had doubts as to if I would be active myself as she took over the shack. Of course I was totally happy that Elsie wanted to make plenty of DX and it was a proud moment watching her in action.

As you can see she did amazing for her first ever contest.

 My efforts were also quite good once M7ELC moved over and I got in the hot seat.

I managed 22 zones this year which is my previous high score from a few years ago. I have yet to beat 22 out of 40 zones but I thought conditions were pretty good with plenty of nice signals and lots of DX.

As usual I had an assistant taking care of tracking the Zones, this year it was my youngest daughter Martha. She probably will be going for a licence herself once she is ready to learn the less fun stuff. In the meantime a great job with the tracking and art work with her CQ WW Zone chart below.

Catch you all again on the next post or better still on the air.... For now stay healthy and have fun best 73 from us all! 

THANKS for passing by Hamradiooperator.blogspot.com. The UKs longest running Ham Radio blog.

CQ WW DX 2021

 Just 10 days to go before my favourite radio contest takes place! I will be checking out that my station is working properly in advance and plan to be active from tomorrow on and off all week. I wonder what the results will be like this time now that we are experiencing some decent regular openings on all of the HF bands. Looking forward to catching up with some of you on the air! Good DX and best 73 enjoy your weekend because next weekend will be radio chaos lol.

Still Active and Operating Ham Radio

 

Its been an awful long time since I posted here on my old blog! Well I am still in good health and of course still playing lots of Ham radio when I have spare time.

The past month or so has been crazy at work so my live streams on YouTube has suffered and I have not been as active on camera as usual. I have of course still been here in the shack just slightly with more of a lower profile whilst hunting for the precious DX. 

The station at M0YKS is still working exceptionally well, all antennas are holding up well so far and I have a nice new three section ladder to help maintain and keep them that way. 

I also have a second valve amplifier which runs the same Russian military tank GI7BT Ceramic valves. This one is currently in use and is in a nice shiny Ameritron casing. My original GI7BT amplifier is now rebuilt with new valves and a few other bits and pieces. I had converted the Valve mounting setup after advise from a local amp guy but found it not suitable to operate that way so I ended up recently rebuilding the amp back to the original specs. Its now safely stored away as a back up secondary amplifier. 

Right now I am about to call into the 40m RSGB post News net read by Geoff GM8OFQ and send a signal report of 5/9 +40 to the Island of Hoy, part of Orkney Islands above Scotland! I always try my best to listen in on a Sunday morning to find out what we have to look out for over the coming week. From the sounds of it, we can expect more openings on the higher HF bands, some Aurora and possibly meteor scatter on VHF as well as EME. 

Catch up again with all of you soon, stay healthy and thanks for passing by one of the U.K longest and oldest running original Ham radio blog. 73 de M0YKS Simon and Hamily!

M7ELC Working Satellites and ISS...What's Next?

 Well its been a great couple of weeks and to cap things off we recently had a fantastic Van camping expedition up in Galloway Scotland. M7ELC and myself M0YKS got the chance to use the MM prefix whilst out and about in the DX Machine. 

The band conditions were fair and I worked Puerto Rico and USA as well as into Russia and across Europe. I heard Indonesia and my FT-857 performed well using both Hustler mobile and Maldol mobile antennas.

On our return Elsie M7ELC was straight back in the shack and this time she worked her first Space contact using the ISS repeater which was awesome!

So after a busy week which included getting my FT-817 repaired by a very nice guy called Karl - M0KRL from South Yorkshire. The FT-817 has a new PA output for both HF and VHF after it was blown many moons ago. I will be playing /p out and about and also trying it on the satellites in the coming week. I am pleased to have got it repaired as well as opened up across the full 40m band. 

So like I said a very busy week of holiday family ''Hamily'' fun its back to work in the morning for the final college term leading up to summer. This one is a six week term so I will be off on my travels again in the not so distant future. In the meantime I will be playing Radio which will be along side my new shack partner M7ELC at times lol. Not so much live streams as the return to normal life at the moment is pretty much complete thankfully. I will be making the odd flash stream here and there but mainly having fun on the air with a few video uploads here and there when something interesting is happening that is worth sharing. Enjoy the sunshine, Band openings and plenty of fresh air! Catch up soon folks! 

de M0YKS Simon and Hamily

M0PIR Wins The Microphone Tower

 I would like to thank all of you guys that entered the competition, it was a bit of fun to mark the end of lockdown and my regular weekly live streaming check ins. I'm sure you have all seen enough of me keeping you up late at night lol. So finally the time is here for at least a bit less of the live streams. lol.  I'm amazed how many of you guys have kept up. Thanks for the company throughout the past year and half of a very unusual time and we made it! Yeah!!! From now on as we move into the next solar cycle and summer freedom I will be doing the live stuff as and when I am in the mood lol, the same goes for the regular video recordings.

 Anyway the answers to the competition for the microphone stand are:

1. My 1st Call - M3HTS  

2, How many Valves in my amp - 2

3,What is my most popular YouTube video of all time - Hustler base station antenna used on my mobile 

So a few got some correct and three of you got all of the right answers. Well done! I did a live draw on the YouTube Ham Radio Sunday Night Live Check in and Sparky Clark - Jordan M0PIR was the lucky winner 🏆😀.  Well done Jordan the tower is on its way already posted out.

   

 So that was fun.... now I am back playing some Satellite and Late night DX on 20m. Great signals on both Satellite and HF this evening 👌 73 Good DX de M0YKS Simon. 

M0YKS MINI TOWER MIC Stand Competition

Ham Radio Activity - New Licensee in the Household M7ELC - M0YKS Mini Tower Competition

Well its been far too long since i posted here so I thought I best sort that out. What have I been doing lol. Lots of radio including livestreams, a few repairs and plenty of work. You might have seen on my YouTube channel that my eldest daughter Elsie has now become one of us and now holds her own Call sign at the sweet age of 10 years (only just as well). Her Mum M3TLL, Sister and I are all very proud of her amazing achievement. We have been working together throughout lockdown teaching Elsie and she has been an awesome student that's for sure! Well done M7ELC - Elsie.

As well as playing plenty of radio I recently achieved the QRZ DX100 using only a microphone and antenna no digital modes or internet! 

I have also had a bit of time to take down the satellite antennas and rotator for a 5 year service. This went well, I since refit the installation in a different more accessible location to the side of my QTH as well as replace a broken reflector and change the polarisation from horizontal to vertical which has made a massive improvement on all of the satellites. I am now booming into both FM and SSB Satellites and receiving excellent NOAA weather images. I am looking forward to ISS switching back across to the repeater which is due to happen in the next couple of weeks.

Satellite Rotator YAESU G-5500, 5 Element Yagi 145 MHz , 15 Element X Yagi 435-437MHz - The Latest Position a few feet lower but working much better than before. 

Radio propagation on HF has been much better and I am spending more and more time on the higher portion of HF such as 20m again and really making the most of the late night DX openings into North and South America and the Caribbean. I have had some great reports from Argentina and beyond and currently I am chasing Master Of Radio Communication - South America award. I have a way to go as I am at 54% so far.

Finally over lock down I have done lots of hours live on YouTube operating Ham Radio and amazingly the subscription numbers have doubled I am currently at around about  2.42K and climbing. So as a thank you to each and everyone for watching, following and keeping me sane through a couple of long a difficult lockdown periods I have decided to make a second mic stand. This one has been improved and will be given to a lucky competition winner which will be happening on my Sunday night Live check in (tomorrow). I will also post the competition here with an entry link. Keep an eye out from tomorrow eve late.... The comp will be open for a week or so and is free to enter. Good luck.

This is the finished off Prize -  One Mini Lattice Tower with a Mic Clip and Separate PTT switch which needs wiring to your radio mic PTT input. The Heil GM-5 is NOT included lol Its just to give you an idea of what to expect. the Mic stand will hold most studio microphones. Good Luck!