Ham Radio
Experiments & Fun With Simon M0YKS
Yorkshire UK
Sunday, June 27, 2010
/ 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Since I tested my latest project the miracle antenna mount, I decided to make another type of portable mount only this time I wanted something to house a mobile whip. I came up with a four legged stand which I made from 6mm thick aluminium as seen in the picture.
Once I cut the aluminium, I was able to bend the four legs into the required shape fairly easily using a fly press. I then began to assemble the mobile antenna mount that would allow my vast collection of mobile HF antenna’s to be mounted securely as well as gaining a good RF ground through the mount.
The next stage was to add wire radials directly to the aluminum which can be spread out into an X configuration.
Once I completed the build I packed the gear into my rucksack and headed outside to climb the Moor top. After around 20 minutes of doggy walking, I found a bell pit where I quickly set up and I tried 20m and 15m out with some interesting results. Louise – M3TLL and or furry companion Dudley were kind enough to once again catch my crazy antics on film during our walkabout.
I could not resist sharing tonight’s fantastic Sunset view looking out from our Hill Top Shack which was taken earlier this evening by my YL, Louise – M3TLL.
The winter WX is finally coming to an end up here on the Moor and band conditions on HF have been very interesting lately with a lot more reliable & good dx openings into VK & ZL occurring most mornings.
I worked VK6ANC on 20M from my mobile last week 5/9 in the clear at around 8.15utc, using the FT-100 and Maldol HF-20 Mono band antenna.
Evening DXing has been spent down on 40M most nights with plenty of QSOs into North America and the odd Caribbean station.
20M has also been good in the evening especially over the weekend during the US contest, It was nice to see the higher end of the HF bands also up on signal with lots of contester's booming in on 15M.
I had a bit of fun working lots of big signals from across the pond down on my favorite band for DX, 20M.
Antenna Comparisons.
Both the 80M & 20M Delta Loop antennas have been working great for me, I have had much more time to compare the antennas against my vertical the Hustler 6BTV.
The results show the Loop antennas clearly perform the best 80M -17M and the Hustler Vertical performs best from 15M to 10M. It sure is handy having antenna switches in line!
I recently acquired a set of mono band Hustler mobile antennas covering 80M, 40M, 20M, 17M and 15M.Over the weekend I got the opportunity to try the 40M Hustler antenna whilst parked up at 1175 feet on top of neighboring ILKLEY Moor. The antenna was pulling in some big signals and putting out a rather nice footprint as I worked a handful of Irish Stations as well as a couple of Europeans.I made a quick video of the new Hustler mobile antenna in action on 40M with the help of camera Woman Louise – M3TLL (My lovely YL). The latest Video can be seen below.
I am looking forward to testing the rest of the Hustler Mono Banders as soon as possible! Thanks for the visit, 73.
Home Made Tripod Test With Miracle Antenna & FT-817 - Video
Despite freezing those parts that don't like freezing off, I managed to try out the latest metal work project. Due to the cold I was in Test mode which was short and sweet as seen in the video.
Since I got the FT-817 and Miracle antenna I have been pondering over a few ideas that I would like to try whilst out and about in the great outdoors. One of the ideas was to make a light weight tripod type of mount, that would allow the Miracle antenna to be used with feeder rather than a direct chassis mount. I wanted something that I could mount inside my rucksack that would stick out of the top just enough to mount the antenna clear of my head and body. I also wanted something that could be placed on a wall, rock or flat spot quick and easy.
With this in mind I set about the task and came up with this. I made the tripod with the intention of standing it on Trig Points that are located nearby on the Moor top at high spots and summits. The tripod also sits well on my shack desk where earlier I heard the ARRL DX News coming in 5/7 on 14.275MHz with the little Miracle antenna, set up as seen here. Close Up of the aluminium cradle and tripod which has been riveted together using 4.8mm long reach rivets. The new tripod mount is very light and easy to use, I made it from 2mm aluminium which I folded into shape. The three legs and cradle are joined together using rivets. Total build time was less than 30 minutes.
I hope to get out over the coming weekend and work some QRP contacts using the new kit, with a bit of luck there may be a video showing the results.
