LAMCO Repair Service

After laying a new floor I accidently dropped my YAESU G-5500 elevation - azimuth dual controller box which resulted in fault on the azimuth meter needle. The needle pinged to the right when I powered the unit up which was a pain in the back side after doing such a careful job up until that point.

I had a look for the obvious but could not see anything suspicious on inspection so I decided to seek expert help. At first I found myself struggling to think of who and where I would be able to get a quality repair as amateur radio equipment is not the typical run of the mill tv or pc hardware. 

The region that I live in is not the best for finding amateur specialists but fortunately there was a radio shop in South Yorkshire, about 35 miles away. I looked up the number and gave LAMCO a quick call, they told me the good news that they had a radio equipment repair service. So off we went down the M1 and came across a helpful friendly fellow amateur Dave - M0XIT who made us very welcome at LAMCO's.

Dave - M0XIT

The shop is packed with lots of goodies,  I spent a good 45 minutes looking at all the equipment (with my tongue hanging out).

The stock level was excellent there were transceivers, antennas and various kit to equip any amateur operator or SWL. The latest ICOM 7100 was there on demo for all to see. I know where I will be going when I want some more equipment in the future!

We left the YAESU G-5500 and picked it up two weeks later fully repaired with a verdict of a blown thyristor. I was very pleased to be heading back with a repaired piece of kit that is now back in service in my shack. The price for the repair was reasonable, I would recommend the LAMCO radio repair service to anyone in need of a radio equipment repair. 73

Summertime Play

The Latest 2E0HTS Mobile Station 

This years summer holiday started by changing our vehicle from the Toyota Rav 4 for the shiny blue Toyota Avensis as seen below.

This presented a new install for me to figure out, I soon came up with a plan and carried out my new installation.

In this picture you can see my Maldol HFC-20 HF antenna mounted at the rear.

I ran a short ground wire from the antenna base directly to the chassis and managed to get 1:1 - 1:3 right across 20 meters. 

As for the rig I decided to give my FT-100 are well deserved rest and try out my FT-857. The first thing I did was in my workshop where I folded up some sheet aluminium to cradle the FT-857 face panel. I wanted to be able to clip it to the ashtray avoiding any permanent fixings.

Once I fettled the bracket to fit and work as I required I ordered a separation cable from ebay which arrived a couple of days later. I wired up the FT-857, fitted the separation cable, clipped the ashtray bracket in and bingo! I was back on the air /mobile in my latest Toyota.

I spent a fair bit of time setting up the audio settings found within the menu of the FT-857 and I have been making lots of nice QSOs around the world over the holidays ever since.

Trip To The Yorkshire Air Museum & GB0YAM

This was an exciting day for all of us as we got to walk freely around some impressive aeroplanes from the past and the present. The Yorkshire Air Museum is about 50 miles from my QTH and has a large number of aircraft and air force treasures to see.

  

There was so much to see and the sun was blazing, The large hanger housed some real beauts I especially liked the Halifax seen below.

Elsie, Louise and I managed to get some cockpit action as we try to imagine what it must have been like to fly these old aeroplanes. 

There was even more to see so I had a go on a Harrier flight simulator which was ace and wandered off to the communication tower.

The station is now active under the amateur call GB0YAM and I could hear the sound of CW booming through from across the base.

The Yorkshire Air Museum certainly had lots to see, we had a brilliant time and will return soon. The NAFFI style canteen was also good! 

Holiday Shack On The Moor Tops

If you have been following my antics for a few years you will all ready know about the shack on the hill. If your just dropping in for the first time I used to live on top of the Yorkshire Moors in a 40 ft Static caravan which was DX heaven. Nowadays its our quiet retreat where I get too spend quality time with my family. As well as been a beautiful scenic location its the home of my second shack where I am well equipped to work the satellites and most of the HF bands.

I reconfigured my set-up and introduced the FT-100 and FT-817 allowing me to work the SSB satellites as well as the FM ones. For HF I am using my good old trusty FT-767GX. I have worked lots of Dx on 20, 17 & 15m using it over the holidays recently, into places like Argentina, NA, SA, Eu and Australia. My Delta Loop is still up as is my other Hustler 6BTV and thankfully are both still doing a good job for me along side the home brew satellite antenna the IO-10 EL that I made a few years back. I have had lots of fun over the past fortnight making many QSO via FO-29 using the IO-10 EL. FT-100 and FT-817 combination.It seems to be working great as I also made some good QSO on 2m SSB.

SO-50 Satellite - 5 Watt QRP Operation

As well as playing indoors at the holiday shack Ive been outside with my ARROW satellite antenna and handheld rigs. I have worked some old friends as well as a few new ones via the FM satellite SO-50. The portable 5 Watt set up is great fun to use and very effective from up on the moor tops. I managed to catch a short video of one of the many SO-50 passes that I was active on, it features a QSO with another Simon who's call sign is G6AHX. Hope you enjoy the video and have a good weekend! 73 thanks for passing by, hope to be back soon de 2E0HTS - Simon

Amateur Radio - Photo Collage

I like playing around with the many different apps freely available to Google chrome users and earlier this evening I tried a program/app called Photo Collage. I found it at the chrome web store and simply added it to my chrome web browser. After about ten minutes I created the picture seen above from some images that  I had previously saved to my pc drive. It was really quick and easy and I think the result is quite good, hope you like it!

73 have a great weekend.

End Of Term!

Once again another college year comes to an end after a lot of hard work. I have enjoyed teaching all of the students and as you can see by the image below its now time to celebrate success and wind down for the summer holidays. 

In case you are wondering? Yes, we were on board a space craft, however the unbelievable bit is that I am the one wearing the tie! To infinity and beyond!

Thankfully, I shall be back down to Earth soon and able to crack on with blogging and get some more radio play time too. 73.

Long Path Mobile DX to Tasmania

As I made my way to work this morning I came across a strong signal coming in on 20m via the long path from Tasmania. It was infact VK7AC - Norm with a 5/9 signal in the clear. I gave Norm a shout and was recieved back in Tasmania with signal report of 5/7. Not a bad way to start the working day!

 VK7AC - Norm's Shack 

Shack Happy CQ CQ!

I have been enjoying my radio equipment a lot since I settled on my preferred layout of my amateur radio station. The shack is working well as are my antennas, all that's left to do is to get busy making plenty of qso's. I am going to start making more of an effort to call CQ rather than my usual style of replying to someone else's CQ call. I guess I am a lazy operator, hopefully next time I post it will be about the stations that came back to my call as I aired my hard to catch call sign. 73!

QSL Cards

I am always happy to exchange qsl cards and have collected far too many to count over the years. Today's package arrived via the qsl bureau and contained some nice cards. My favourite this time around is a Japanese qsl card pictured above from JA3EGZ - Mega.

Happy DX, 73!

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!