Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year To All! Thanks for all of the fantastic comments, advice, ideas and encouragement as well as all of the emails sent during the year. Thank you to All at Planet Ham . Thank you to all Stations worked and all QSLs received, hope to do it all over again in 2009. And finally Thank you All for visiting Ham radio operator.blogspot.com and reading my blog posts as well as putting up with the many radio video's h.i! Have a great Christmas holiday and all the best for the new year!

After hearing Al, ZL1BD most mornings for the last couple of months it gave me great pleasure to make QSO with Al this morning on my work bound journey. ZL1BD AL was a real 5/9 into Baildon Moor when I heard him calling CQ at around 8.15 utc, I gave him a shout back using my Yaesu FT-857, Maldol HMC-20 antenna and 50watts. Al, ZL1BD came straight back to me and gave me a 5/6 report and also remembered me from our previous QSO from around 18 months ago. Al had remembered that I was near by to some relatives he had here in yorkshire U.K. and knows my home area quite well. I can now rest easily regarding the FT-857s performance as it seems to be working very well making good DX contacts from my Toyota Lucida Estima. I Hope to work more early morning DX openings during the winter months.

The WX is very wet here in Yorkshire at the moment so I decided to make the most of the situation by playing some radio. I worked some stations via the Earth orbiting VO-52 Satellite, OM3VAN, HA6NM, DL3JIN and MW0BBU all on the same pass which lasted around 10 Min's. I then had a listen around 20m and noticed that the noise levels were very low allowing weak signals to be heard. I heard some European stations working Australia, and the US Virgin Islands the pile ups were quite crazy, it reminded me back to the day I heard a US station once say it sounded like "Wild Dogs in a meat shop". A good way to sum up a lot of the mad pile ups you here when those rare or interesting stations are spotted and discovered on the Ham bands. Picture of OH2FFY/Mobile It was around 11.30 utc when I came across OH2FFY Greg working mobile on 14.187 mhz with a signal of 5/7 - 5/9 with QSB and lots of QRM (Mad Dogs h.i). I listened for over half an hour and realised that we had already made co

Last night whilst tuning around 40M I managed to work some good DX into Senegal, West Africa which is a new Country for me. I was running 50W from the FT-767GX with a G5RV type Dipole when I heard a pile up around 7.092mhz, the voices stoped calling and I was able to hear the DX station 6W2SC. 6W2SC(Peter) was coming through up to Baildon Moor N.Yorks quite well with a 5/8 signal report received at my station. I worked Peter with a little patience form his good self, which he had as other stations were insistent on calling over me. h.i I still managed to make the qso despite the heavy QRM back to him sending a 5/5 2E0HTS signal. Its a nice bonus working a new one and lets hope propagation is improving at last! Thanks from myself to Peter 6W2SC for making it possible to add a next DXCC in the old log as well as the speedy eQSL confirmation ;-)

With the WX (weather) bringing snow flurries to the UK, this weeks radio activity has been spent once again in listening mode. Both the FT-767GX & FT-847 have been in operation receiving signals on HF and VHF in combinations of weather Fax's as well as satellite weather imagery. The snow was around 6 inches/30 centimeters at its peak which was on Thursday and is still present today (Saturday) despite the suns rays trying to melt it. As usual the best satellite images came fro NOOA 17 using Radio Com 5.2 to decode and satscape to track. This image shows the clear sky over the UK, but looking at the approaching weather front that is in the Atlantic we better enjoy it while it lasts! RX using IOIo beam & FT-847 Here was the scene earlier on in the week, I guess I wont be riding the Kwacker for a while. h.i The Snow did bring some good openings on Tuesday on 2m ssb during the contest as I worked some good Scottish DX using 50W on the home brew IOIo beam. Thanks to GM4PPT dick,

This weekend brought freezing temperatures to the Yorkshire Moor where we live, I couldn't resist putting this spectacular view looking north west from my QTH up the Aire Valley on here for all to see. Normal visibility from this QTH is usually up to 30 miles, this weekends view was almost from a fairy tale. The QTH is at around 1000 ft above sea level and as you can see anywhere below a 1000 ft has been eaten up by freezing fog. click on image to enlarge Other news apart from the WX is I tried the Maldol HMC-6S on my mobile set up. The antenna is a bit on the big side for driving around with, but when stationary I was pleased to hear the multi banded beast pulling in some big signals on 20m. I checked the SWR on the 20m band and it was 1.1, the other bands were also working but propagation was not so lively. I will be fully testing the antenna in the near future on the other HF bands, more than likely when Spring arrives. click on image to enlarge That's all for now, just a q

The WX-Weather has brought snow, wind and freezing temperatures to North Europe. At my QTH-Location Baildon Moor, N.England, at 1000ft above sea level the temperature dropped to 0 degrees Celsius last night and we had a threat of snow but it did not settle. The bands were in good shape late last night/early this morning, as I worked Russia, The Ukraine, The USA and lots of other Stations from Europe using PSK31 on 40 & 80M. All signals were loud on both bands with plenty of activity, I dragged my self away around 2am to get some sleep but it wasn't easy! h.i At present the sun is beaming with outside temperatures at 5.0 degrees Celsius and the wind is stirring making it feel even colder. The image I have just received is from Earth orbiting weather monitoring satellite NOOA 17, which just passed by heading South West. The image shows N.W and W Europe with N.England under heavy cloud cover. I believe this is probably the best image I have received for a while using the IOIo beam