Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

I recently added some more radio gear to my ever growing collection which comprises of a few more antenna's and a Ft-1000MP Mark-V to help bow the shack table some more. I strung up a Carolina Windom 160 by Radio Works last weekend which joins my collection of home made delta loops, wires, beams and verticals. You can never have too many radios or antenna's hi hi. Since the the CW160 was up I have made lots of great QSO,s on 80m, 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m & 12m. I have yet to try it out on 160m, 30m & 10m but the results so far on the other bands have been very surprising. The antenna is 265ft long and is suspending by trees in a more or less straight line and it is nice and stealth like not causing any complaints so far which always helps to keep things peaceful. The new addition - Yaesu Ft1000MP MK-V fine tunes the antenna well using the onboard atu, the antenna is less than 2:1 at worst across all of the HF bands and is at 1:1 on 160m without the atu in its present configur...

As well as Ham Radio I have had a history of playing music - DJing on local community broadcast stations. I was involved with a local station for over 15 years before I got my amateur radio licence, broadcasting live to about 250,000 listeners three times a week never missing a show. So as you can imagine I have an extensive collection of Vinyl recordings. To sum it up, if I ever melted them down I would have enough plastic to manufacture 10,000 hand held microphones. On a more serious note I try to spend the odd weekend playing some of my records and at the same time I have the PC interfaced to my sound system allowing me to convert the tracks to mp3. I have had my "HI FI" equipment for over 20 years and it still sounds as solid as ever. It is connected to some PIONEER CS-777 speakers powered by a DENON PMA350 amplifier. I still have some 22" base boxes fitted with horns that I can "string up" if needed for venues etc. I obviously don't listen to music whe...

Since I settled for the 10 element 435MHz and IO 145MHz loop antenna (IO-10EL) I have been getting into the OSCAR Satellites with ease. I have been making lots of QSO's with the home built beam fixed at 30º elevation for the past year or so on FM and SSB. Earlier this evening I made QSO's on AO-51, HO-68 and VO-52. On AO-51(FM) I worked ON5NY, on HO-68(SSB) I worked IZ7JXJ, DJ8DT and for the second time this evening ON5NY. On VO-52(SSB) I worked IZ5AVK and DK1IE, all were good signals and all Stations could hear me at 5/9. I was running approximately 35Watts from my Yaesu FT-847 and managed to still get in to HO-68 at a total distance of 2500 miles as the the Satellite headed over North America. I am always amazed how well my homemade antenna performs and I still get the biggest buzz when the "birds" pass over, in fact my hard done by YL - Louise M3TLL thinks I have a problem and calls me a "Satellite Junkie". Unfortunately for Louise, there doesn't see...

We spent last week relaxing at the Galloway Coastline in the south west of Scotland. We had a very enjoyable stay at The Isle of Whithorn just 7yds from the sea. Our accommodation was excellent on the Harbor row, which was only a stone’s throw away from the historic landing place of St Ninian We visited this area for the first time three years ago when we stayed at the Galloway Astronomy Centre and have been revisiting as regular as we can, ever since. The area has lots of historic sites not to mention the stunning views, large empty beaches and plenty of wild life which for us makes up a great holiday. One of our favorite beaches is at Monreith where there is one of Scotlands best kept secerets The Church of Kirkmaiden hidden away but easily found along with St Medana’s Well . The Church of Kirkmaiden St Medana's beach at Kirkmaiden During our many visits to the beach I was able to get some HF Mobiling done with the trusty Yaesu FT-100 on 20m, 40m and 80m with some great cont...

Over the weekend I worked a few amateur satellites using my Yaesu FT-847 radio and home made IO-10EL Satellite antenna. Satellite & Station worked SO-50 - EA1JM . VO-52 - G0FGX, HB9OAB, G6NQO & SP3GAD . HO-68 - N1AIA & KB1RVT (FM Mode) . AO-51 - LY1R . HO-68 - M0ITF (SSB) . I still prefer working via the SSB transponders rather than the FM birds, however its all extremely good fun with plenty of fellow Satellite ops that are always very friendly and happy to work you. As usual AO-51 was the busiest of the birds with plenty of activity on each pass. I was especially pleased with my QSOs across the pond using FM via HO-68 which is proving to be a fantastic Satellite both on FM and SSB. I cant wait until HO-68 has been fully commissioned and is switched on all of the time. Check out the Oscar Satellite Status to see which Satellites are operational and have been heard recently by fellow Hams and SWLs all over the globe.

I just got out of my mobile ham shack and noticed that something was different about my dual band antenna? I soon realised it had been modified into a Tree-bander or perhaps a "Twig" (for all of you that can remember the old CB slang for antenna). So here is what happens when you drive down small country lanes with plenty of green scenery everywhere. Luckily no birds nests were harmed in any way and the antenna is still good.

I am very pleased to have recently found out that I had been chosen as a winner of a competition I had entered after visiting the Icom Web Site . I signed up to Icom's news letter a few months ago and have been enjoying reading the latest news from Icom and entering some of the competitions found on their web site. I didn't expect to be the lucky winner of the last competition prize, which is a well presented logbook & diary packed with lots of useful pages and an Icom pen to fill the pages with Call signs and DXCC. Thanks to Icom for this great prize that I won, I now can begin ticking the boxes of all the many different Pre-fixes I work whilst on the air. I hope to get some of you in my new Log soon!