Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

I have been waiting for the new bird ARISSat-1 to pass by and tonight at 21.03 UTC I was in luck. Above is my first ARISSat-1 SSTV image received at my home QTH using a Yaesu FT-847 and Dual Yagi Satellite antenna array. I am looking forward to some closer passes and better reception over the next few days.

During the weekends and holidays the family and I have been spending plenty of time up at the old QTH (the shack on the hill) taking in the fresh Moorland air. When we bought our new family home we decided to keep our old Moorland QTH which comprises of a luxury 40ft Static Caravan up at 1000ft asl on the edge of the Pennines here in Yorkshire. Its a great place to hangout with a wonderful view! The old shack is still working as well as ever with my trusty FT-767, FT-890, FT-2600m and VR5000. The rigs are all connected to my original antennas. The antennas are also holding up exceptionally well. I have still got my home made IO-10EL Sat beam up as well as the 20m Delta loop, Hustler 6BTV, X200 Co-linear and 10m vertical. Our lovely baby daughter is starting to take an interest in the hobby of amateur radio, She has the makings of becoming a keen SWL. Hope to work some of you from both of my shacks/QTH during the next couple of weeks as I enjoy my summer holidays. 73 have f

Whilst surfing the HF bands on a lazy Sunday afternoon I had my satellite tracking equipment on standby ready to receive and decode NOAA - 18. Here is the received transmission from NOAA-18 received at 3.15 pm (local) at the QTH of 2E0HTS - Yorkshire, U.K. If your intrested in recieving signals from NOAA Satellites check out NOAA SAT Status for frequencies and up to date information.

The video above was filmed in my recently finished radio shack, I hope you enjoy it 73! Video Information Stations worked in the video are: LU1IV - Argentina & GI1CET/p - Northern Ireland. Bands worked in video: 40m, 2m, & 70Cms Equipment used; Yaesu FT1000MP MARK-V & Yaesu FT-847. Antennas used in these contacts were 5 element Yagi (2m) 15 Element X Yagi (70cms) and a Carolina Windom wire antenna (80m - 10m) 131 feet in length. Thanks for watching and if you would like to see more amateur radio videos from my self, check out the 2E0HTS YouTube Channel

I arrived home from work earlier to find my Daughter investigating this months edition of my favourite amateur radio magazine - RadCom. It looks like she is following the "HTS" path hi hi, perhaps I could read some of the articles like SOTA, IOTA and tell tales of DXpeditions far far away during bedtime stories.

The wind has been battering the trees at the bottom of the garden for the last two days which is a pain in the rear as I use the nice tall trees to support the far end of my wire antenna, you can imagine the rest. I had been watching my Carolina Windom wire slap about until eventually it fell to the ground. In between a rain shower I decided to brave the gusts and managed to get a next piece of rope up into the tree and wound the wire back up in the air. It looked good, nice and straight with an extra 10 feet of height after a lucky throw that I pulled off earlier. I ended the evening the way radio amateurs like best as I made a very nice QSO on 17 Meters into Tokyo Japan with Yoshi - JA1OJJ. JA1OJJ signal was a 5/8 solid copy on my Ft1000mp MKV, Yoshi give me a 5/6 report on the tree swaying Carolina Windom (CW-80). When I awoke this morning the CW-80 was still in the air but not for long! The dreaded wind took it out again sometime today, as you can see in the picture above I wont be

Since moving in to the new QTH I have been regularly tweaking my amateur radio set up and testing out various equipment configurations. I have now finally got my station working effectively and have settled for a lay out that I can comfortably work with, which can be seen pictured below. Equipment Used YAESU FT - 857 YAESU FT - 847 YAESU FT – 1000MP MARK – V YAESU SP – 102 Ext Speaker YAESU FP – 1030A Power Supply Unit YAESU G – 5500 ELEVATION – AZIMUTH DUAL CONTROLLER YAESU MD – 1 Mic YAESU MH – 36 DTMF Mic HEIL GOLDLINE GM5 Mic Labtec Head set & Mic RIGblaster plus Interface MFJ – 962D VERSA TUNER III 1942 CW Key 22” Monitor and Dual Core 3800, 2Gig Ram - P.C, Running XP Pro. Software Used Winlog32 RadioCom 5.2 Satscape MMSSTV PSK31 Deluxe DX Atlas Ham Radio Deluxe Decorative Equipment I also enjoy making models in my spare time usually out of metal. In my shack you can see a couple of models I made for my collection. Supporting my HEIL Microphone, I made a mast like structure wi