Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

ICE - Industrial Centre Of Excellence One of the courses I am delivering at the College where I work comprises of Engineering and Electronics (ICE) . The ICE students on this course are into their second year of having me as their tutor and so far they have developed skills in MIG, MMA and TIG Welding, Metal craft and Fabrication, Plasma arc cutting, Sheet metal and are currently focusing on Electronics. So far my students have built basic soldered circuits using boards, resistors, diodes, and LEDs, as well as Morse keys which work with buzzers. The students have also been learning about amateur radio and responded well to sending messages to each other in Morse on their home brew kits. Over the past few weeks they have come on very well with their soldering ability and have moved onto the final project which is a Digital FM receiver . The FM radio receivers are quite nice kits and it was very exciting when the first student to successfully complete the receiver had radio 1 coming i...

I added another way of viewing my Ham Radio Main Site's Guest Book by creating a second book simply entitled "View The 2E0HTS Guest Book," both books can easily accessed and are pictured below. They are available for anyone including non Hams and can be found attached to the front page of my Ham Radio Main Site Its early days but so far I have received a good response, Thank You! To all who have dropped by and left a comment and name. Don't forget to sign and say hello! Best 73 de Simon 2E0HTS.

I just read the sad news that G4ILO Julian Moss has passed away after a long illness, I will always remember the banter and encouraging comments Julian always left for me on many of my blog posts. He will be truly missed by many and our thoughts are with his wife and family.

Its half term at the College where I work so I am off for the week, my youngest daughter Martha has been wide awake since 6 am so I thought I might get up out of bed and show her some early morning DX. 20 meters was not open yet and 80 meters was closing down, however up on 40 meters things were happing and I worked W3DIY loud and clear 5/8. I was running my FT-1000mp into my Hustler vertical and received a nice report from Rick who was booming in.

The CQ World Wide DX is my favourite contest it is the best way to work lots of DX from all around the world on the HF bands. This year I had lots of fun as did one of my Daughters Elsie, I let her join in with her own DX Zone chart to fill in each time I worked a zone. This proved to be a good idea, she really enjoyed it and kept asking me to get another! This was the best encouragement that any Ham dad could ask for during any contest h.i. As a single low power operator I had a real blast and ended up working into 21 different zones which included 46 different Countries logged by the time the contest had ended. The 21 Zones I managed were worked on 10 and 15 meters, I also made QSO,s on 20, 40 and 80 meters toward the end of the contest. Conditions were reasonable throughout the entire 48 hour contest, I have known even better conditions in past contests but I am more than happy with the performance of my main amateur radio station during this CQ WW (2014). I worked 21 zones...

Just in case you wanted a copy, I made this years CQWW Zones check-list available to download or share.

A nice start to the working day as I drove my DX Machine I worked special event station ZL1AA . ZL1AA was celebrating 90 years since they first worked into the UK. Follow the link to read the full story .  ZL1AA came in well at around 7.15 utc up on the 20m band with a 5/9+ signal to my FT-857, I received a 5/9 report back!