Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

  Another successful improvement to the station this winter was putting some 12 ft radials at the base of the Hustler 6BTV antenna. Since I did the performance has greatly improved with regular DX contacts into Monserrat in the Caribbean, Canada and USA. Chris GM4ZJI was the one who told me to try the 1/8th wave radials which work amazingly well. Thanks Chris!!! As you can see the signal on the QSL card from Adam KA1KA is not 5/9, the band was quite poor so that is why I am over the moon to make the QSO and QSL with the 6BTV. My fan dipole on 40m is very similar in performance, almost as good but slightly down on outgoing signal with about 5-10 db less signal reports back in. (just for info).

Greetings and hello, hope all is well. Since I built the 40-80m Fan dipole antenna I have been much more active on the 80m band, this antenna with its 1:1 balun has been receiving many excellent signal reports from both short and long skip local and DX.  The SOTA wire is an excellent radiator and combined with a 1:1, 50 ohm balun which I bought  a Diamond BU-50 rated to 1200 watts seems really good despite its small physical size, it appears to be working very well so far with 400 watts. I am pleased to report it has not shown any problems or issues over the winter months where we have had lots of snow and ice. The homebrew 40-80M FAN DIPOLE, YES! I would definitely recommend. Also, I recommend fitting a balun to any dipole made for HF as it does help to prevent unwanted RF return and reception interference that is often picked up on the feed line. Since I fitted the balun, I have noticed a positive difference whilst using it. The dipole seems to be a very good performer al

A very late Happy new year to each and everyone,  I hope you are all keeping well and safe as we enter another year over shadowed by this dreadful virus. Once again I am working online with my students rather than being in the welding and fabrication workshop where I belong. Despite the chaos there is plenty of fun and laughter in the household and I have also been very active on the ham radio bands. My log has never looked so healthy and I have been making many QSO meeting some great guys and girls on the air.  The last few months have flown by and I now seem to be live streaming both welding sessions and ham radio from the shack. Every Sunday evening I have been live on YouTube working lots and lots of other radio amateurs on 80 and 40m as well as up on 20m when conditions permit. Its started to become a weekly ritual and I have almost formed a virtual gathering of regular friends via the YouTube channel stream and of course on the air. It is a real pleasure to finally ge

Greetings friends and followers around the World! 73 Seasons blessings and good will and health to each and all! Merry Christmas! I received a nice diploma on Christmas day for receiving SSTV images which commemorate 20 years of onboard amateur radio activity. It was easy enough to obtain via  ARISS SSTV Award  link.  Here is an earlier one from the Sputnik series. Its great fun receiving images from ISS and can easily be decoded using MMSTV free software on your pc. There are a few apps for phones and tablets that work well also. Check out my latest video as I decode ISS SSTV images if you want to see how easy it is.  Also if you like that you might want to decode weather satellite images which is a very similar method apart from you need a slightly more complicated decoder which again is free and is called WXtoImg Above is a recent image from NOAA 18 below is a video showing how I successfully decoded the weather image. Keep yourself amused this Christmas as we all stay safe, have a

What a year we have been having with little sign of any significant change as of yet. Some of the  Positives of this year for myself  Have to of been Ham radio. I have  met many new amateurs and SWLs since lock down began on the air and online, I formed a Facebook group and doubled my YouTube subscription. Also I carried out maintenance on all of my antennas and made a new one along the way.  Ham radio has been a great choice of passtime this year and I would like to thank all of you guys and girls, new friends and old friends for all comments and encouraging feedback that helps keep me going. HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone ❤. This week was my last working week at college, I'm finally on holiday for two weeks and hope to get on the bands. Earlier and through the week I have been active and I was also able to make a few videos of some of my qso and radio fun. Catch up on my YouTube channel . This week I worked some mobile and base HF, Satellite and ISS. I even decoded a

I noticed a swr variation when I switched between my dipole and vertical hf antennas. The swr reading on my Hustler 6btv was 1:6 and I noticed that when I switched back to it sometimes it was up to 2:0. I played around with the switching mechanism and sure enough it was back to 1:6. The next step was a quick inspection of the internal contacts and switch housing. I noticed that the central spindle was worn and this was allowing the switching pole to lean slightly towards the dipole pick up point. The slight movement rectified the closeness but the switch was well worn through years of operation. So I treated my station to a new better quality replacement as seen below.  my old switch has served me well but the new high power Avair switch has better isolation and is much nicer to operate.  I hooked it up and to my pleasure saw the SWR fall to 1:4 which is even better. Let's hope this nice neat upgrade has a good long lifespan as it seems pretty cool on day one of operati

Hi All! Hope you are keeping safe... We are in the same position as most regarding lock down and other than going to work I have been stuck indoors a lot lately. So, off outside into the garden it was and antenna building time once again was here.  I decided to replace the prototype 40/80 fan dipole that has been in use since the end of spring. It has been working really well even though I made it from some random used wire, I bought three reels of SotaBeam military spec heavy duty wire which come in 50 meter reels. The wire is stainless coated multi strand 50 ohm and is in a low impact green colour. It is very good for antenna elements or radials and solders up nicely.  I also decided I wanted to try out this new build double dipole with a suitable 1:1 balun that would help prevent unwanted coaxial line transmission and also help reduce unwanted reception noise on the feed line from random electrical sources nearby. The balun also helps to isolate the returning RF at the feed point a