Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

 The latest solar cycle 25 is proving to be far better than we could of hoped. We all seem to be experiencing regular unusually good long distance openings on 29 MHz. Earlier this afternoon I got back from College and managed to get the radio on earlier than usual. Straight away I could hear that 10 meters was wide open as the 28 MHz SSB portion was full of signals. I had a nice QSO on 10 metes SSB into North America and then proceeded further up the band to 29 MHz using FM. Again activity was up and I could hear a number of North American stations calling CQ on straight FM. There were so many signals coming in on FM that I ended up tuning around too much further down the band than usual, it was there that I stumbled across TO8FH on the Island of Mayotte operated by a french DXpedition team. To my amazement I heard them coming through really well, there was fading at times but during the peaks their signal was up to S9 on the YAESU FTDX101MP that I was using. My antenna this time aroun

  This afternoon I was listening for signals on 29MHz AM when I heard a great signal coming acroaa the Atlantic from Milford, Massachusetts. The signal was coming from the amateur radio station of K1ETP Rich and his signal was peaking at 5/9+10db with slight QSB.. I was trying out the AM Mode to see how well it performed with my FTDX101MP. I have already had success on this mode as I previously made AM contacts with this radio on 20M into Europe when I made a QSO into Sweden. More recently I have been trying to catch some more AM on 10 Meters. I am interested in seeing how the FTDX101MP performance is on AM. This contact was absolutely fantastic and possibly one of the clearest sounding DX signals that I have heard on any mode. my verdict is: Maybe the radio should have been given 100W rather than 50W on AM. The findings are: It is brilliant on receiving. this video shows the reception quality without noise reduction or any DSP filtration, just simple straight AM. After the report

This week has been extremely good on 10 Meters FM. I have been working lots North and Central America on FM as well as a nice one into The Western Sahara. The clarity on FM has been superb as I experienced great conditions whilst playing around with my YAESU FTDX101MP. I even got a QSO into Mexico working XE2ARP on 29 MHz FM, Awesome! The SSB operating has also been great on all of the bands, I heard a station from North America on 80m early morning and 40-10 has been great with signals coming in from Japan, Australia as well as North and South America.  My Satellite operations this week have been a mixture of FM, SSB and Weather Sat reception. I managed two contacts into Russia via the birds on VHF/UHF. one via RS-44 on SSB and one earlier today on AO-91 on FM.  I also worked Satellite operators from Poland, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. The Dual X Yagi Sat array and  my HF antennas which are the original Cushcraft MA5B,  Hustler 6 band Vertical and Nest dipole have be

 I arrived home after work and decided to check out 10m before the sun went down and we hit the grey-line. The New York repeater was up at 5/9+20 as was VE3MMX -R, both were easy to access with 100w.  Tonight I was looking for AM signals so I swept the band carefully listening out for signals from the USA hoping to find someone using AM. I came across one very weak signal but decided to try again at another time, as I tuned back up the band I heard WA3JR Joe calling CQ on FM simplex. Joe was 5/7 at times with QSB, we had a pretty good qso that was crystal clear Q5 at times. The straight FM carrier waves were propagating well as we had some fun chatting for a while. It was a lot of fun for sure and a nice opportunity to work across the Atlantic DX FM on 10m. It reminded me of my youth when we used do this kind of stuff regularly on the CB Bands. It happens every now and then on 29 MHz, usually around 29.400 -29.500 FM for straight/simplex FM, over the years I have had some pleasant surp

 My ground station was working well at my location here in Yorkshire earlier today, the NOAA weather  Satellites were coming in well on 137 MHz as NA-18 and NA-19  passed by    NOAA 18 Pass NOAA 19 second Pass  The full reception and decode can be seen here below in the video I made. I use WXtoIMG as previously mentioned . This software will auto track weather satellites and decode weather images from a simple 137 MHz FM receiver set up using a laptop/PC with the receiver audio fed into the line or mic in.  Here in my ham radio shack I use additional tracking software to control my antenna and radio which is not necessary if you wish to receive weather images. In the past I have tried many setups which were very basic and they all worked. These days I am lucky as my station is well established and performs automatically without requiring any manual assistance. More time for me to drink a coffee and enjoy the image of the day! 73 have fun.. 

   When I get the chance I still get a lot of pleasure receiving live satellite images transmitted from NOAA SATs which I decode using WXtoIMG . This one was pretty clear as it passed over Europe heading South.

I had a good bit of fun this afternoon messing with my humble YAESU FT-2980. It was the 145 Alive event that fellow YouTuber Tim G5TM has been organising. Its a great idea and certainly does exactly as intended and indeed 145 Megahertz is definitely alive today with lots of signals coming through on the 2 meter FM part of the band.  I was on for just over an hour and enjoyed making QSOs with both portable and fixed stations that were coming in quite nicely with my mono band Diamond F23 vertical antenna.  The WX is wet, so I was quite happy to be in doors today enjoying playing radio. Thanks to all that went out and set up portable, it was good to hear plenty of operators making waves on a usually quiet band. Despite my long absences I do enjoy 2 meters FM simplex and it's good to get on my FT-2980 for a change. It is my most simple but effective radio in the shack and is definitely still going strong. It was spot on for the job with a very good output power