Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

 This morning before work I was listening out for DX on 3.795Mhz at around 7:30 utc and heard two nice signals from North America. I managed to work both stations - W2VP and W9LF. The signal exchange from W2VP was (My sig) 55 out and John was coming in to my station with 56 signal.  W9LF was slightly further away and I was 5/6 at his end and Carl W9LF was 5/7. A great start to the day as headed off to work. This evening was even better as I made more 80m DX with Russ VE9FI with a signal exchange of 5/5 both ways. After that I was on a roll and worked a Net with K2RR Rich who gave me a 5/7 report, Rich was loud and coming in very well with a 5/8 signal. Next up was VE1CHW Rob, Rob was also strong with a 5/8 signal I received a 5/7 signal report back. I also worked Vlad UG5A 5/9 both ways and finished off with W2FFE Dave, again another good copy and a 5/7 exchange both ways.  The new EFHW Inverted V is certainly surprising me and seems better than the centre fed...

I hope you're new year has begun well. I have been feeling much more like myself after being ill before and over the Christmas break.  My FTDX101mp has been getting plenty of use and I have been enjoying operating on 29Mhz AM. I have been doing quite well with my MA5B and 50 watts out working across the Atlantic into North America. I must say it is a very nice sounding signal on AM and it has great DX potential for an original old school mode that most have forgotten or never tried. How about giving 29.00 to 29.100 AM a listen and give it a go yourself. The best time to try is Saturday and Sunday from 13:00 - 16:00 UTC.  Other fun stuff that has been keeping me busy is the new 1/2 wave 80m inverted V with a 49:1 Transformer. I have been enjoying exploring it's potential and I am very surprised just how good it works at my QTH. I'm working North and South America easily on 40m as well as far East so far. On 80 it's strong across Europe and I have had a couple...

Thanks for following me through 2023 via the various online methods. It's been a strange year but radio propagation has been good. Thanks for all the many QSOs I made with some of you throughout the year via HF and satellite bands.  Have a Merry Christmas or nice relaxing holiday. Which ever it is enjoy and best season greetings, good DX 73. Simon M0YKS

Another fantastic CQWW SSB weekend with more stations active than ever,  I was having so much fun operating alongside Elsie M7ELC and we were both making plenty of DX operating short shift patterns as we kept the hot seat hot with my FTDX101MP and Cushcraft MA5B antenna. I did reasonably well as you can see my QSO footprint for 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters. I made 500 QSOs, in total worked 21 zones and 87 Countries across the globe. Saturday was the best day for DX but day two was still quite good in some directions. M7ELC was very patent and waited, called, waited again called some more and persisted. In the end she racked up 20 zones in her log. A pretty good effort once again and a lot of fun seeing her get mad at times when she struggled to make the contact. Her high pitched tones certainly assisted her signal well as she punched through the ionospheric layers. Thanks to everyone that we managed to work during the contest.  See You Next Year! CQWW SSB. I listed the  8...

 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 a...

  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 re...

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 ...