Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

M0YKS Satellite Earth Station 📡 The amateur Radio hobby has so much to offer and can take you to places you cannot ever go to in person. Yes I am referring to space and in particular the International Space Station. The past couple of weeks have provided some great late evening passes from ISS and I have been making the most of the opportunities. My log is full of ISS, Teval SATs, RS-44 SAT, JO-97 SAT and SO-50 SAT contacts. It's been good and my Earth Station is still working well for me.  A quick run down of the equipment that I am using: TX RX - YAESU FT-847 Rotator - YAESU G-5500 Interface - RS-232 COM-232B  USB CAT cable x2 Antenna V: 144-146Mhz Innovantenna 5 element X LFA YAGI  Antenna U: 435-437Mhz  15 elememt  Oscar 437 SAT X YAGI  Software - SATpc32 PC Windows 10 I also use Look4Sat on my Tablet  the satellite band is great fun and the Radio amateurs that you make contact with are really nice people. You get to know a very friendly com

 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 dipole which

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  87 Countries (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 aroun