Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

For those of you that are regulars you will all know about the problems i have had in my mobile station over the last fortnight and for anyone who is here at ham radio for the first time,hello and welcome to my web blog. After operating all week from the mobile on the recently fitted ft-857 I was now missing my old friend the ft-100 which was suffering with a locked up solid vfo with no easy way to tune up or down. So I struggled all week on the ft-857 that seems to not be able to blank out the rfi from the engine too well but still made a couple of QSOs on 20m, 40m, and 2m asking for a audio reports. The Conclusion FT-857 vs FT-100 The Old ft-100 in this case is better than the new ft-857 on Receive, Audio quality,and overall performance on HF and FM. As for the ft-857, is easy to use and looks good but that's about it, as soon as the FT-100 gets back in its right full place the better. Well, Karl G1YPQ got it right when in qso he was telling me that I did not sound as clear as u

I managed some good reports today whilst driving too and from my works QTH. At about 7.15 utc I worked into the Azores on 40m from the ft-857 with 50watts into a maldol hfc40 mono band antenna. I was given a 5/6 report which was well received at 5/9, I then tuned to 20m and switched to the hfc 20, where I managed a 5/9 into Italy just as I was arriving at work. The best report of all came on my home bound journey at around 15.45 utc from Gary EW1MM on 14.174mhz who I have made QSO with many times from my mobile, my home station, and at the STAR Centre. Gary gave me a super critical report of sounding sharp and clear with a very occasional clip on the odd word.As soon as I was stationary I reduced the ssb mic gain down from 40 to 30. I will see how that setting works and hopefully it will be a true 5/9 if I can manage to refain from shouting into the mic, I have constant reminders from Louise that I can get quite loud when struglin to get through the QRM whilst in QSO. You no what its l

I have worn out the VFO on the magnificent little ft-100 that has served me well in my mobile. The rig works fine apart from the actual vfo that has now locked up which makes it awkward tuning around the bands using the select knob and mic buttons instead of the vfo, and of course driving at the same time. After trying to operate this way for a couple of days, I soon decided to take the ft-100 out of the vehicle and exchange it for the ft-857 from the shack at my QTH. The ft-100 will be ok interfaced to the p.c where my mouse, keypad, and screen control my rig. I will send off at the same time to yaesu UK and hopefully obtain a replacement VFO which looks fairly simple to install. In the meantime I have been running the two rigs in reverse rolls, I am just about getting used to the changes in my mobile. I am not sure about the ft-857 on 20M or 40M as I have only had a couple of QSOs on each band so far, but apart from the electrical noise picked up from my Toyota Rav4 all is well. The

MX0KSC is the Call Sign of the Keighley STAR Centre which is part of park Lane College Keighley. The Station has been active for around three years and was set up to promote Science, Technology, and Maths using the theme of space to inspire learning.The shack is found along side a mock space craft, mission control, laboratry and mars landscape all located in the STAR Centre. Since the project started over 2000 students aged 6years to 86 years have visited the STAR Centre and experienced the Radio Comms Shack of MX0KSC and as previously mentioned, many scouts have gained radio communicator badges and some Air Cadets have recently passed their exam and now own foundation licences to operate Amateur Radio. MX0KSC usually operates During the week days or evenings and sometimes Saturdays whilst engaged in training and learning, also on special events such as JOTA, TDOTA, Scout Camps, National science week and Keighley show. The Club station is run by , Louise M3TLL, Phil M1PAC, Barry 2E0OOC

History of Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872) Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born on April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Jedidiah Morse, a pastor. Samuel Morse trained as an artist and worked as a portrait painter until the 1830s. However, today Morse is remembered for inventing the electric telegraph and the related code system known as Morse Code in 1837. In 1832, while returning from a period of art study in Europe on the ship Sully, Morse overheard a conversation about the newly discovered electromagnet and came up with the idea of an electric telegraph. The electric telegraph was basically an electrical circuit made up of a battery, a key, and an electromagnet, all connected by wire. The battery created electricity that travelled along the wire. The key, at one end of the wire, was pressed down to complete the electrical circuit. The electromagnet, at the other end of the wire, had a pencil attached to it, which moved and made a mark

Here is the location of the last 100 visitors Thanks for visiting 73 to you

I hope you like the new blog look that Louise has found me. The past week has been very busy at the College where I work.There are many new Students starting new courses in various Vocational subjects. Its the one of the busiest times so you can imagine I am running around trying to remember everyones names. I am looking forward to seeing these young learners progress and succeed and at the moment its good to see some good behavior and enthusiasm from young learners. As you may have guessed it has not been so easy to play radio the last few evenings. I have been riding the recently purchased Kawasaki 750 to work due to the good weather lasting, so working mobile has been limited.Its been fun and also saved me a fortune on petrol. This Thursday evening I am gonna be in the STAR Centre with Louise M3TLL, we will be helping a group of Ranger Scouts learn a bit more about radio and propagation with the aid of the Centres Radio Communication shack situated next to the MARS Landscape. It sho

Hi again from 2e0hts, This weeks radio activity has mainly been on HF from my radio shack and earlier in the week I managed to also make an Internet QSO with my blog friend JN4VWH Nash in Japan. I made the contact for the first time with Nash with the help of msn messenger, this was fun and helped us to arrange a radio sked which we tryed on 7mhz, 18mhz and 21mhz without success. However I then decided to interface the radio to the computer and managed to allow Nash JN4VWH to receive my radios incoming signals via the msn system. I then set the monitor level on the rig which allowed my audio to be also heard through msn each time i transmitted on the air. So Nash could hear myself and any stations that i was working on HF, allowing him to know what was going on here in North England. Fortunately the bands were very busy and I made many QSOs on 20m, 40m, and 80m, I also mentioned to some of the Stations worked that Nash JN4VWH was in SWL mode via my radio and p.c. The stations I spoke w

Today I was active alongside Louise(M3TLL) and Phil(M1PAC) and other colleagues from my Workplace which is Park lane College Keighley. We were operating the STAR Centre Club Station which is part of the College and the Call Sign is MX0KSC which stands for MX0(ENGLISH CLUB STATION) and KSC(KEIGHLEY STAR CENTRE). The Location of our portable Station was at the grounds of The Keighley Agricultural Show, at Marley Stadium Keighley West Yorkshire in the North of England. The Videos below show our Station in Action. PART 1 PART 2 We had a fantastic Day and I managed to test the new portable Hustler 6btv antenna system recently mentioned in this blog with an amazing first QSO of the day with JA7NVF from Japan. So I guess you could say that the new antenna and home brew mounting bracket is working just fine. During the event we made contact with 58 stations from all around the World and all over over the U.K. We operated 40m,20m,2m on phone and some SSTV and PSK31 on 20M.The HF Bands

Here is my latest Ham Radio antics where you can see how I made a home brew mounting bracket that fixes to any Vehicle Tow Bar allowing large base station antenna systems to be used. You will see on the video that I sucessfully mounted a Base Station Vertical 80M-10M HF hustler 6BTV (6 band trapped vertical). You can also see how and why I decided to try this with the Big Signals that I got on 80M, 40M, 30M and 20M all booming through the Hustler 6btv into My little Yaesu FT-100. The mount proves to be secure and quick to install, all I have to do know is try it out again when the propagation is good or perhaps a contest? Keep an Eye open for any future activities regarding this monster mobile Vertical here or on My YouTube Channel. 73 thanks for the Visit

This Weekend brings International Lighthouse/Lightship Weekend (ILLW) on the Air to the Ham bands, I have been on Air and have made QSO with many Stations that have set up portable Ham stations, some with special Callsigns at various Lighthouses around the world.There are over 15000 possible Lighthouses to contact around the world so you can imagine that's an awful lot of potential contacts to make and I doubt that all of the Worlds Lighthouses/Lightships have been activated by Radio Amateurs from all over the Globe. During the afternoon of Saturday i managed 22 contacts working 14 different Countries on 3 bands which were 80M, 40M and 20M. I was happily surprised to run into Ian GM3SEC under the Call GB2LS located at Southerness Lighthouse SCO223 with his fellow Hams from Wigtownshire Amateur Radio Club SCOTLAND - U.K. Ian GM3SEC was putting out a big signal on the ft100 He was running, this was received by my ft847 and G5RV antenna. If you have read the post on Radio and Astrono

The past couple of days have been a bit on the damp side here on Baildon Moor so I have been keeping my self amused with radio and the latest NASA activities regarding the docking of Endeavor to the ISS which Ive been keeping a close eye on since lift off last Wednesday the 8th. I have done this via the NASA web site Live TV Feed From ISS , you can get to via the link on the right of this page. I recommend view in media player. ISS SIGHTINGS As well as watching the live feed Ive been in and out looking into the Sky's at night, this was to be successful with three consecutive evenings of clear sky I was able to see the ISS and Endeavor Space Shuttle as an extremely bright Star travelling across the Horizon and night Sky. I am not so clever with the camera so practice makes perfect but I did get some shots of one of the pass byes, taken on long exposure. The top image is the best, if you click on it to enlarge and look closely you can see some resemblance of the ISS and Shuttle. This

Hi Folks, We have been playing Radio and looking at the Stars, Planets and Galaxies up in the very beautiful and historic Galloway area of Scotland. I would recommend this part of the World to you all if you get chance to visit! It offers beautiful scenery, lots of history, friendly people and for those of us who like operating HF, zero noise interference allowing many good QSOs . As far as Astronomy goes, Galloway boasts some of the darkest skies in the U.K making observations extremely interesting and easy to see other Galaxy's , Globular clusters, Meteors, orbiting Satellites and the International Space Station which I had the pleasure of viewing with the naked eye. Whilst operating I was 2M0HTS/m which is my call sign for Scotland. I find this a bit confusing?As intermediate licence holders we have to drop our County locator's prefix which in my case is 2E0 (England) replacing the E with M for Scotland becoming 2M0. This is kind of ridiculous as MM/2E0HTS would be

Ive been quite busy this week with a lot of driving it worked out well as I got the opportunity of playing radio /mobile, I have the choice of 4 bands with the antenna systems i have installed to my Toyota rav 4. The picture above shows a Diamond 2m/70cm ANT, a 40m Maldol HFC40, and a 20M Maldol HFC20. This weeks QSO from the mobile have been made on 20m and 40m, the most of the time I was operating on 40m with some excellent results on my ft100 running 50 watts. I made contacts with Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Poland all on 40M and from the Mobile. I am once again impressed with the performance of the little Maldol HFC40 like its partner gripped to the back of my tail gate the HFC20, both of these antennas have been in use daily for over 2 years and are still in top shape providing an experience of pure joy and surprise with some of the distant Counties worked. I have one of the 80m Maldol HFC80 but I haven't managed to make QSO with anyone so I wouldn't rec

Click on image to ENLARGE Once again NOOA 15 gives a good look at what is happening around 17.50 utc I have not been so active on the HF bands as I have been busy fabricating a tow hitch/bar for my Vehicle.This is not a problem as I am a fully qualified Welding and Fabrication Engineer, so I was what we say? Playing! I made two attachments one is a straight forward tow ball bracket and the other will allow the mounting of a 6BTV from Hustler.The new home brew Tow bracket will shortly be put to the test as I am picking up a new toy which is a Kawasaki 750 spectre US import this thursday on the motorcycle trailor I am borrowing. The Antenna mount will get tested when I set up Portable Station in about a month at the annual Keighley Show. There I will errect the Six Band Trapped Vertical( Hustler 6BTV) and fix it to my Vehicle using the homebrew Bracket/Mast so expect to here more about the Keighley Show nearer the time. As far as the new edition to my Motor Cycle Collection I am looki