Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Today I managed a nice QSO with Tom ZD7X who is located at St. Helena which is quite a distance away from my location. I managed to work Tom ZD7X with a 5/9 report operating my FT-767GX with my home brew 20m delta loop assisted with the MFJ-969 to tune the antenna with 50 watts on 12 meters. 12M is rarely open and I have only had a few QSOs on this band so I guess the new Cycle has begun at last! Good DX de 2E0HTS 73

This information is courtesy of QRZ.Com, I thought Id share it with everyone especially those who might of missed it! QRZ.Com for those of you that don't know it is well worth a look. QRZ.Com SOHO: the new solar cycle starts with a ‘bang’ The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that the SOHO solar observation spacecraft witnessed the start of the new solar cycle. The appearance of a very special solar spot on the sun surface a few days ago, signalled to scientists around the world that a new solar cycle had begun. This solar spot also produced two solar blasts. Each solar cycle lasts an average of 11.1 years. The new solar cycle, called ‘Cycle 24’, started on 4 January this year, when SOHO observed an event scientists have been anticipating for about a year. A fairly small and, at first sight, inconspicuous sunspot on the Sun’s northern hemisphere showed a reversed magnetic polarity compared to sunspots of previous years. A sunspot is an area of highly organised magnetic activity o

Happy New Year to all! The final few weeks of 2007 did not seem to bring any good propagation making DX openings few and far between. I was fortunate to work just one distant station during the festive season on the 27th of December, and using eQSL.cc I sent and gratefully received an eQSL card confirming QSO with ZP5MAL (Juan from Paraguay). This QSO was on the Yaesu FT-767GX with the hustler 6BTV operating on 20M exchanging 5/3 reports. The Ft-767GX has also been working well for me on 7.038 mhz with the aid of my P.C and nomic rig blaster as I have had many successful QSOs using winPSK31se digital mode. The 40m band has been fairly flat for phone contacts just like 80m and 20m for most of the time. Most of my radio talk time has been taking place on 2m running the FT-847 & FT-857. A distinctive increase of activity has been happening on 2m lately which has been welcomed locally. This is probably down to the many new recently licenced operators that have come into the hobby over

Chris on the Right of the picture with his pass certificate who is a fellow work colleague at Park Lane College Keighley. Chris is a lecturer in Electrical Installation and has been spending lunch times and the odd couple of spare hours with Louise and myself over the last two months. Louise is a registered Examination officer for the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). I am RSGB registered as a Foundation Licence instructor. Chris has been undergoing Foundation Licence training comprising of practical and theory lessons as well as self study. On Friday the 15th of December Chris sat the Foundation Licence Exam successfully gaining a Pass result. Chris has now applied for his Licence and will be operating his Yaesu ft-847 in the next few days. I am looking forward to working him on some of the bands. Well Done Chris! (Non Amateurs) If you are thinking about becoming a Licenced radio ham, there should be a local club or School/College that might be able to help. More info on this at

Seasons Greetings to all from our Dog Dudley who is practicing his Reindeer pose, He is ready to help Santa sniff out some chimneys I might get him to try some Antenna Antlers next!. Have a Happy Christmas from Louise (M3TLL) and Simon (2E0HTS)

This week was my YL Louise's birthday, I had arranged a short break in Cumbria which we thoroughly enjoyed. We were based at Barrow-In-Furness in the South West of Cumbria and we found the town very interesting with all of its engineering history, Submarines and historic Port. The locals were very friendly and there were some interesting Islands that we visited where I got to make one or two nice QSOs. Here is a video of some of the radio contacts I managed to make during our stay in Cumbria and the Lake District. I decided to do this as some of you guys have been asking me to make some new Youtube videos, so thanks for all the emails and I hope this is OK! Regards and 73 Simon 2E0HTS

CQ100 is a program for use exclusively by licenced radio amateurs and is a simple and effective way to keep in touch with hams all over the globe 24 hours a day without any propagation. If you are interested you can download a 3 month free trial if you follow this link http://qsonet.com/programs.html I have already heard many CQ calls through the CQ100 virtual radio and I will be listening out for you all, and monitoring all the other bands at the same time on my real rigs! 73 C u agn Simon

This Antenna design was one that I used about 4 years ago, it worked exceptionally well on 80m and 40m. The size of the antenna makes a Half wave length on 80 meters, and with the traps a half wave on 40m with a SWR (standing wave ratio) of 1:1-1.5 across both bands. It worked well also on 20m with the use of an A.T.U (antenna tuning unit). I made my version of this antenna using 3mm multi strand copper cable which I left covered by the PVC insulation. The traps can either be home brewed using some 40mm diameter plastic drain pipe and winding wire around the pipe approximately 10 turns, then connected in line after the 10 metre lengths. Or the alternative is to purchase some commercially made 7.1 MHz traps, and fit them in line the same way. The antenna can be fed with 50 ohm coax with a home brew balan or again a commercially purchased balan. The wire lengths of the dipole are 2x 10 metres and 2x 6.7 metres as shown on the diagram above. This antenna can be mounted quite low to the gr

Greetings to all, I recently acquired the Heil mic and had planned to use it in the mobile with the ft-100, but after trying it out I decided to stick with the original fist mic from Yaesu. The Goldline from Heil had struggled to pick up my voice from the dashboard mounting bracket, and with the whole idea of making mobile operations more inconspicuous by not drawing attention to myself, fitting a hands free mic seemed to be out of the window. I was having to shout that loud to hit the alc level, most peoples heads were turning and wondering what I was shouting at. So back to basics and the fist mic wins! I then decided to try the Heil microphone in the shack on the ft-767. This was the beginning of a potentially beautiful relationship as the rig and mic compatibility seemed good with some good reports from experienced G-Stations on 80 meters. I have been using the microphone for the last couple of days and I am finding it OK with the wired PTT switch in my hand and ready to engage. T

I have recently had the pleasure of assisting a fellow member of Staff at work by helping him train to become a radio amateur. Chris is an electrical lecturer at the college where we both work, I was extremely happy when Chris asked me to help him get into the hobby and with his electrical/electronic knowledge it will be fairly simple to pass the foundation examination and obtain the licence which will allow him to operate his recently purchased yaesu ft-847. Good luck with the exam Chris and welcome to the world of Ham radio. Chris asked me about Q-codes so I decided to post the list of Q-codes which are used by radio amateurs around the world. The Q-codes were originally invented for use with telegraphy and then Morse code allowing messages to be transmitted quickly without having to rattle out long and difficult sentences. These days they are still used as a way of sending voice messages as well as Morse, whilst communicating with another station. The Q-codes can be very useful espe

Greetings once again, I've been playing radio quite a lot since I repaired the ft-100 /mobile rig, making many successful DX and local QSOs on 40m, 20m and 2m. The next stage of improvement for my mobile station is to fit the heil base mic that I recently acquired from Ron 2E0DOG. This should be an easier way to operate hands free as well as maintaining top quality audio. I tried a hands free kit from Watson last year but the quality of audio was poor, so I've been using the standard fist mic from Yaesu ever since. I shall fabricate a bracket to mount the mic in the Toyota at the side of the steering wheel close to the dash. The mic has a separate PTT switch that will fit at the side of the hand break. I am awaiting a mic lead which will convert the round pin plug to the ft-100 mod type plug this should hopefully be arriving soon allowing me to begin operating the new set up. The other equipment has also been working well, especially the old ft-767gx which I have been running o

Today has been a good day for Bradford North scouts, Bradford South scouts, Windhill Shipley scouts and Keighley Scouts who have all been active on the bands with the club station call sign MX0KSC. During the event the scouts got a chance to learn about Morse code, Q-codes, phonetics, International pre-fixes and call signs, as well as speaking world wide on amateur radio, also logging and e-qsl/qsling. All of the scouts sucessfully completed a range of tasks enabling them to obtain a scouting radio communicator badge. They were all extremely happy with thier achievements. The JOTA event is running all weekend and as it is celebrating 50 years of activity on Ham radio you can imagine all of the bands are extremely active with this celebration for jota. We spoke with 20 different Stations and all scouts spoke with each operator so if you multiply 40 scouts with 20 QSOs we had a total of 800 exchanges of voice contacts and greetings messages, not bad for 7 hrs of operation. Thanks to all

I came across a simple delta loop design courtesy of dxzone found on the net some time ago and have been planning to give it a go for a while. This weekend I had a couple of hours spare, so I decided to give it a go using some 2mm multi strand wire cable, a dipole centre and a mixture of 75 ohm and 50 ohm coaxial cable. The delta loop is supposed to be resonant on 20 meters but I found it to be a little high so at present I am tuning the Loop with my mfj-969 which copes extremely well. The resonant frequency is 13.2 MHz at the moment so the next chance I get, I shall shorten the overall length making sure that each of the three sides are still equal in length, and hopefully adjusting the antenna for maximum performance ATU free for 14.2 MHz. I believe the miscalculation in the resonant length is probably down to the fact that my wire is covered in the plastic sleeving from the manufacturer which always effects the swr as I have noticed in past experiments with dipoles you always get sl

As most of you know its been 50 years since the historic launch of Sputnik. This link will take you to an interesting artical on Sputnik at the ARRL website. http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2007/09/28/03/ Its well worth a read if you havent seen it 73 all the best.

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