Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year To All! Thanks for all of the fantastic comments, advice, ideas and encouragement as well as all of the emails sent during the year. Thank you to All at Planet Ham . Thank you to all Stations worked and all QSLs received, hope to do it all over again in 2009. And finally Thank you All for visiting Ham radio operator.blogspot.com and reading my blog posts as well as putting up with the many radio video's h.i! Have a great Christmas holiday and all the best for the new year!

After hearing Al, ZL1BD most mornings for the last couple of months it gave me great pleasure to make QSO with Al this morning on my work bound journey. ZL1BD AL was a real 5/9 into Baildon Moor when I heard him calling CQ at around 8.15 utc, I gave him a shout back using my Yaesu FT-857, Maldol HMC-20 antenna and 50watts. Al, ZL1BD came straight back to me and gave me a 5/6 report and also remembered me from our previous QSO from around 18 months ago. Al had remembered that I was near by to some relatives he had here in yorkshire U.K. and knows my home area quite well. I can now rest easily regarding the FT-857s performance as it seems to be working very well making good DX contacts from my Toyota Lucida Estima. I Hope to work more early morning DX openings during the winter months.

The WX is very wet here in Yorkshire at the moment so I decided to make the most of the situation by playing some radio. I worked some stations via the Earth orbiting VO-52 Satellite, OM3VAN, HA6NM, DL3JIN and MW0BBU all on the same pass which lasted around 10 Min's. I then had a listen around 20m and noticed that the noise levels were very low allowing weak signals to be heard. I heard some European stations working Australia, and the US Virgin Islands the pile ups were quite crazy, it reminded me back to the day I heard a US station once say it sounded like "Wild Dogs in a meat shop". A good way to sum up a lot of the mad pile ups you here when those rare or interesting stations are spotted and discovered on the Ham bands. Picture of OH2FFY/Mobile It was around 11.30 utc when I came across OH2FFY Greg working mobile on 14.187 mhz with a signal of 5/7 - 5/9 with QSB and lots of QRM (Mad Dogs h.i). I listened for over half an hour and realised that we had already made co

Last night whilst tuning around 40M I managed to work some good DX into Senegal, West Africa which is a new Country for me. I was running 50W from the FT-767GX with a G5RV type Dipole when I heard a pile up around 7.092mhz, the voices stoped calling and I was able to hear the DX station 6W2SC. 6W2SC(Peter) was coming through up to Baildon Moor N.Yorks quite well with a 5/8 signal report received at my station. I worked Peter with a little patience form his good self, which he had as other stations were insistent on calling over me. h.i I still managed to make the qso despite the heavy QRM back to him sending a 5/5 2E0HTS signal. Its a nice bonus working a new one and lets hope propagation is improving at last! Thanks from myself to Peter 6W2SC for making it possible to add a next DXCC in the old log as well as the speedy eQSL confirmation ;-)

With the WX (weather) bringing snow flurries to the UK, this weeks radio activity has been spent once again in listening mode. Both the FT-767GX & FT-847 have been in operation receiving signals on HF and VHF in combinations of weather Fax's as well as satellite weather imagery. The snow was around 6 inches/30 centimeters at its peak which was on Thursday and is still present today (Saturday) despite the suns rays trying to melt it. As usual the best satellite images came fro NOOA 17 using Radio Com 5.2 to decode and satscape to track. This image shows the clear sky over the UK, but looking at the approaching weather front that is in the Atlantic we better enjoy it while it lasts! RX using IOIo beam & FT-847 Here was the scene earlier on in the week, I guess I wont be riding the Kwacker for a while. h.i The Snow did bring some good openings on Tuesday on 2m ssb during the contest as I worked some good Scottish DX using 50W on the home brew IOIo beam. Thanks to GM4PPT dick,

This weekend brought freezing temperatures to the Yorkshire Moor where we live, I couldn't resist putting this spectacular view looking north west from my QTH up the Aire Valley on here for all to see. Normal visibility from this QTH is usually up to 30 miles, this weekends view was almost from a fairy tale. The QTH is at around 1000 ft above sea level and as you can see anywhere below a 1000 ft has been eaten up by freezing fog. click on image to enlarge Other news apart from the WX is I tried the Maldol HMC-6S on my mobile set up. The antenna is a bit on the big side for driving around with, but when stationary I was pleased to hear the multi banded beast pulling in some big signals on 20m. I checked the SWR on the 20m band and it was 1.1, the other bands were also working but propagation was not so lively. I will be fully testing the antenna in the near future on the other HF bands, more than likely when Spring arrives. click on image to enlarge That's all for now, just a q

The WX-Weather has brought snow, wind and freezing temperatures to North Europe. At my QTH-Location Baildon Moor, N.England, at 1000ft above sea level the temperature dropped to 0 degrees Celsius last night and we had a threat of snow but it did not settle. The bands were in good shape late last night/early this morning, as I worked Russia, The Ukraine, The USA and lots of other Stations from Europe using PSK31 on 40 & 80M. All signals were loud on both bands with plenty of activity, I dragged my self away around 2am to get some sleep but it wasn't easy! h.i At present the sun is beaming with outside temperatures at 5.0 degrees Celsius and the wind is stirring making it feel even colder. The image I have just received is from Earth orbiting weather monitoring satellite NOOA 17, which just passed by heading South West. The image shows N.W and W Europe with N.England under heavy cloud cover. I believe this is probably the best image I have received for a while using the IOIo beam

My journey to work on my Kawasaki Z750 was becoming unnecessary now that the dark nights and late sunrises have got under way and we are now into Winter. So for the last couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to use the FT-857 on 20m and 2M from in my Toyota Estima Lucida mobile Ham shack. Conditions have been quite remarkable most mornings at around 8.00utc as I embark on my work bound journey, I am listening up and down 20m ever hopeful of some distant signals. Recently without to much tuning around I have come across some big signals, real 5/9 from the Far East. Last week I heard a few VKs on the morning run as well as ZL1BD, who boomed through and as usual with a large following from G-land and Europe. I worked AL ZL1BD some time last year when conditions were good in my old mobile RAV-4 using the FT-100. It will be good to make the QSO on the FT-857 and latest Toyota, I will get lucky one of these fine mornings I am sure! h.i AL ZL1BD was loud again this morning at around 8.15

I have had a passion for tracking and receiving NOOA weather Satellites for a few years and have tried a few different antenna's along the way with some reasonable images being received. I have had the home brew IOIo beam up for the last two months and have been pleasantly surprised with its performance. The best way to ensure a clear image is achieved by having an almost inaudible sound level from the output of your radio to the sound card. In other words make sure the sound-in to your computer is set very low from the radio. The software I have been running since 2004 is Radio Com 5.2 which has now been superseded by version 6.0. Radio Com 5.2 seems to work exceptionally well still, and I have had a lot of Radio Hams around the world getting in touch with me since they have watched the Weather Satellite videos I did for this site and Youtube. A lot of other Hams told me that they were using WXtoIMG decoding software which allowed the user to play around with the received imag

I’ve been using the Multi band Maldol HMC-6 S antenna, for the last 3 years at my QTH as a stand by antenna and have been pleasantly surprised with its overall performance. The Vertical Mobile/Portable antenna covers 6 bands, 40M, 15M, 10M, 6M (HF) and (VHF) 2M & 70CMS. I’ve used it a lot for listening across the HF bands as well as some short wave frequencies, I’ve also put out some good signals and made some good DX contacts on 40M, 15M and 10M as well as 6M using a good ground plane system (20 foot Metal Container). It even Works well on 2M, I have not tried 70cms but the SWR appeared to be good across the band. I have also got a range of Maldol Mono band mobile HF antenna’s and have been planning to try the HMC-6 fitted to the Toyota’s rear fixing instead of the mono bander’s. This has proven to be difficult to stop running the mono band Maldols, down to the good results that I can honestly say I have had. The Mono band Maldol,s especially 40M, 20M and 15M will be a hard act to

Over the weekend we managed to team up with Phil M1PAC and Craig M3CSD and headed off South in Convoy style to The Great Northern Hamfest located in Barnsley South Yorkshire. The drive took just short of an hour and passed by quickly as we enjoyed rag chewing on 2M FM. On arriving we were joined on the frequency by Mick a local G station who kindly refreshed our memory's of the rally's location and best parking positions, which proved to be very helpful. On entering the rally I began searching the different stalls with the aid of Louise M3TLL and it wasn't long before we both spotted some bargains. The first of three nice extension speakers I picked up was this heavy little maxon at the cost of £1.00. This had made the trip well worthwhile and is now connected to the FT-847. I picked up at CAT interface lead for the FT-847, some dipole centre's, Coaxial plugs and some wire type antenna insulators, all in mind for further projects. As well as grabbing some bargains I bum

CQ World Wide Contest Every year I look forward to using my HF Ham Radio Station during the World Wide CQ Contest. CQ WW is where World Wide participation makes it possible to work new DX locations and rare activations brought to life by enthusiastic radio amateurs from all nations spread around the globe. The Contest lasts all weekend, 48 hours in total. This year's Contest brought some new Countries and call signs into the humble 2E0HTS station. In total I worked 15 Zones and 64 different Countries without trying too hard. I managed 131 different QSO's in between the constant searching up and down the bands, compared to most Station's I was only playing h.i Some Station's make Thousands of QSO's as we Ham's Know already! ;-) I really enjoyed giving a few points away during the Contest and it was nice hearing some of the regular Contest Station's as well as the new ones of course! One big Thank you to All Station's worked! I did manage to get some of th

Today's SSTV transmission received from NA1SS at 10.11utc with a 5/9+40 signal at 2E0HTS Simon's QTH. I also heard Richard call out and I managed to get into the ISS and Richard came back, but it was very quick as half of Europe was calling at the same time. Hopefully I will get a better QSO next time. Thanks Richard and all at ARISS.

This mornings SSTVs transmission whilst passing France and Spains border.