Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Living with a radio ham means you instantly have ideas for Christmas gift buying. If you want to buy your radio amateur a hobby themed gift here are a few ideas you might want to consider. Ideas for Stocking Fillers * Anything with his callsign on it I can't begin to describe the joy on 2E0 HTS's face when he received through the post from an Slovenian ham friend (S57CW/S57ORG) a miniature Slovenian registration plate with his callsign on it. I can only assume the same would apply for any merchandise with his callsign written on it. A mug, a tshirt , a woolly hat for his DXpeditions . The possibilities are pretty much endless. * Earphones If, like me, occasionally you want some peace and quiet from the endless CQ calls and other amateurs tuning up then why not invest in a good pair of earphones. He'll think you care, you'll be able to watch telly in peace! Happy Christmas! * Stationery A radio ham always needs something to scrawl on and with. I learnt early on not

Whilst sending out some recent eQSL cards I got curious and decided to check how many Countries I had actually worked/logged with eQSL. I was interested to see just how well I was doing from my mobile whilst out and about away from the shack. The eQSL /M cards can be few and far between as I have to depend on the other stations that I work whilst mobile to send their eQSL as I stick to driving rather than logging. So with this in mind you can imagine that plenty of nice QSOs/DX doesn’t always get confirmed by eQSL. Thanks to all you guys that are keen eQSLers, I still managed to compile a good start to a hopeful longer list to come of Countries worked and confirmed. I also added Countries I have worked whilst mobile in Scotland and Wales. I use a different eQSL card when operating from the mobile, the shack or any portable stations which can be seen heading each section. Please don't worry radio amateurs from Wales, I will try much harder to make more QSO next time I visit ;-) Mob

I spent most of this afternoon on my computer logged on to the eQSL website confirming and downloading the latest batch of eQSL cards, which I then upload to my other blog - 2E0HTS QSL Gallery . I have been uploading eQSL cards that I receive from both Hams and SWLs to the site for a couple of years now. There you can find eQSL cards displayed that I have received dating from early 2004 to present day. If you have worked or heard my station active and have sent me a eQSL, it will be there somewhere. Follow the older posts link found at the bottom of the page to find earlier eQSL cards I uploaded. For the latest upload to the 2E0HTS QSL Gallery , I decided to put the received eQSL cards into categorised headings which slightly helps to organise things when dealing with a lot of uploading. In this case I had a back log of 131 eQSL cards to get through. The new simplified Headings that I will be using from now are as follows: 2E0HTS HF Bands eQSL Confirmed Amateur Radio Contacts 2E0HTS

Video of QSO between S57ORG and myself at Marko - S57ORG portable location in Slovenia on Sunday 7th November Thank You Very Much for this Video Marko, its great to hear myself sounding nice and loud in Slovenia. 73 Hope to catch you again on HF and the Satellite Bands.

I continued chasing the Satellites yesterday and managed to get into HO-68 before I called it a day. I caught the HO-68 pass on video which can be seen below. Enjoy! During this pass HO-68 is operating in FM mode. Contact is made with SW6KRV, UT3NW & ES5QA whilst the Satellite is at a distance of around 750 miles from the Station of 2E0HTS.

In between cleaning my motor cycles, I have spent today in and out of the shack as I have been closely monitoring the various Satellite passes over my QTH. I started the day early making QSO via the AO-7 Satellite at 08.44 utc with three stations from Europe - 9A2EY, EA1BYC and ON5NY. The next "Bird" I worked via was VO-52, where I made QSO with OZ2SAT & DL7UHF at around 10.32 utc. I then tried my luck again at 16.11 utc where I got into AO-51 which is an FM Satellite which always proves a bit more difficult than the SSB Sats that I worked through earlier. Despite the European pile up and only one station working at a time via the FM transponder, I still managed to work S57ORG who was quickly followed by ES5QA. I heard many other European Ops calling through the bird during the pass, as usual it was chaotic but still lots of fun. To work the Satellites, I am still using my reliable home brewed IO-10 dual band Sat yagi with its 30º fixed elevation (seen on my QRZ page &

Today's weather Satellite Image courtesy of NOAA-19, decoded by 2E0HTS using Radiocom 5.2 software. The UK can be just about seen in the centre of the decoded image. Yorkshire (my QTH) can be seen quite clearly with little cloud cover especially at the coast. Spurn point in Humber Estuary can easily be seen when you zoom in on the image. Fellow Yorkshire folks - Enjoy the Sunshine!

Once again the Bands have become a mass of squawks and rumbles as Radio amateurs around the World battle it out across the HF bands trying to work as many SSB phone contacts amongst the racket of zones and signal reports. This is of course the very popular annual CQ WW Contest. The main objective of the CQ WW Contest is for radio amateurs around the world to contact other amateurs in as many zones and countries as possible within 48 hrs. The World is divided into a total of 40 Zones. The Bands used during the contest are all bands, from 1.8MHz through to 28MHz, except for WARC bands. I enjoy this Contest very much as it coincides with the anniversary of when Louise (M3TLL) and I first dated, Louise lets me play radio every year during our special weekend, as long as I pamper to her every need in between which is easily achievable hi hi. During this year’s CQ WW Contest, I don’t believe that radio conditions were as good as previous years. I did not hear the volume of regular DX station

Image received at 12.30 utc Below is a screen shot of my computer screen as signals are received from the NOAA -19 Satellite on 137.100 MHz(fm) To do this I use my IO-10 Satellite beam coupled to the Yaesu FT-847. The signal is fed to my P.C via a soundblaster sound card to be decoded into the image seen above.

I recently received the provisional Results from the IOTA 2010 Contest which took place back in July. I took part in this years IOTA Contest for the very first time really enjoying the whole experience and to my recent surprise doing quite well considering my low output power. I entered the Fixed, Single Operator, Unassisted, Single Sideband, 24hr, Low Power Section of the contest (a bit of a tongue twister to say the least). The shortened abbreviated version can be seen below with my score and position. 11 - 2E0HTS - EU005 - Great Britain - IOTA FIX SOU SSB 24H LP - 143 - 57 - 68913 Follow this link to see the full IOTA 2010 Provisional Results . Other recent activity has been mainly on the HF bands especially 40M, 20M, 17M and 15M. Over the past week I have worked some nice DX using the FT1000mp MKV and recent CW160 antenna, the good propagation has provided some excellent openings on the higher end of the HF bands. On 15M, I have worked into Brazil - PY2DN & New Zealand - Z

I recently added some more radio gear to my ever growing collection which comprises of a few more antenna's and a Ft-1000MP Mark-V to help bow the shack table some more. I strung up a Carolina Windom 160 by Radio Works last weekend which joins my collection of home made delta loops, wires, beams and verticals. You can never have too many radios or antenna's hi hi. Since the the CW160 was up I have made lots of great QSO,s on 80m, 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m & 12m. I have yet to try it out on 160m, 30m & 10m but the results so far on the other bands have been very surprising. The antenna is 265ft long and is suspending by trees in a more or less straight line and it is nice and stealth like not causing any complaints so far which always helps to keep things peaceful. The new addition - Yaesu Ft1000MP MK-V fine tunes the antenna well using the onboard atu, the antenna is less than 2:1 at worst across all of the HF bands and is at 1:1 on 160m without the atu in its present configur

As well as Ham Radio I have had a history of playing music - DJing on local community broadcast stations. I was involved with a local station for over 15 years before I got my amateur radio licence, broadcasting live to about 250,000 listeners three times a week never missing a show. So as you can imagine I have an extensive collection of Vinyl recordings. To sum it up, if I ever melted them down I would have enough plastic to manufacture 10,000 hand held microphones. On a more serious note I try to spend the odd weekend playing some of my records and at the same time I have the PC interfaced to my sound system allowing me to convert the tracks to mp3. I have had my "HI FI" equipment for over 20 years and it still sounds as solid as ever. It is connected to some PIONEER CS-777 speakers powered by a DENON PMA350 amplifier. I still have some 22" base boxes fitted with horns that I can "string up" if needed for venues etc. I obviously don't listen to music whe

Since I settled for the 10 element 435MHz and IO 145MHz loop antenna (IO-10EL) I have been getting into the OSCAR Satellites with ease. I have been making lots of QSO's with the home built beam fixed at 30º elevation for the past year or so on FM and SSB. Earlier this evening I made QSO's on AO-51, HO-68 and VO-52. On AO-51(FM) I worked ON5NY, on HO-68(SSB) I worked IZ7JXJ, DJ8DT and for the second time this evening ON5NY. On VO-52(SSB) I worked IZ5AVK and DK1IE, all were good signals and all Stations could hear me at 5/9. I was running approximately 35Watts from my Yaesu FT-847 and managed to still get in to HO-68 at a total distance of 2500 miles as the the Satellite headed over North America. I am always amazed how well my homemade antenna performs and I still get the biggest buzz when the "birds" pass over, in fact my hard done by YL - Louise M3TLL thinks I have a problem and calls me a "Satellite Junkie". Unfortunately for Louise, there doesn't see