Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

I can't quite remember just how many years I have been planning on replacing my prototype microphone mast/stand,  yesterday I finally made myself a shiny new one! I engineered my latest home brew microphone stand to house my HEiL GM-5 studio mic at the perfect height for my operations. The early design was made from 6mm round bar making it heavy so this time I opted for some 3mm TIG welding wire making the new mast very light. I cut my wire to the required lengths during the assembly, which I carried out with the TIG Tungsten Inert Gas welding process. Once completed, I gave it a coat of aluminum aerosol paint and left it to dry overnight. This afternoon my daughter/apprentice and I began to assemble the microphone head mount and PTT switch to the new mast which also involved getting the soldering iron out (-: more fun :-). We checked the soldered joints with the multimeter which was the best thing ever for my new tech especially when I found an old electrical switch t

I have just made my first FUNcube QSO at 11.05 utc using my FT-847 and Satellite array. I thought I would see how well I could receive the very recently launched Cubesat and to my pleasent surprise I could hear lots of activity via the SSB/CW transponder of FUNcube AO-73. I found it very easy to get into the tiny orbiting funcube at around 15° and had a good first contact with Walt - ON5NY who is a regular for me via all of the satellites I work. Walt was a nice strong 5/9.  As I made my first QSO via FUNcube (AO-73) the satellites pass peaked up to 20° elevation and as I lost the pass I heard CW signals down to around 5° elevation at around 330° azimuth, then I lost reception. Not bad for my first go! FUNcube (AO-73) Operating Frequencies.  145.935 MHz BPSK Telemetry 300 mW or 30 mW when the transponder has been activated  Inverting SSB/CW transponder 300 mW PEP  435.150 – 435.130 MHz Uplink LSB  145.950 – 145.970 MHz Downlink USB

. I parked my motorcycle up a couple of weeks back due to the wet and slippery dark mornings and nights during my daily commute to the works QTH. This is the time to enjoy the comforts of four wheels and the added bonus of my mobile HF station the Yaesu FT-857 mobile transceiver, Maldol and Hustler mono band antenna's. Over the past few weeks I have made lots of great QSOs /M and heard plenty of VKs, ZLs as well as many other DX stations on the morning run in to work with signals often over the 5/9 mark. The return evening journey has not been quite as good but I still hear activity and  have made a few nice contacts usually in and around Europe. For the best results I have been operating mobile mainly on two of the HF bands - 15m and 20m. Its been great fun as usual playing radio /mobile with my little FT-857 and with a quick change over I can experiment with my various mobile HF mono band antenna's. 40m is also very good for mobile operation and I have worked some fa

As we reach the midpoint of Cycle 24 we may experience disturbed or "wide open" band conditions when operating our Ham radio stations. This is due to the effect on the Earth's ionospheric layers being battered by lots of flowing electrons more commonly known as solar flares. The sun's magnetic field has been reversing over the last few months and will shortly experience a complete flip of polarity. This event now known as "solar max" happens every 11 years and like our treasured DX delivering solar cycles is subject to random peaks of activity (solar super storms). The last super storm happened back in 1989 resulting in a massive geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection during solar max. Solar max is a term used by scientists to describe the sun's 11-year cycle. During "Solar max" our sun's magnetic field reverses polarity, typically spawning sunspots, flares, auroras and geomagnetic storms. When Solar max takes place, fiel

According to my Doctor I have been suffering from an "acute respiratory infection" for the last 10 days which will clear up once I have completed all of the prescribed meds. Unfortunately I have not been working or playing and today is the first day that I managed a quick QSO in my shack since I first started feeling ill. I made a very short QSO as I worked HZ1BL in Saudi Arabia up on 12 meters at around 10:40 utc using my FT1000 MKV mp and Cobweb antenna. I have worked HZ1BL previously on 40m, 20m and of course 12m. After that I thought I would check my eQSL account to see how many cards I had waiting. I found around 50 eQSL's which I added to my Online eQSL Gallery Here are a couple of my favorites from my latest batch. Thank You if yours is amongst the many eQSL cards that are on display which can be found by following the link above.

After laying a new floor I accidently dropped my YAESU G-5500 elevation - azimuth dual controller box which resulted in fault on the azimuth meter needle. The needle pinged to the right when I powered the unit up which was a pain in the back side after doing such a careful job up until that point. I had a look for the obvious but could not see anything suspicious on inspection so I decided to seek expert help. At first I found myself struggling to think of who and where I would be able to get a quality repair as amateur radio equipment is not the typical run of the mill tv or pc hardware.  The region that I live in is not the best for finding amateur specialists but fortunately there was a radio shop in South Yorkshire, about 35 miles away. I looked up the number and gave LAMCO a quick call, they told me the good news that they had a radio equipment repair service. So off we went down the M1 and came across a helpful friendly fellow amateur Dave - M0XIT who made us very welco

The Latest 2E0HTS Mobile Station  This years summer holiday started by changing our vehicle from the Toyota Rav 4 for the shiny blue Toyota Avensis as seen below. This presented a new install for me to figure out, I soon came up with a plan and carried out my new installation. In this picture you can see my Maldol HFC-20 HF antenna mounted at the rear. I ran a short ground wire from the antenna base directly to the chassis and managed to get 1:1 - 1:3 right across 20 meters.  As for the rig I decided to give my FT-100 are well deserved rest and try out my FT-857. The first thing I did was in my workshop where I folded up some sheet aluminium to cradle the FT-857 face panel. I wanted to be able to clip it to the ashtray avoiding any permanent fixings. Once I fettled the bracket to fit and work as I required I ordered a separation cable from ebay which arrived a couple of days later. I wired up the FT-857, fitted the separation cable, clipped the ashtray bracket in and b

I like playing around with the many different apps freely available to Google chrome users and earlier this evening I tried a program/app called Photo Collage. I found it at the chrome web store and simply added it to my chrome web browser. After about ten minutes I created the picture seen above from some images that  I had previously saved to my pc drive. It was really quick and easy and I think the result is quite good, hope you like it! 73 have a great weekend.

Once again another college year comes to an end after a lot of hard work. I have enjoyed teaching all of the students and as you can see by the image below its now time to celebrate success and wind down for the summer holidays.  In case you are wondering? Yes, we were on board a space craft, however the unbelievable bit is that I am the one wearing the tie! To infinity and beyond! Thankfully, I shall be back down to Earth soon and able to crack on with blogging and get some more radio play time too. 73.

As I made my way to work this morning I came across a strong signal coming in on 20m via the long path from Tasmania. It was infact VK7AC - Norm with a 5/9 signal in the clear. I gave Norm a shout and was recieved back in Tasmania with signal report of 5/7. Not a bad way to start the working day!  VK7AC - Norm's Shack 

I have been enjoying my radio equipment a lot since I settled on my preferred layout of my amateur radio station. The shack is working well as are my antennas, all that's left to do is to get busy making plenty of qso's. I am going to start making more of an effort to call CQ rather than my usual style of replying to someone else's CQ call. I guess I am a lazy operator, hopefully next time I post it will be about the stations that came back to my call as I aired my hard to catch call sign. 73!

I am always happy to exchange qsl cards and have collected far too many to count over the years. Today's package arrived via the qsl bureau and contained some nice cards. My favourite this time around is a Japanese qsl card pictured above from JA3EGZ - Mega. Happy DX, 73!

Earlier this evening ARISS participated in another successful  International Space Station school contact with Sir George Simpson Jr. High, Canada. The qso took place at around 20,00 utc,  I received a good signal from the ISS crew which can be heard in the video below.

I have been enjoying my Easter break with the family and getting about as well as playing radio in between. Finally the sun has been visible throughout the weekend which was all that was required to enthuse us all to venture up to our moor top holiday home. When we got there the snow drifts were still hanging around despite the pleasant temperature of 8 C. Dudley our dog enjoyed sniffing out the many rabbits to be found as we walked around the moor top retreat.  Inside the shack (B) the amateur radio gear was thankfully still working very well. I dusted back the sheets and I enjoyed playing radio on my good old FT-767 HF transceiver & delta loop antenna. My little FT-2600M & the rest of the VHF kit that I have set-up was also still good including the home brew IO-10 Sat beam and rotator. I worked some nice stations on 17m, 15m and 12m throughout the afternoon and had a good time hanging out with my lovely family with some juice, hot drinks and chocolate biscuits.

The HF bands have been quite good here in Yorkshire of late.  I was surprised just how good 15 meters is right now during a nice long qso with a US West Coast ham station KU7O - Jerry, from Washington. Jerry was calling CQ on 21.290 MHz at around 21.30 utc with a cracking signal to my cobweb antenna &  FT-1000mp transceiver when I answered his call. Our signals were strong enough to maintain a reasonable exchange of information throughout the qso, it was definitely an armchair copy! Jerry was 5/8 - 5/9 and my report back was 5/4 which was pretty cool. I am impressed with the performance of 15m band tonight and shall be getting back to it after this post to catch the rest of the signals I am hearing during this nice opening. 73 Happy Holiday!