Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Beamsley Beacon North Yorkshire Today was our first trip up the to the top of Beacon hill near Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire. It was a bit chilly at the top so I couldn't hang about for to long, but we did hear a few stations on my handheld Kenwood THF-7e transceiver. Well done to my girls on their first ever trig point summit.

Weather Image Received From NOAA-19 I recently changed my computer and replaced it with the acer Aspire XC-115 mini tower. The PC is very fast and has all the required bells and whistles with the latest windows 8.1 operating system. The program that I normally use for decoding (radiocom 5.2) was designed for XP and is a bit old for the latest operating system so I decided to try another well known satellite decoder known as WXtoImg .  I downloaded the latest window 8 version which seems to be working quite well as I caught a pass earlier this afternoon from NOAA 19. The decoded image above was received via my FT-847 and satellite antenna, the frequency used was 137.100 MHz.

I am enjoying my new call sign and have been using it mainly on the HF bands which has been very enjoyable and surprisingly I have not made any mistakes so far. Yankee Kilo Sierra rolls of my tongue quite easily and seems to be heard on my first call by most of the stations that I have worked using my new call. I decided to tweak my new M0YKS logo as seen above, I changed the layout slightly and added a different Yorkshire rose as well as some colour to represent the spectacular Yorkshire Countryside. I hope to catch some of you soon somewhere on the amateur bands. best 73 _ . _

I thought I would try out google draw to create a handy reminder in my shack of  my new Call sign.

Greetings to All! Its been a long time since I blogged, this is because I have been very busy studying for the advanced amateur radio licence examination. I am extremely pleased to be able to share with you the fantastic news which I received earlier today which is....... I passed! My new Call sign is M0YKS.

During the last hour of the day just before bedtime I like to tune around the bands to see what stations I can hear coming in to my amateur radio station. The past couple of weeks most evenings have found the majority of the bands have been closed and the little bit of late night activity has been mainly on the lower bands such as 40m & 80m. On the lower bands late on I have worked and heard many US Hams coming in well up on 40 meters and I have heard one or two good ones coming in great on 80m at around midnight local time staying open throughout the night until I am back up early for work listening over breakfast. Last night before I hit the sack I heard CU7MD at 11.50 utc on 3.790MHz who was up at 5/9 with very few takers responding to his CQ call. I listened for while and decided to give Jose - CU7MD from Azores Islands a shout back where I was heard at his end with a matching 5/9 report. I was running my FT-1000MK V MP and Carolina Windom 80m antenna system which is onl

As I listened to the weekly GB2RS news broadcast I heard the sad news that Bill - G4KQJ had passed away last week at the age of 87 and a half after he had recently been poorly. G4KQJ had read the RSGB news for over twenty five years and was always a 5/9+ signal up on 145.525MHz from his amateur radio news station GB2RS which was located in Brighouse, West Yorkshire. Bill known as King Queen Jack, was a first class amateur radio operator and a very good news reader who always had time for a rag chew before and after the RSGB news broadcast. Bill had a wealth of experience in many topics but the ones that I remember the most and had the many pleasures of discussing and listening about were of his many years of service in the Royal Air Force. Bill was originally from the south of England but fell in love with a northern girl from nearby Bradford, He settled up north and he became a respected fellow Yorkshireman. G4KQJ was a amateur radio friend who I spoke almost weekly with for ove

Since my YAESU FT-100 came back from the rig docs I have been itching to change it back over into my mobile station. The FT-100 had a technical issue a couple of years back which turned out to be a number of dry joints. I have had my FT-100 in service since 2004 /M and really like this particular radio, I prefer the FT-100 screen size over the FT-857 especially the signal meter which is much better on the FT-100 in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I have to say that the FT-857 is also a good mobile rig and has served me well as my spare whilst out and about in the DX Machine. But the FT-100 is my preferred radio of the two for every day mobile operation, so my FT-857 is better off back in the shack coupled to my Tri band vertical next to my other lovely YAESU Radios. In the DX Machine I have already been working stations loud and clear with the FT-100 earlier today during the work journeys on my favourite mobile band which is 20m. I will be back in the mobile and on 20m again in

ICE - Industrial Centre Of Excellence One of the courses I am delivering at the College where I work comprises of Engineering and Electronics (ICE) . The ICE students on this course are into their second year of having me as their tutor and so far they have developed skills in MIG, MMA and TIG Welding, Metal craft and Fabrication, Plasma arc cutting, Sheet metal and are currently focusing on Electronics. So far my students have built basic soldered circuits using boards, resistors, diodes, and LEDs, as well as Morse keys which work with buzzers. The students have also been learning about amateur radio and responded well to sending messages to each other in Morse on their home brew kits. Over the past few weeks they have come on very well with their soldering ability and have moved onto the final project which is a Digital FM receiver . The FM radio receivers are quite nice kits and it was very exciting when the first student to successfully complete the receiver had radio 1 coming i

I added another way of viewing my Ham Radio Main Site's Guest Book by creating a second book simply entitled "View The 2E0HTS Guest Book," both books can easily accessed and are pictured below. They are available for anyone including non Hams and can be found attached to the front page of my Ham Radio Main Site Its early days but so far I have received a good response, Thank You! To all who have dropped by and left a comment and name. Don't forget to sign and say hello! Best 73 de Simon 2E0HTS.

I just read the sad news that G4ILO Julian Moss has passed away after a long illness, I will always remember the banter and encouraging comments Julian always left for me on many of my blog posts. He will be truly missed by many and our thoughts are with his wife and family.

Its half term at the College where I work so I am off for the week, my youngest daughter Martha has been wide awake since 6 am so I thought I might get up out of bed and show her some early morning DX. 20 meters was not open yet and 80 meters was closing down, however up on 40 meters things were happing and I worked W3DIY loud and clear 5/8. I was running my FT-1000mp into my Hustler vertical and received a nice report from Rick who was booming in.

The CQ World Wide DX is my favourite contest it is the best way to work lots of DX from all around the world on the HF bands. This year I had lots of fun as did one of my Daughters Elsie, I let her join in with her own DX Zone chart to fill in each time I worked a zone. This proved to be a good idea, she really enjoyed it and kept asking me to get another! This was the best encouragement that any Ham dad could ask for during any contest h.i. As a single low power operator I had a real blast and ended up working into 21 different zones which included 46 different Countries logged by the time the contest had ended. The 21 Zones I managed were worked on 10 and 15 meters, I also made QSO,s on 20, 40 and 80 meters toward the end of the contest. Conditions were reasonable throughout the entire 48 hour contest, I have known even better conditions in past contests but I am more than happy with the performance of my main amateur radio station during this CQ WW (2014). I worked 21 zones

Just in case you wanted a copy, I made this years CQWW Zones check-list available to download or share.