Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

A very late Happy new year to each and everyone,  I hope you are all keeping well and safe as we enter another year over shadowed by this dreadful virus. Once again I am working online with my students rather than being in the welding and fabrication workshop where I belong. Despite the chaos there is plenty of fun and laughter in the household and I have also been very active on the ham radio bands. My log has never looked so healthy and I have been making many QSO meeting some great guys and girls on the air.  The last few months have flown by and I now seem to be live streaming both welding sessions and ham radio from the shack. Every Sunday evening I have been live on YouTube working lots and lots of other radio amateurs on 80 and 40m as well as up on 20m when conditions permit. Its started to become a weekly ritual and I have almost formed a virtual gathering of regular friends via the YouTube channel stream and of course on the air. It is a real pleasure to finally ge

Greetings friends and followers around the World! 73 Seasons blessings and good will and health to each and all! Merry Christmas! I received a nice diploma on Christmas day for receiving SSTV images which commemorate 20 years of onboard amateur radio activity. It was easy enough to obtain via  ARISS SSTV Award  link.  Here is an earlier one from the Sputnik series. Its great fun receiving images from ISS and can easily be decoded using MMSTV free software on your pc. There are a few apps for phones and tablets that work well also. Check out my latest video as I decode ISS SSTV images if you want to see how easy it is.  Also if you like that you might want to decode weather satellite images which is a very similar method apart from you need a slightly more complicated decoder which again is free and is called WXtoImg Above is a recent image from NOAA 18 below is a video showing how I successfully decoded the weather image. Keep yourself amused this Christmas as we all stay safe, have a

What a year we have been having with little sign of any significant change as of yet. Some of the  Positives of this year for myself  Have to of been Ham radio. I have  met many new amateurs and SWLs since lock down began on the air and online, I formed a Facebook group and doubled my YouTube subscription. Also I carried out maintenance on all of my antennas and made a new one along the way.  Ham radio has been a great choice of passtime this year and I would like to thank all of you guys and girls, new friends and old friends for all comments and encouraging feedback that helps keep me going. HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone ❤. This week was my last working week at college, I'm finally on holiday for two weeks and hope to get on the bands. Earlier and through the week I have been active and I was also able to make a few videos of some of my qso and radio fun. Catch up on my YouTube channel . This week I worked some mobile and base HF, Satellite and ISS. I even decoded a

I noticed a swr variation when I switched between my dipole and vertical hf antennas. The swr reading on my Hustler 6btv was 1:6 and I noticed that when I switched back to it sometimes it was up to 2:0. I played around with the switching mechanism and sure enough it was back to 1:6. The next step was a quick inspection of the internal contacts and switch housing. I noticed that the central spindle was worn and this was allowing the switching pole to lean slightly towards the dipole pick up point. The slight movement rectified the closeness but the switch was well worn through years of operation. So I treated my station to a new better quality replacement as seen below.  my old switch has served me well but the new high power Avair switch has better isolation and is much nicer to operate.  I hooked it up and to my pleasure saw the SWR fall to 1:4 which is even better. Let's hope this nice neat upgrade has a good long lifespan as it seems pretty cool on day one of operati

Hi All! Hope you are keeping safe... We are in the same position as most regarding lock down and other than going to work I have been stuck indoors a lot lately. So, off outside into the garden it was and antenna building time once again was here.  I decided to replace the prototype 40/80 fan dipole that has been in use since the end of spring. It has been working really well even though I made it from some random used wire, I bought three reels of SotaBeam military spec heavy duty wire which come in 50 meter reels. The wire is stainless coated multi strand 50 ohm and is in a low impact green colour. It is very good for antenna elements or radials and solders up nicely.  I also decided I wanted to try out this new build double dipole with a suitable 1:1 balun that would help prevent unwanted coaxial line transmission and also help reduce unwanted reception noise on the feed line from random electrical sources nearby. The balun also helps to isolate the returning RF at the feed point a

  As we move into the last couple of months of 2020 which has been defiantly a year to remember for obvious reasons, we can look forward to getting back down to the lower HF bands such as 80m. I really enjoyed the winter DX last year and made plenty of good qso across to USA, Canada, Caribbean and South America whilst operating on the 80m band. This year I have the 40m/80m home brew Fan Dipole which has already proven to be an awesome asset to my HF station. For those of you that have been coming back to my call on the regular YouTube live streams you have already sampled its performance h.i. Thanks for the super qso's guys, I look forward to catching you all again over the weekend this coming Saturday evening about 10.30pm local (21.30 utc). So, the homebrew Fan Dipole worked out well for me. I must admit I am quite impressed with it, I have some brand new SOTA beam wire reels in my possession which at some point will be used to build a brand new replacement which will be cut to t

 Hi everyone I hope all is well? It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted so thought I'd drop by and update you of some of the activities I have been getting on with. First I will start with the card I received this morning confirming a great qso with ON3ONX who was worked via SSB Satellite XW-2A.  Over the past fortnight I spent a number of evenings trying my hardest to get into the new ISS repeater, I have probably tried around about 50 passes which I would say out that I made a qso 5 times giving me a 10% success rate. At first I thought I had an issue at my end but soon realised that the majority of stations in the UK and N.W Europe that were getting in each time (the same stations) are in fact running higher power than myself. This of course is quite unnecessary as well as out of order lol. I guess some people are so desperate to make it their own personal repeater hi hi that 300w is acceptable. I cranked it up to 50w and still struggled and at one point went the wh

 Its been just over a month since I purchased the COM 232B antenna rotator interface.  The neat little box sits nicely on my G-5500 control unit and is hooked up to my Windows 10 PC running Orbitron and WiSP DDE tracking software. The auto tracking of the antenna has made making a contact into the satellites much easier allowing me to focus on the reception and uplink signal out from my FT-847. I am looking at the next step which is configuration of the cat control for auto frequency doppler correction but at first glance its a bit of a faff and is not something I have the time to commit to setting it up properly at the moment. However, I spent a couple of hours last night trying to get it functioning on Orbitron but had no success so far. I more than likely will have to try something else if I want the auto frequency control, possibly GPredict.  I made a new video of my satellite operation which features CW, SSB and FM communication. Best 73 from the family and myself and we will catc

 The FlightAware setup that I received from my good friend Pat W1DUK recently has been performing really well with the "Cantenna" 1/4 wave vertical antenna for 1090MHz. The set up comprises of a raspberry Pi with a FlightAware SD card and a FlightAware SDR USB Dongle, into a 1090 Mhz Antenna. Today I was up early and with a freshly fabricated bracket I managed to clip the Cantenna up high in the sky on the top of the mast. The reception footprint has now become up to 200 miles and possibly further with a greatly improved omni-directional pattern. I am in the first couple of hours of testing and have seen the number of aircraft increasing from an average of 10 to 20 + aircraft at once being tracked. A great success so far! A screen capture taken with my first go using the "Cantenna" 1/4 wave vertical mounted in the top window inside the house A screen capture of much improved activity and reception range taken with the "Cantenna" 1/4 wave vertical mounted o

  Well guys I have had a busy few months playing radio and staying safe at the same time! I am back at work now and decided to post a few of the videos that I recently created! I hope everyone is safe and healthy and if you haven't seen these yet enjoy! Operating a Yaesu FT-847 on the Satellite bands using VHF and SSB. A quick DX catch up with Kurt in Trinidad. Beautiful signal as always! Upgrade made to the Diamond F-23 high gain 2M band mono band vertical antenna On my way back from Burnley in Lancashire over the hill tops!                                                              IOTA 2020 Warm Up                                                 A quick pass from a couple of FM Satellites M0YKS mobile ham radio FT-857 DX Machine Out and about in the DX Machine with the family. We visited some great local countryside and played radio in between. Total distance travelled was 80 miles round trip.                                             Ham Radio Communication  - RS0ISS - M0YK

This morning I was pleased to receive an email form Kwon -HL2-0112B from South Korea. Kwon had received my signal whilst I worked OZ/DB4ST  up on the 20m band. I will be writing out a QSL card for Kwon shortly, thanks for the report Kwon! 73 to South Korea hope to make it to your SWL station again soon Thank You!

Messing around in the shack late night DXing paid off again,  I caught a couple of nice QSO just now into Montserrat and the USA. First I worked Micheal W3MLJ operating on a remote station he was 5/9. After that I worked Frankie VP2MNI who as usual was booming in with a solid S9 from Plymouth Montserrat. Both stations were worked on the 20m band. Thanks for the QSO guys!

I had tried my best to avoid any changes to this well established old blog of mine, but due to constant changes such as templates and securer viewing and privacy settings I have been over ridden by blogger and the whole blog has had a makeover. This happened of course without my blessings or consent but I suppose It was inevitable as more and more people bin their PCs and browse the web on phones, tablets and I-pads. I myself do use all of the above apart from I pad due to costs lol But! I also still do most things on my desktop Windows 10 PC and have no plans to get rid of it! So, here it is.....Bloggers supposedly better template which is pretty basic without the cluster and ISS tracking and of course very well visited flag/site meter no longer with us "Doh" Thanks To Everyone that has passed through since 2006 and hopefully will still continue to do so! Check back soon I should have got over the shock by then and be posting HAM Radio Epic Content lol. Best 73 S

You may have missed me on the Satellite bands as my antenna required a bit of maintenance which I managed to get sorted yesterday! It was not my favourite pass time but all went well and I was back on the satellite bands later that same day. I made a little mini Satellite series on video which starts with PT1 - a antenna test and demo - Moves on to PT2 - How to make an SSB Satellite QSO - Ending with Part 3 which was an actual QSO Via an SSB satellite with Peter 2M0SQL. You may find this useful if your new or thinking of getting into the amateur satellite bands: PT1 - Satellite Antenna Maintenance PT2 - How to work Amateur Radio SSB Satellites PT3 - XW - 2A Space BIRD Amateur Satellite QSO with 2M0SQL - M0YKS

Ham Radio Poems by M3TLL Louise There's a voice inside the static And it's calling out CQ CQ DX is anyone there? He wants to speak to you You've set up your antenna You're receiving loud and clear You're going to call out to the voice That you can loudly hear You shout out your callsign He says he can hear you fine Receiving you above the noise Your signal's 5 and 9 You exchange all of your info Find out what you want to know Say 73s and 88s QSL via the bureau A new one for 2020 QRZ? Keep calling I hear you in the noise Conditions might be changing As I can hear your voice I know it is frustrating Keep trying you'll get through I can hear your voice in there  As I call CQ It doesn't matter where you are I just like the conversation  So keep calling, hopefully We'll have good propagation  I want to get you in my log And to hear what you've got to say So please keep trying to get through Point your antenna this way