A hill and half a watt[026]
Greetings from a house on a hill...
HERE
Still not home. I was. For a bit. But we are having another little holiday. Dragging as much out of the summer as we can.
As someone house sits for us, we are house sitting for others. It’s a great way to procure a base in another neighbourhood. What is even better is that this place is on a hill. See that window at the end of the arrow. That’s where I’m sat. It’s big house split into a lot of flats. And no, sadly I can’t put an antenna on the roof.
Besides. I have no HF gear as I chose to travel light. I packed three hand helds. The FT5D, The Icom ID52 and the Wouxun 4m radio.
I did pack an inflatable 2/70 antenna but forgot the adapter. Still having fun.
THERE
Last week HF in Wales was limited. I carried my gear all that way for only a brief window to play. I rigged up a linked dipole and made local contacts with Scotland, England and Ireland. MM7JNT, EI2HPB and M5 STC.
I had my handheld with me at all other times but with very few repeaters in the North west of Wales I was mostly receiving APRS signals from Ireland.
While I was scanning the simplex frequencies one night I did pick up one side of a conversation. GW0HGC was a strong signal and weirdly he immediately recognised my voice. There must be so few local radio operators in the area as after checking the log I realised the last time we had chatted was 2 years prior when I had the callsign M7XTN. I now see why so much of the activity in Wales is digital.
The most radio fun to be had it seemed was on PMR. We were up above Shell Island and my daughter had fun winding up the kids in the sprawling campsite that stretched out below us. It was all in good spirits and everyone had a laugh.
Great to hear kids running around, radios in hand having fun. Shame to think that as soon as they are old enough to have phones they’ll quickly forget this particular type of radio communication.
One kid: “Stand on a log, the toilet block is in the way of the signal!”
Another kid: “If I touch the radio on the tentpole I can hear you better!”
Analogue radio and all its foibles, restrictions and magic really does nurture natural creative skill. Just as artists thrive within self imposed constraints, creative radio operators also thrive as they wield wire and physics this way and that, in order to communicate and connect.
To think that you can have all this fun with a hill and half a watt.
GEAR
When I saw the Icom 905 announced I really hoped it would finally offer 4m. Turns out it’s gone the other way. Quite a bit.
Should you also want to be able to carry two handhelds on a bike/motorbike/motorised scooter/ride on lawnmower or scooter then check out these little pouches.
I find them much more convenient over trying to mount the radio on the bars and the pouch is useful for snacks or a bottle of wine for non radio times. I got mine from Alpkit but you can get similar on Amazon or eBay. The Alpkit is bigger than others and will easily hold two radios at once.
ONAIR
After getting home the hot weather continued and I’ve not really seen the shack outside of a couple of check ins with the local net. It’s just not been comfortably to sit in there.
Much nicer to get out and about. Yesterday I inadvertently had a go at castles on the air. Which I didn’t know was an actual thing until I just googled it.
I didn’t find any simplex activity but from the top of Warwick Castle I did manage to hit the Rugby repeater 25km away and chat with G8DLX/p. Not exactly DX but GB3ME does not have brilliant coverage at the best of times and I was glad for the chat.
A few hours ago I took the 2/70 and 4m radio out on the bike. Unlike back home there are a few hills round this way and it was fun to ride up and over a few to see what kind of radio was around. Nothing on 4m but I did here a lot of digital chitchat on WiresX enabled GB3LE. G4TXK was demoing to some cadets and chatting to VE1TWP.
ELSEWHERE
Need some amateur radio clip art?
How to build a 5-band stealth antenna.
How to build a 4M vertical dipole.
A weird little podcast from the Truckers Network Radio Show
8 year old girl chats to astronaut.
FINALS
Thanks for reading.
Please share this wherever you think it might resonate. Let me know what kind of radio adventures you are getting up to. Don’t forget it’s churches on the air 9th-10 of September. Next week i’ll be GW5DOC again. I can’t keep away from Wales it seems.
Over
73 de Christian G5DOC
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