Bicycle Mobile [047]

Greetings from the shack...

A.I Generated illustration

HERE

I’m back after a couple of weeks working in Paris. Thanks for your patience. I missed the storm that passed through and so far it looks like my antennas survived. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.

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THERE

Work abroad was all encompassing. Plus my family came out for one of the weekends. I’ll drop a note below in regard to my limited radio activity out there.

I returned from France with laryngitis and no voice. This made radio interesting. In order to hop on the net and let everyone know I was back home, I cloned my voice and attempted to key the mic to the computer speaker while playing out some pre written text.

The quality of the recording is not great, but if you want to hear how the AI generated me faired on the 10am net I have included an audio clip. It’s edited for brevity with just the relevant bits left in.

So the fake voice certainly got me by, and if I’d had time to plan I could have programmed a soundboard with no end of responses. It’s quite possible that within five years we will have realtime two way translation of our international QSOs done in the radio. Not with an iCom or Yaesu of course. They move far too slow. OK, maybe iCom. They at least have got USB charging for their handhelds. ;-)

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As soon as my voice started returning I was straight off for some photo/video documenting in the North of England. On the way home I stopped off in Barnsley to check out an amateur radio shop called Lamco. You might know it as HamRadio-shop.co.uk.

Lee the owner was chatty and super helpful. Great to know there are other options out there for finding interesting radio and antenna deals.

Lee was telling me that CB radio is still popular in the area and there is even a mobile operator with a CB radio on his bike. This was me and my friends back in the late 80’s and it’s great to hear it is still a thing. I wish I had a photo from back then.

It all started with a hand held (HT) on a BMX. Here is an AI render of what it might have looked like. The kid really does look a lot like I did, but the bike looks too American. I had a Raleigh Burner.

An AI generated image of someone looking uncannily like I did as a kid.

And then I moved to a Mini Midland Portapack attached to the handlebars of my Raleigh Mustang mountain bike. Sorry again, no photo. But I have found these photos online and am pretty sure I’d have looked as nerdy as these two do.

Again, The kid on the right bears an uncanny resemblance to an 11 year old me.

Nowadays I just drop an FT5D into a pouch on the handlebars and rely on the UK repeater network. Sometimes if on a long ride i’ll also pack a 4m handheld for good measure.

I’m starting to wish I’d kept my wide-banded 857D and mounted it on a Raleigh Chopper with an ATAS on the back. HF, CB, 2m 70cm and PMR all on a bike.

If only I could then travel back in time to 12 year old me aka ‘Captain Nemo’ and show him there was no rush to grow up.

I probably wouldn’t look as cool at this though.

Yes I know this is a radio telephone. But it’s still radio. ;-)

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GEAR

A very interesting all band radio. Even does 4m. (Would look great on a bike)

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Why is Apples USB-C cable $130

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It’s interesting to see how much gear you can get in a backpack when on a bike, but I prefer to strap stuff to a luggage rack. This guy has a decent antenna set up.

I find this little EFHW attached to a sotabeams 6m pole super portable and works brilliantly.

Back in the day on 27megs I had either a fire stick on the back of the bike or a DV27. I found whips would whack me in the back of the head.

Here is a video from six years ago showing that Firesticks (although not that good) are still popular.

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ONAIR

I took a couple of radios into Paris with me. My Yaesu FT5D, which due to lack of Parisian repeater activity, I only used with WiresX through my Pistar. I was nice to chat with M7APO back in the UK while digging into bread wine and cheese.

I also threw up a retractable long wire to use with my Xhdata D-808 and had so much fun scanning what felt like hundreds of broadcast stations. Local, distant, commercial and some fascinating pirate stations. I really wanted to record some of what I heard but never found the time to set up a recorder. As much as I really want this amazing looking all-mode SDR receiver, my next SW listening radio really needs to have onboard recording.

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Earlier today I got Allan GB2BD in the log. His station celebrating 100 years of BBC broadcasting from Aberdeen. 2BD was the original callsign. There was a lot of QSB but he was managing the pileup nicely. Listen out for him on 40m over the next couple of days.

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ELSEWHERE

• A great little podcast called Pop Music Pirates documenting the golden era of British pirate radio stations.

• Quite a sophisticated bicycle mobile set up.

• Testing radio waves during eclipses.

• Historic shortwave transmitter radio site celebrates 80 years.

• This is my other more regular, slightly more eclectic email.

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FINALS

Thanks for reading and I hope subscribing.

Got any photos or stories of you bicycle mobile? Please share.

Also please share this email wherever you think it might resonate.

You are some of the more curious people in radio ;-) And I thank you.

Over

73 de Christian G5DOC

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