Height is might, but a washing line is also fine. [006]
Greetings from the shack...
HERE
Sat in the dark. A drink by my side, and the comforting glow of radios.
How is your Friday going? Let us begin. [Slurp]
THERE
Not been further than Peterborough this week. I did also get on the roof and secure the EFHW that featured last week. It’s not yet in the best place but seems to be doing quite well. I still need to trim the coax down. I think I’ll use the spare coax on the end of my ZK6BKW. That has done really well this week. It keeps surprising me.
Spent a good many hours glued to the the airwaves. The conditions were all over the place but good stuff was regularly found.
I recorded this on 3.689 one night.
That transmission is featured alongside others in the following video.
It’s not just the amateur bands, all the bands are interesting!
GEAR
The picture at the top of this email is from inside my LDG Z-11 Pro tuner. I took it apart to see if there was any damage after the 4m net this week. A few of us in Huntingdonshire meet on a Tuesday at 8pm on 70.4MHz.
In a rush to get in the shack I didn’t check my antennas and forgot to disconnect the 4m antenna from a switch coming off the tuner.
I knew something was up as my SWR was off. Then I smelled something was up and turned everything off.
Pretty soon the shack was filled with an acrid aroma I was not familiar with. Net controller Richard M0OFF told me “…you are not a proper engineer till you have tuned for maximum smoke.” It appears I’ve now done that. Do I get a badge?
Thankfully things had only got hot. Not enough to damage anything as the tuner still works fine. Just hot enough to melt a little glue around the toroids into a bit of a puddle. It’s almost like it’s there as an early warning system. At least that’s what I’m going with.
Ah… Radio related post. The best kind of post.
I love getting little parcels from Sotabeams.
All the bits I need to test the 49:1 QRP transformer from Moonraker. The little black clips are for hanging antenna wire from your gutter. Or Christmas tree lights. But we all know that lasers are better than Xmas lights. Less RFI.
Anyway, the antenna is ready to go. I just need a dry weekend.
The Russians appear to be using a boring looking but very capable radio.
The AZART-P1 frequency hopping dual channel wide band tactical radio can communicate between 27-520MHz. The manufacturer claims ranges of 5 kilometres at V/UHF and 500km on HF. The MoD says they can also communicate with mobile phones.
If you see one for sale at your local radio rally haggle. With 20,000 hops-per-second on proprietary Russian Army waveforms, who knows if you’ll stay on frequency long enough for anyone to hear you.
Thanks to Clive 2E0OZX for sharing this video with me. I really should make one of these.
I’m still in the market for a portable power pack but always wondering about the noise they might produced. This guy tests noise with a guitar amp.
Today I was listening to Gil M7GGB commenting on the local net that our radios will be useless after a nuclear strike due to EMP. I was too embarrassed to ask if he had a Baofeng in a bin. I mean… what else are we to do with our spare Baofeng radios?
I’m not taking about a bucket repeater. I’m talking about a faraday cage for your emergency radio. There are a lot of sites out there discussing this. Offgridham.com goes into some detail without bringing up religious end of days type stuff.
I quite like Ham Radio Crash Course’s ‘Tactical Trash Can’. It sounds better than ‘Baofeng in a bin’ ..as that’s where most of them probably end up anyway.
ONAIR
Up until recently most of my 80m contacts have been international. In fact I’ve struggled to work anyone local on 80m. But after the recent storms the ZS6BKW seems to be behaving a little better.
The other night I had a great rag chew on 80m with G4TCB, 2E0KAX, M0SKA and M0MRR.
The closest contact in the group was 16 miles the furthest 137. I was initially testing the multiband halfwave which was so much better then the longwire but the ZS6BKW really came into it’s own. The long wire was so bad it either needs moving, removing or lowering so I can hand clothes off it.
While passing through Peterborough this week I managed to catch the 2pm PADARC net on 145.400.
This was my second simplex chat with M0NUR. My first contact with her was during the practical for my M7 exam in 2019. Before I was even licensed!
Another friendly daily net. Make sure you drop in if you are near by.
Finally, another very enjoyable QSO this week was today on 40m with Jon G4RGV. He told me he was down near Gatwick and using a washing line over the lawn.
It wasn’t till I visited his QRZ page that I realised he wasn’t joking. This is the antenna he was using.
Of course there was no washing on it at the time, but during such a strong, clear QSO it was a great hat tip to simple, low slung antennas. At the time I was on my ZS6BKW but inspired by his antenna, I switched to my lower EFHW. It brought him in even better and Jon reported my signal had gone up. Height might be might but a washing line is also fine.
ELSEWHERE
Let me know if you read any cool Ham radio blogs like this one.
Words in a waterfall.
The RSGB is cutting ties with Russia and Belarus.
BBC website ‘blocked’ in Russia as shortwave radio brought back to cover Ukraine war.
For a moment there it looked like the owner of QRZ had stopped supporting Russian callsigns.
Just caught the end of a distant over on 2m the other night. I didn’t try to get in but I’m pretty sure I heard the callsign 2E0MMY. His QRZ page took me to his music on Soundcloud. Have a listen.
FINALS
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Please check out the QRZ pages of the radio operators I linked to. Who knows what cool stuff they might be into.
Thank you for being some of the more curious people in radio ;-)
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Over
73 de Christian G5DOC
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