Saith deg tri [025]
Greetings from Wales...
HERE
Right now I’m at the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth. I lived in Wales for a while as a small child and have been to this part many times. I don’t speak Welsh but can pronounce some of the places without too much thought. Ask Wikipedia and it will tell you that Machynlleth is pronounced [maˈχənɬɛθ]… Luckily it also has an audio file.
The photo above was taken last night on a hill next to an old mast with a broken wind turbine on top. You can see one of the steel guys. I went for a walk with my radios and although I did hear chatter on distant repeaters most of the local radio activity was on PMR446.
Once back in my room at the centre I snuck out after dark and installed a 40m antenna (above head hight) from my window and across the roof garden. But all the bands appeared to be wiped out. This building is covered with solar panels. And not the new kind. I’m thinking there is little shielding and although I really want panels on my own home I’m wondering if there is a way to find high quality shielded systems.
THERE
While on the way to Wales earlier in the week, on a different mission, I stopped off at Rugby services and noticed some picnic benches on a small hill. After the lowland Cambridgeshire 115m asl felt like a hill and to be honest it did have some take off over the fields either side.
What with free parking, food, coffee, toilets, and wooden posts that would happily take a fibreglass mast, I can’t help but think this would make a great place for an outdoor club meet. I remember back in the day all car parks were fair game for an array of parked up CBers, so how about R.S.O.T.A. Rest Stops On The Air? Or perhaps M.S.O.T.A. Motorway Services On The Air?
Only having limited time for the wee break I had a quick chat with G1VAJ Tony on GB3ME before getting back on the road.
GEAR
Interesting new LiFePO4 96000mAh/297.6Wh portable battery pack just out.
It’s from the same people who make my current portable battery pack. Here is the Amazon link that has at time of writing has a 10% off voucher. (It was 20) I’ll see if i can get my hands on one to test. Looks pretty meaty. The current 72000mAh pack has been great. Interested to see how these improved batteries cope in the field.
ONAIR
With the kids on School holiday I’ve done more thinking about radio than actual radio. Been on the road most of the time taking them here and there. Plus with no mobile set up in the new (old) car I can’t even hit the repeaters when out and about. Unless I have five mins free to try the HT.
While in Margate this week I did just that. But with the weather as it is, no one wants to sit in a hot shack next to a radio and after repeated calls on GB3EK there was nothing heard. So I just pinged a few packets across APRS. There I am…
I have also downloaded iWSPR TX for iPAD with the intention of doing some weak signal propagation reporting on my loop. This requires me connecting my iPad to my Icom IC-705 though. Or just use the speaker and mic close to the radio. It was either do that or write this about how I haven’t made the time to do that and here we are. Soon though. I also have some field radio planned in the next few days. Not having been at home much means the sky loop is just hanging in space doing nothing. I did plug the Icom 705 into it yesterday but really struggled to tune it. I had this issue before. It tunes while on FT8 but not other modes. I was only running 5 watts and it’s possible the losses were too much to power the tuner. More testing needed. But having the tuner up in the air is a pain.
ELSEWHERE
I bet Icom can sell you a solution to sort out their mediocre audio emanation out of the top of their radios. Or you can use a cardboard box ;-)
HB9VQQ is also having issues with Solar panels.
HamBone, a Raspberry Pi bot for Ham Radio.
The US has a simplex frequency that radio operators will use when at a hacker camp or security convention. It’s the Conham frequency 146.580. No good here in the UK as it’s out of our 2m band plan. the Amatuers that were in attendance at EMFCamp this year used 433.425 NFM & 145.425 NFM. I’m going to program that into my radio
FINALS
Thanks for reading and I hope subscribing.
Thanks to M0YWO for buying me a coffee. You can too if you like. :-)
I’m about to get on the motorbike and head up the coast. No mobile radio set up. I don’t trust myself. But I’ll stick the radio in a pouch and try APRS. So far their have been no nodes round here as far as I can tell. I can’t use GW5DOC on the FT5D in the APRS settings so i’ll be G5DOC-7.
Enjoy the Sun and if conditions allow I should be on 40, 20 and 15 over the next couple of evenings.
Over
73 de Christian G5DOC
_._
