EA4GKY Keys While wasting valuable operating time reading the funny things Ham’s have to say on Twitter I came across Alberto (EA3GKY) a new (to me anyway) CW Key maker (Alberkeys). He had some great straight keys and paddles so I wasted no time dropping him an email and putting my name on the list […]
WSPR analysis of an EFHW and a DipoleWith only a little time for radio this month I decided to use the excellent WSPRlite from SOTABeams to compare my two staple SOTA (portable) aerials; the 3 band linked dipole and 3 band End Fed Half Wave (EFHW) (which uses SOTABeams pico traps rather than links). I achieved […]
MTR4BI was very fortunate to receive an early version of the LNR Precision MTR4B (Mountain Topper Radio) which is available in the UK & Europe fromDennis at Kanga UK. The MTRs are a pretty amazing family of radios and the MTR4B is a four band version that introduces 80m as standard along with simpler band switching, […]
SatellitesI finally put some effort into working out how to operate through satellites starting with the nice and easy FM sat, SO-50. I treated myself to an Arrow hand held 2m/70cm crossed yagi aerial and connected it up to a Yaesu VX-6 hand held which I pre-programmed using 7 discrete frequencies to receive the satellite […]
As a SOTA enthusiast I’m aways looking for mays to minimise the size of my station and had experimented with End Fed Half Wave (EFHW) aerials in the past but with a matching unit that included an inductor and a variable capacitor I found it super sensitive to the proximity of the ground, trees and […]
It Summer vacation time so managed to squeeze in a couple of SOTA summits; Mynydd Carningli (GW/MW-033) in Wales. I hiked up from the waters edge in Parrog making this a half days activation. There’s very little space at the summit and a school outing had taken over when I arrived so I had to […]
This month I tweaked the tuning of my SOTA linked dipole to give me greater coverage on 40m. I now have an SWR of <1.7:1 across 20, 30 & 40m…now I’m ready for some Summer SOTA action :o) I’ve managed to achieved both my Worked all @lids (WALIDS) Bronze award and collected my first FISTS Millionaire […]