News
- Details
- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
- Category: News
- Hits: 637
As the sun wasn’t playing ball again at the beginning of August, I thought I would try to learn to use this FT8 thingy as it seems the most popular data-mode at present.
Most of the bands were mayhem so I picked my old favourite, 60 Meters (5 Meg'). I had only ever worked about 20 DXCCs on this band since 2002 and I was expecting a very quiet place to practice. How wrong can I be! Most of the contacts were Germany and Holland with a smattering of DX including Malaysia. Altogether 63 DXCC slots worked in less than a week. Not too bad, but my understanding of what is going on and my operating techniques need a lot more work!
As I was feeling up to it, I went to the 'nag & natter' on the 11th. It was great to see real people again if only a few. A good opportunity to catch up with the news and the scandal! To finish off a pleasant evening I had a look in the shack to see all the new shiny kit. In my opinion far too complicated for me but I bet the 'youngsters' will work wonders with all that technology. Chris was in the process of setting up the club station to work FT8 by remote control. I showed him a couple of things that had held me up when getting mine going at home. Within 10 minutes G3ZMS had made a contact with Eastern Canada, and, was then called by an American station. All safely logged electronically for QSLing later.
On the 14th, as I was feeling OK, I managed to get to Ron’s funeral. There was a good turnout from the club and it was an opportunity to catch up & reminisce about the old days.
Back to radio. For some strange reason I suddenly developed a high SWR on 21 Meg. Lots of checking; antenna and connections, feeder, antenna switch, ATU, and balun. The ATU is a remote one at the end of the garden so a bit complicated. I took off its lid and got a mild whiff of smoke. Close inspection and metering - no fault found. Then I noticed a bit of black on the antenna input socket, so I checked the balun. As I started to remove it from the weatherproof box it fell to bits! The solder joint on the coax socket was only just touching. I believe Ken had a fire in his, so I was not surprised to find signs of heat near the ferrite cores. A quick dash down to Screwfix (other retailers available) and got a new plastic box. After two hours in the workshop drilling, soldering, and sawing - hey presto a 'new' balun.
Still playing with FT8 (and now FT4) with no more than 20 Watts, I have been surprised to start getting some DX. 5 Meg gave me a CE4 in Chile, LU8 in Argentina, and I was called several times by JA’s and 3C3 in Equatorial Guinea. I was even called out of the blue by Walid, OD5ZZ in Lebanon! (We usually make contact on SSB.) Later that day, I made a contact with 3B8 on Mauritius island.
I have noted that these data-modes usually include the stations’ grid locator code as their QTH. I had never bothered to take too much notice, but the 5Meg band should really only be 'locals'. Next month I’ll elaborate, as at the time of writing I have worked well over 200 squares just in the greater European area. This could be a really useful propagation tool!
Below are the first proof of long haul propo’ on 60M.
Good DXing
Chris, G4ZCS
- Details
- Written by: Maintenance Guy
- Category: News
- Hits: 415
Aharon and I will be at the West Beach Promenade Car Park in Newhaven for the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend (ILLW) Special Event on Saturday 19th August 2023 - weather permitting - together with any others from the Downland Radio Group to help Stuart Little M0ABT and others from the Newhaven area setup and take-down the Special Event Station GB0NL for this event.
Members of the Mid Sussex Amateur Radio Society are welcome to come along. Please note that there is a small charge to park in the car park.
Apologies for the late notice but I was waiting to check with Stuart that everything was going ahead as planned.
Best wishes, Chris Coward G3YTU
- Details
- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
- Category: News
- Hits: 520
I’ll start this month with a short tribute to Ron, G0WGP. Ron was a great help to me in my early days with the MSARS. He was instrumental in encouraging me to learn from himself, Louis G5RV, and the many others who rapidly built up my knowledge base following my gaining my full licence. Ron’s tales of his time in the Shetland Isle’s during the war still remain with me. Thanks, Ron, RIP.
Last month I indicated that I would elaborate on 'slot chasing'. This is trying to work as many as possible. Each DXCC can be worked on each band and in three modes on each band - phone, CW and data. New starters usually aim to work 100 DXCCs (countries) followed by trying to do that on each band or on each mode. For example, working a MSARS station on say, 10m, 12m, 15m, and 20m equals 4 slots. Doing this on both phone and CW is 8 slots, and so on. There are hundreds of combinations so go on - have a try!
Just to prove that I’m wrong I decided to work this year’s IARU contest, on 15m CW only. This interesting contest has a mix of 'targets' to aim for. This year there were contest stations located in Italy all 'on a level playing field' with the same call format, such as I41A through to I49Z. I only managed 19 of these. In addition, everyone else reports their ITU zone number (UK is in 27). I managed 18 of these, and just to add to this, each DXCC had an HQ station with its abbreviation as its report (UK was RSGB). I managed 11 of these. Not too bad as conditions were terrible at the time, with dreadful QSB and local lightning storms to add to the mayhem!
Just as the month was getting going 'IT' arrived, the Rockall QSL card, an early birthday card!
Last month I mentioned the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and its usual summer activation. Well, on the 26th up they popped! From nothing to a multi-band multi-operator station. I managed an SSB contact on 17m for another new one for the year.
At the end of the month, it was the IOTA islands contest, so I had a go, but with only moderate success this time. Luckily these included several Chinese islands and a handful of North American ones that I needed.
As Autumn is just around the corner, I thought it a good time to try and set up one of these new data modes ready for the darker evenings. Having worked many stations some years back on PSK31, I thought it would be easy. However, the advances in both hardware and software have made it all 'new' to me. Fortunately my K3 is one of the favourite radios for datamodes so the instruction manuals were easy to follow. The software is downloadable from the internet, no more disks to buy!
It took over a week to get a signal out of my system, mostly because of Chemo’ induced finger trouble. When I finally succeeded, I had a surprise when I set up a session and managed to work Crawley!
Oh, and Kuwait, plus 15 or so DXCCs in one half hour.
More next month.
Good DXing
Chris, G4ZCS
- Details
- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
- Category: News
- Hits: 568
Another quiet-ish month for me this June, as I was feeling a bit rough for several weeks.
As usual Murphy’s law kicked in just when I started to feel better - the sun flared again. So, no contact with the American Field Day or the King of Spain SSB contests.
I did, however, manage a second 'insurance' contact with Rockall, this time on CW, and I am glad I did as there had been a problem with their electronic log. A simple fault with the wrong time zone being entered, luckily sorted out now and a QSL is on its way.
By way of a cheer-up, I found that I had been awarded a Silver Award for working the Chinese Amateur Radio Festival stations early in May.
I also got some 'wallpaper' for working the CQWW contest, plus I received confirmation of my contact with East Timor (try finding that on the map).
Having more time at home these days, I have been able to dive into the shack at all times of day to check on conditions. This brings up some of the rarer contacts I have been getting. Watching propagation and grey-line times seems to bring success. It also helps when the Mediterranean countries have gone to bed! I was also reminded of the North South seasonal variation when I spoke to Bob, Ken’s mate down in the Falklands. It is our mid-summer, but their mid-winter and their weather was a bit cold and rough!
I did a short spell as a SWL when Cal, out on Rockall, raised a Mayday for an evacuation. Not many are aware that the main coastguard HF daytime radio frequency is close to our 5Meg allocation, so it’s easy to listen in to the emergency traffic. Last time I heard this much action was during the Lockerbie plane disaster when live feeds from the SAR helicopters could be heard here in Sussex. The comments and reactions from the airborne observers cannot be repeated but gave a true impression of the scale of the incident in real time.
So back to my activity, nothing too special but Ethiopia, Singapore, and The Vatican City were added to my score. A chat with Ken and Dick on the lunchtime net reminded me that we have not heard the Sovereign Military Order of Malta for some time. This is a similar entity to the Vatican, and is on the other side of the Tiber in Rome and not in Malta as some might think. The Order also has a presence near Putney bridge in London (not a lot of people know that...) but I’m not aware of any radio activity from there.
As some 'homework', I checked ClubLog and the LOTW for updates and to my surprise I had lots of confirmations. One of these was for a North American island that means I can now apply for the IOTA North American certificate (even more wallpaper).
Next month, if there is room, I will cover slot chasing and other interesting stuff!
Below is a copy of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta QSL, and the best I could do on the previous (failed) attempt to activate Rockall.
Chris G4ZCS
- Details
- Written by: Chris
- Category: News
- Hits: 600
Burgess Hill Summer Fayre (Town Day) 25th June 2023
To be quite honest I wasn't really sure if Mid Sussex ARS were going to attend this year, but I made up my mind that somehow we would show our face to the public.
Saturday evening I loaded my car with what I needed from the club. Sunday morning I loaded up the car with my radio gear from home along with the generator kindly loaned to me from Kim G7AIE and the petrol can from Alan G8YKV, filled with the correct grade of fuel.
Arriving at the entry point to St Johns Park 20 minutes before my allotted entry time, I was very happy to be let in early. After following a marshal at the obligatory speed of 5mph I arrived at my pitch for the day.
Having spoken to the organisers, I was granted permission to keep my car on site which gave me a good base for any antennas to be put up. So the assembly began - I wasn't sure how the gazebo was going to go up being on my own but was pleasantly surprised having worked out that if I pinned one corner down I could pull it out and then extend all four corners one by one. This process was made even more enjoyable watching how the other groups were coping with even more people helping.
I then unpacked the car and set up the tables with my radios and got them connected to the antennas. My trusty Yaesu FT7 was connected to a 9:1 unun with a long wire which runs very well on 20m, and a Xiegu X1M connected to an Ampro 15m antenna.
I had also brought along my DMR setup which unfortunately I wasn't able to run owing to the fact that my DMR hotspot had developed a fault and wasn't working properly.
Monitoring GB3HY through the earpiece connected to my handheld, I heard Adrian M0TCD calling and after a short conversation he arrived on site.
My next job was to get the Flex Radio at the club connected and working with my laptop and external monitor using my phone as an Internet hotspot. This proved to be a bit problematic but after a quick trip to the club to look at the Flex - leaving Adrian to look after everything for me - we were up and running.
My second visitor was John M3UKI who popped in for a while (thank you for the ice cream). Phil G4UDU was my third visitor and brought with him a WSPRlite, which after some fiddling around with, we were unable to get running properly.
The weather was glorious and certainly brought the crowds out. We had a few enquiries regarding training and obtaining an amateur licence - not as many as I would have liked - but I had achieved what I set out to do and showed the club's face at a community event, with the Flex radio running perfectly.
So to end this article I would like to thank Kim G7AIE for the loan of the generator, Alan G8YKV for the use of the petrol canister, John M3UKI and Phil G4UDU for taking the time to come along and say hello. My biggest thanks of all goes to Adrian M0TCD for spending the whole day with me, answering any questions I couldn't and helping me to pack up afterwards and take everything back to the club.
Chris M7VJE
