A Pleasant suprise

Calling CQ on PSK 31 on what appeared to be a dead  30 metre band here  tonight resulted in a a couple of Stateside QSOs with KA1KE and WA1TFV. I seems my doublet, despite being fairly low at the moment is working quite well on this band. 10 Mhz is quite often overlooked being such a narrow band but it can prove interesting.

January Update

When I moved to this QTH one of the first things I did was to hang the Wellbrook receive loop in the shack window to see what I could receive.
In the past although I had read that the loop could be successful indoors I found that mine picked up too much noise in the shack. I have to say that using it at this location. it has proved pretty effective indoors. I guess this is a quieter location Yes of course it will be better when it as eventually located outside but for now it has proved a very useful receive antenna particularly on the lower bands and considering its location it has worked surprisingly well.
As far as HF transmitting antennas are concerned I was until two weeks ago using a half size G5RV with inductors on it to allow it to tune on 80 metres. The main reason I was using this antenna was that it was quick and easy to erect and I just wanted something to get me on -air again. The '5RV worked fairly well until about a month ago when we had some very stormy weather here in South Wales. Although the antenna stayed up it refused to tune up! Bringing it down I checked the feedpoint, the coax cable, the inductors. I could not find the problem. In desperation I put  up a doublet antenna I had made some time ago. It was a bit of a challenge to fit the 40 metre long doublet in my 20 metre long garden. However folding the ends back I have done it and I am fairly pleased with it on 40 and 80 metres. It also seems to receive well enough on 160metres but a few tests indicate its not very effective on transmit there. Neither is it as good as the little 5RV on the higher bands. Anotherincentive to set up my HYGAIN vertical for 10, 15 and 20 I think!

Long overdue!

Well I hadn't forgotten about my blog but I moved QTH in September and have been busy. The new house is much older (built around 1920s) and one advantage is I have a garden that is just over 20 metres long. Another advantage is although I still live in the same village as before the new location is a little higher up so is better for VHF.
The disadvantage is a have lots of work here to do, mainly decorating and in the summer I will have plenty of work to do outside. Will I find time for radio?? Of course!
I have already set up the shack

And just to get on the air I have put up a half size G5RV wire antenna with additional Inductors for 80 metres and a small dual band Watson W30 for VHF/UHF.

For my shortwave listening activities the Wellbrook loop  is currently propped up in the shack window where it works surprisingly well.
Generally this QTH is quieter electrically I think.

Plans for future include a better VHF/UHF antenna (possible a tri bander covering 6 metres also) getting my HF vertical back up and getting the Wellbrook loop outside. I would also like to get back onto 4 metres (70 mhz). Of course all of this will take time and may have to wait for the spring. In the meantime at least I am back on the air.

A Mystery Solved!

This blog has been quiet of late. Partly this is due to the fact that I recently had to spend a two week period in London due to my work. Not much chance for radio there but I did bring the tiny Baofeng Handheld radio. Whilst I did hear a few simplex QSOs on two metres and was able to pick up one 70cms repeater activity was pretty low. Things have changed as I recall being in the London 10 or 12 years ago, maybe a little longer than that and then the two metre band was buzzing with activity.
Last weekend I was back at home and since it was a dry calm day I decided to take down the mast that held my Watson dual band VHF/UHF antenna and investigate the SWR problem I had/
I had suspected that as the antenna had been up for 3 years or so perhaps I had a bad connection in the PL259 plug or the coax had completely pulled out of the plug somehow.
Once I got the antenna down the problem was obvious.

What you are looking at is the support tube that the "white stick" fibreglass antenna sits on. The hole in the picture should have a screw in it! The screw goes through the support tube and into the base of the antenna itself securing the two together. As you can see the screw isn't there. This meant that the only thing securing the antenna to the mast was its own weight and the cooax cable that was attached to it. It seems that over the months the antenna was able to rotate enough to unscrew the PL259 plug from its socket. I found the coax cable and the PL259 plug were fine, its just that the cable wasn't plugged into the antenna anymore!
I have used this type of antenna at several QTHs with no problems. It is however a worrying thought that the only thing securing the antenna was this one small screw. The support tube was securely clamped to the mast, but the antenna was no longer secured to the support tube. I have been very lucky here that once the screw failed the antenna didn't simply blow off the mast. I will need to find a replacement and possibly look a a way of stopping this happening again.
I won't be re installing this antenna at the moment anyway as I am using my loft mounted antenna for VHF. It is fairly likely that I will be moving QTH in the next few months so I will re erect this antenna at the new place.

SRC Mobile update

Although HF conditions in my opinion have not been too good lately, I have now had a little time to evaluate the SRC mobile whip.
It certainly appears to be a robust enough antenna physically and it looks well made. Using my LDG auto ATU I can now tune all bands from 80 to 10 metres. The antenna seems quite lively on receive, within the first few days of using it and under poor conditions I worked a DL station on 20 metres, he was calling CQ and came back to me straight away. I can monitor a local 80 metre AM net on my morning drive to work, although I would think that 80 metres is likely to be the worst band for this antenna.

Because the "Tune" function on my Icom 706 MK1 does not operate on 6metres I am unable to get the LDG atu to work on that band. I have found however that by tuning the whip up on 80 metres and then switching to 6 I get an acceptable SWR and indeed the antenna appears to work reasonably well on 6.

All in All I am pleased with the SRC. It is very convenient having all the HF bands available without swapping whips and the performance does not seem to be noticeably different from the mono band whips I had been using.

HF Mobile

A couple of weeks back I ordered a multiband HF SRC 8010 mobile whip from Snowdonia Radio Company. It took a while to arrive and a follow up email to the company wasn't replied to but luckily today the antenna arrived. The antenna with the aid of an auto ATU will, according to specifications tune from 80 metres up to 6.
I have tested it briefly on the car today, sure enough it did tune from 80 up to 10 metres and in fact it sounded very lively particularly on the higher bands. On 6 metres my auto ATU doesn't want to speak to my Icom 706 MK1 but I was able to get  what appears an acceptable match on that band (by tuning the whip on another band and switching to 6) and was rewarded by hearing a number of stations on 6m SSB as well as accessing a semi-local 6 metre repeater on FM.
The antenna looks to be well constructed. As I understand it the base contains a small balun which help in the matching of the whip. It will certainly be nice to have more choice of HF bands when I am mobile. Up to now I had whips for 40,20 and 10 and had to decide before setting off which band I would operate each day.

I will report back when I have had more time to assess this antenna but first impressions are good.

Below is the base of the antenna

First the bad news.................

Switching on my 2 metre rig today I noticed a complete absence of signals. Ok I know 2 metres is quiet around here, but I had just come into the shack minutes after pulling up on the driveway where I had been listening to a QSO on the mobile 2 metre rig. Trying to transmit revealed the problem- an infinity SWR. The antenna was fine yesterday- I had a number of local QSOs with it last night. Its still on the mast, no visual  signs of anything wrong but it looks like its a victim of the fairly high winds we have had over the last few days. Maybe the cable feeding the antenna has broken loose, maybe the Watson X300 which I have been using (and which always looked a bit fragile to me) has given up. Its been up there for 3 years without giving any trouble so I guess I can't complain too much! Anyway I had intended to replace the pole which the antenna sits on with a thicker/stronger one so now I will have to get on with it. I will be ordering the new aluminium poles in a week or so. Then I will have to wait until ta clear calm day, hopefully when the next door neighbour is not in his garden(!) and do some antenna maintenance. Until then I have a small dual band vertical in the loft which will be fine for local QSOs but I know that it won't work for at least one of my regular VHF contacts where the path between us is not too good.

The better news is a new toy has arrived for me. I have been reading quite a bit lately about a new dual band minature handset from the Chinese manufacturer Baofeng. At £37 from Hong Kong including postage and a dual band antenna I couldn't resist. Mine arrived 10 days after placing the order.

Unpacking the radio and fitting the battery was a surprisingly tricky process. Although I have read a couple of reviews I hadn't expected it to be quite so fiddly. Eventually I managed to get the battery fitted and the back cover of the rig correctly locked back in place. As I said I haven't read of anyone else having problems with this so maybe its just me!

The rig is very compact, you can see it here next to my other Chinese dualbander.

Its also very slim

First impressions are that it seems to be a lot easier to program than my other handie, the manual as usual is of limited use but luckily a few minutes with the rig and the menu system starts to make sense.
The supplied earpiece/mic that came with my rig is of no use- as soon as you try to transmit with it the rig locks in transmit mode- I think other users have also had this problem.

All in all though this seems a nice little rig. I haven't used mine in anger yet (its still charging up) but will post more finding soon.