6 Metres

Caught my first six meter opening of 2015. Some pretty strong signals on the band when I switched on around 1930 UTC. Managed to work a few with just 50 watts from the Icom 7000 to my vertical. Nothing spectacular but it was nice to work Italy, Spain and France on 6 metres.Switching on the "radio" computer to enter the calls in my electronic log I found the computer had died! I havent time at the moment to investigate the problem but this PC is quite old and in fact was given to me for free. Possibly time for an upgrade I think. In the meantime I am glad I still keep a paper log in the shack.

A new (but old) addition

Here is the latest addition to my Shack. As a young shortwave listener in the 1980's I always wanted one of these receivers but back then it was of course well out of my price range. It is the Icom R70

I managed to get an immaculate example of this receiver at a reasonable price and I am very pleased with it. It is a heavy, well built set, it feels far more substantial than the Kenwood receivers I have from the same era.
It is however quite a quirky receiver in some ways. Each time you turn the receiver on it defaults to the same frequency (15mhz in general coverage mode and 7 mhz in HAM mode). In addition you tune in 1 MHZ bands and you must use the UP and DOWN buttons to go to the next Mhz segment. In other words if you are at 7.999 Mhz and keep tuning, rather than go up to 8.000mhz the R70 rolls back down to 7.000mhz. Quite an odd way of doing things. Still as an HF receiver the R70 is excellent and I think this one is a "keeper".