Friday 18 January 2013

Snow!

Pictured is how my HF doublet looked first thing this morning! Covered in snow which had fallen overnight (as foercasted) and the wire sagging badly. South Wales has seen some heavy snow in the past 24hours making travelling difficult. So no work for me today!
A quick shake of the antenna feeder got rid of the snow by the way and the antenna is back to normal.
So today I have some extra time and have started reorganising the shack.


Wednesday 9 January 2013

60 Metres

Today I applied online for a notice of Variation to my licence to enable me to operate on 60 metres. The NOV was granted seconds after applying so it seems the intention is now to grant an NOV to any full licence holders that wish it.
The NOV gives us in the UK 11 frequencies that can be used on 5mhz.
Interestingly enough initial experiments show that this is one band that my Western HF10 doublet doesnt like - tuning is extremely tricky even with an external ATU. Although keeping the power down seems to improve matters.  It seems if I want to use this band I am going to need to rig up an alternative antenna.