Here is a look at the Handheld radio I use the most. Its a FM/DMR dual band handheld and its available if you shop around for under £50.00. Quite well made too and the RX performance is pretty good and I get good reports on TX too. Goes to show that getting into radio and DMR needn't be expensive.

Not much time.............

At least there wasn't much time for radio operation on my holiday last week in Cornwall.We stayed at a Caravan park near Perranporth, not far from Nequay and about 10 minutes walk to the beach. On VHF just using my Chinese Luiton handie and helical whip  I managed to work back into Wales via the GB3WW repeater and via a more local repeater I worked another Welsh station also on holiday in Cornwall. Overall the 2 metre band was even quieter than it is here in South Wales.

I managed to get out with my HF portable station for just an hour or so one morning, setting up very close to the sea, you can see the pro whip antenna below.

On 20 metres I heard a few VK stations, at good strength along with some East Coast USA and many European signals. I tried a few calls on CW to no avail and tuned across the SSB section of the band. Running 30 watts I managed a QSO with special event station 9A282AA before I had to go QRT and enjoy the rest of the day with YL and family.
I was hoping to have got right down to the beach and maybe run the radial wire into the water to see how that would help my signal, but time was against me! Maybe next time!

Uprating the 857

I have owned my Yaesu  FT857D for about 9 years. I bought it to use portable and apart from a stint in the shack as a 6 and 2 metre rig that is what it has been used for.
However portable work usually involves less than efficient antennas, or at least the way I do portable does! In the past I have used the Buddistick and now I have the Pro Whip vertical, for what they are the antennas work quite well but are not as effective of course as my doublet at home.
To make the best of things then I need to use CW. My CW is still a bit hesitant but is coming along and of course I need to practice more! The 857 however doesn't have a CW filter and the standard SSB filter is a bit wide for CW when the bands are busy.
So I decided to bite the bullet and order and fit the 500hz CW filter for my 857.

it arrived today

So eager to install it I set about removing the top cover of the rig. I have never needed to take the cases off the 857 before, but I thought it would be easy enough, just remove the screws at the top......................but wait....the covers would not come off! The Answer? Read the manual, you have to remove these screws which are attached to the bottom panel too!

Once the covers were off it was an easy matter to drop the filter in

There is still space for another filter so I could add the 300hz one but I don't think I will need it and they are very expensive.

Anyway I put the rig back together and switched on:

As you can see the rig has recognised it has a 500hz filter so all is well. The filter makes quite a difference so it should give me an incentive to operate CW on holiday!

Testing...

Since I am hoping to take a trip to Cornwall for a few days shortly I thought I would assemble and test out my portable station. The fine weather this evening provided the ideal opportunity.

First I dug out the Yaesu FT857, removing it from the shack an replacing it with this old Yaesu FT211 which is fine for 2 metre FM use.

Next I took out my 12 volt portable pack and set up the FT857, Buddistick antenna, MFJ tuner and my "new" mini CW key and set it all up in the back garden.

The Buddistick was set up on the lawn and tuned for 40 metres

After tuning around a very lively 40 metre band I tried listening on CW. I was rewarded by a QSO with G0NXA. I was running 25watts and got a 559 report, not bad for the tiny Buddistick with two radial wires laid on the lawn!
At least I know the setup is working, hopefully I will have time to use it when I am Away.

Key decisions

Following on from my last post I had also decided that I might try some CW operating when I next use the portable gear. In the past I have worked SSB only but with my very limited antenna system I should get better results with CW. I have two keys here in the shack, both my paddle key and the straight key are too large and possibly too fragile to take along in my portable kit. I mentioned this fact in a conversation on 2 metres a few days ago and a local GW3 friend told me he had three keys that he would be interested in selling.
A few days later he called around with the keys, leaving them with me to try them out and choose the one I liked.

You can see my own "Straight Key" at the rear to give some idea of the size of the smaller keys. Although initially I liked the look and feel of the key on the left,and it had quite a weighty base it wasn't the one I chose. I found it very difficult to adjust and wasn't too happy with the way that the lead that connects it is on the right hand side of the key rather than at the rear. The little key at the centre was my final choice although I really need to find a base for it now. Note the lever to the right of the key. Moving this closes the contacts so that the key is continuously  "down". I wonder was this designed to help "tuning up" so that you don't have to press the key down?

Portable power

The Yaesu FT857D that sits in my shack is slightly wasted in its current role as a two metre rig. I originally bought it some years ago to use for portable work and got to thinking that perhaps I should actually use it for that purpose.I also have a portable "Buddistick" vertical and  two suitable portable twelve volt power packs here. 
The first pack  large heavy unit which contains a 20ah battery which although its a few years old now still seems to hold a charge.

This is a useful piece of kit buts its heavy, not suitable for a long walk and too weighty to pop into a rucksack/backpack

The smaller pack is a lot lighter, it is a 12 volt 4.5ah rated pack. This unit  is older and I have recently found that even after a full charge it was only showing just over ten volts.
With nothing to loose I opened it up and found it contained two 6 volt batteries.

Luckily the electronics supplier Maplin stocks identically rated and sized batteries and I was able to replace these worn out items leaving me with a useful small pack again.

Amazingly for less than the cost of the new batteries I could have bought a whole new unit. I didnt do this because none of the new units I saw were as compact and light as this one and they had features I didn't need such as compressors for inflating tyres and jump leads for starting cars. All this unit has are the twelve volt sockets seen in the picture and a useful light at the rear.

Now all I need is some fine weather and free time to go portable again!

Out and About

I had the opportunity to go portable again today.The weather was superb and the nice cool breeze on top of the mountain was very welcome. This time I took my old camera tripod and used this rather than the little Buddistick tripod. It was much more stable and the antenna stayed upright.

Here are the things I needed to carry from the car to the operating spot. Its lucky that it was just a 5 minute walk. The Buddistick, a flask of tea and some snacks are in the rucksack along with my 2 metre handie and the MFJ ATU.

I also gave in and took an ATU with me, which made things a lot easier as the Buddistick can be difficult to tune. Here is my Portable shack.

I had a few HF contacts, one on 40 metres, a couple on 20, although there was a contest on and two on 17 metres, a nice band which I should use more. Although the Buddistick is designed to operate on 40 metres, results are rather disappointing although if you consider the size of the antenna perhaps this is not surprising.A better option would perhaps be a dipole or doublet supported by a fibreglass pole for the lower bands. I may make such an antenna up, but no doubt if I do I won't get a chance to do any more portable ops this year! The only problem with such a setup would be finding a way to support the pole when there are no trees or fences nearby.

2 metres was very quiet from this location today. Surprising as it was the weekend and a really good VHF location. In the 1990s when I used to operate from this spot you could spent all day on 2 metres FM, no longer, even the repeaters were quiet-is this a sign of the times?

And finally here is the view from the operating spot. I could keep an eye on my car from here (the one on the left) although this is a quiet location.

Out in the open

Today I had a day off work and since the weather was good I decided to pack up a rig and antenna, a flask and some sandwiches and go portable!
I drove to Bwllch-y-Clawdd, a high spot  about 30 minutes drive from where I live. This location overlooks the Rhondda Valley  and the views are pretty amazing from here.


I set up the Icom 706 and  Buddistick antenna, powered from my portable 20ah battery (weighs around 705Kgs!) and I was ready to go. This is a very peaceful location, for the three hours or so I was there I saw no-one else. I have operated VHF previously  from this location and know that its a good site. However I had not tried HF before and I wondered if with my limited small vertical antenna I would be able to work anything. I was able to vary my output power but for the most part I was running around 30 watts.
Initial attempts were not too promising with just a marginal QSO with a mobile station on the Isle of Man on 40 metres SSB.
Switching to 10 metres I had a little more success working into Germany and Italy, one of the Italian stations was running only 900 milliwatts!


6 Metres was also open, but try as I might I could not get my antenna to a good match on 6 metres although it is supposed to work on that band.

All in all an enjoyable few hours using the radio in the fresh air. A couple of learning points too.
1) The Buddistick on its little tripod is prone to blow over in a strong breeze, I need to look into a way of weighting or anchoring the tripod better.
2) The Buddistick whilst a clever antenna can be VERY tricky to tune. I have read that the radial length is important but varying the radial length didn't seem to make much diffeence for me.
3) I could not tune the antenna on 6 metres at all. I need to look into this as I like to operate 6 when the band is open.


I do have a small MFJ ATU which I could take with me but I would like to get the antenna to match as closely as I can without an ATU, after all its just more weight in my rucksack!!