I have always enjoyed taking part in the UKAC series of contests, they are very busy and ideal for portable operating in the summer months. Not so much fun in the winter, but the chance to operate from home required a beam. I have tried to take part with a vertical co-linear, but the crossed […]
Coax Cables and Associated Losses
As a newly licensed amateur, one of the points I found hard to grasp was feeder losses. While it was explained to me that feeder cable had losses, it was sometimes hard to visualise what this meant in the real world. The maths can be a little scary, and so in this article, I have […]
CQWW SSB 2017
The CQWW SSB event runs over the last weekend of October and covers all contest bands from 1.8 MHz to 28 MHz. The event is one of the largest international events of the HF calendar and encourages stations to operate from far-flung and exotic parts of the world. We opted for the sun-drenched shores near Ongar in […]
National Hamfest 2017
The National Hamfest 2017 (29th and 30th September) was once again held at Newark Showground. The site provides a large area for both camping and caravanning, with the show opening on Friday and continuing on Saturday. The location provides the ideal opportunity to meet up with friends from around the country, and browse the stalls […]
CQ WW RTTY DX Contest
The CQ WW RTTY contest runs towards the end of September, and this year George M1GEO and myself decided to enter the contest under our own callsigns from our contest site at the Secret Nuclear Bunker. We decided to keep it simple, using just two aerials. 1/ 80m dipole @ 30m 2/ 40m 1/4 wave ground […]
SSB National Field Weekend with Camb-Hams
This year I joined the Camb-Hams for the SSB National Feild Weekend from their contest site in Worts’ Causeway, Cambridge. I arrived on Friday afternoon to assist with the setup, this included antenna for both 144 MHz and HF for the field day. The HF event runs in parallel with the VHF event over 24 hrs, […]