General

An SSTV image from a pass of the ISS @ 14:23z today as part of the “Expedition 55 Interkosmos” mission. I didn’t get set up in time so only managed to get the end of the last transmitted image. ISS was over north France at the time, at about 250 miles up. 145.800MHz +- some doppler. SunSDR2 Pro and the X510n vertical. 30dB over 9 signal.

The next pass at 15:50z ish was going right overhead, so I was all set up for this one. The first image (with the green noise) was received over the middle of the Atlantic (amazing 800-1000 miles away?), the second when overhead here in S.Wales and the third when passing over the east side of Poland.

The last pass of today, around 17:30z resulted in the following two images. Signal strength on the last was around S5-S7 with qsb. 

Most of the time signals were around s9+10 or so, with very little qsb. I did notice some flutter/phasing/qsb on the final image as can be seen by the noise lines over the image.

Anyway that is all for now. I will put any new images below.

73 Richie.

So, I decided to have a dabble on JT65 last night, had a listen to the bands and opted for 17m.

The frequency was quite busy but I found a spot where I could call some CQ’s. 7X3WPL came back to me, but as you can see he failed to give me a report. In fact, he ended the contact with a 73 and then started calling CQ.

So this station did not give me a signal report (look at the times), and he then went about calling CQ. I double checked back through the call/band history and could not see his call sign. Unless there was some serious QSB or some sporadic propagation openings he was not on that frequency calling cq prior to me.

So, this morning, I checked QRZ, and unsurprisingly there was a QSL waiting for my approval from 7X3WPL.

Now, as I am only a year or so on the air with this callsign, I would have liked to have had that QSO confirmed and add Algeria to my country’s worked, but no, I refuse to add something that has been so obviously made incomplete. Why bother even operating and trying to make contacts if you cant even be bothered to send a report ?  Obviously it could be, and probably is, an operating mistake but to then call CQ as well ? As it happens according to QRZ he gave me a -14 report.

Is this a sign of things to come, with more and more automation, and the 59 73 mentality ? I read about the up and runs where the last you hear from a station is R-02.

Please for the love of god, if you are operating a slow as hell mode (5-6 mins per qso) then at least send a report and see the qso through to completion. I am slowly getting fed up of wasting my time.

73

Well, it is about time I designed a QSL card. I wanted something that represented Newport and S.Wales. I stumbled across an artist, Rhiannon Ash, who has done some lovely water colours of some of the Newport heritage. These are the final designs for the front and back of my qsl card.

Well, I decided to set up a new youtube channel, instead of filling up my bushcraft one with radio related vids.

Check it out here….

NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL

… and please subscribe 🙂

73

So, after seeing some of the creations from a few friends, my brother and I decided to go 50/50 on a 3d printer.  I really needed a small dipole centre and balun combo, capable of 100w tops, so I decided to go about making one.

Some designs in TinkerCad, a few tweaks here, a few there, and the case was complete, together with a number of different plates enabling custom, so239 and bnc connections. The case would eventually house a 1:1 guanella current balun, using a fair-rite type 31 core.

The case went through a number of iterations, and prints. The above design was the finalised version (hopefully, lol).  The T clip you see in the design enables the dipole centre to be attached to a painters pole or slid down a fibre mast.

I am only printing in PLA at the moment, so the balun will not stand up to 365 days a year outdoor use.

Anyway, the printer is nearly finished cooking another, so i’ll sign off here.

73

Richie.

 

Well, after lots of study, and an agonising wait I now have my full call sign, MW0LGE 🙂

Thanks to Ross (GW3NWS) at the Newport Amateur Radio Club, and all those involved with the Bath distance learning course especially Bob Jones (GW4FCV) and Steve Hartley (G0FUW).

73 🙂

Last year the Cwmbran and District Amateur Radio Society staged a fox hunt and a number of us built 3 element tape measure yagis using measurements provided by a fellow club member, Pete MW0RPB.  This year I decided to rebuild mine, and rework the dimensions using a great yagi design program from John Drew – Yagi Calculator. I used jubilee/pipe clips, some plastic conduit, conduit saddle clamps and a bunch of screws. It should be noted that for these calculations the dimensions of the elements were 21mm wide and 0.5mm thick, with non metal boom.

 

Design frequency was 145.000 MHz the centre of the band.

Reflector length 1007.6mm tip to tip, solid, at 0mm boom position (the start position)
Driven length 972.7mm tip to tip, with a 10mm gap, at 414mm boom position
Director1 length 904.5mm tip to tip, solid, at 568.6mm boom position

Note: The driven is tip to tip measurement, this includes the 10mm gap at the centre. The boom positions should be marked on the boom from one end, starting at 0mm then 414mm and finally 568.6mm.

A hair pin match was made from some 2.5mm bare copper wire (from twin and earth mains). The dimensions for this 85mm long and 25mm wide. The paint/covering on the tape measure was scratched off/filed and tinned heavily.

The coax feeder was cut to and odd half wave length (* velocity factor) of the design frequency, 0.66 being the VF for RG58. The number 5 being an odd number of half wavelengths long, you can pick any odd number for this to give you your length of coax. Have a read of this if you are interested in why this is done.

feeder length (meters) = ( (150 / 145.000) * 0.66 ) * 5

An RF choke was added at the end of the conduit using some of the feeder, so make sure you pick an odd wavelength long enough to include enough for the choke.

 

The results speak for themselves, what a cracking antenna, see the swr plot above (thanks George for the lend of the Sark-110).  I had a QSO on 5w with a station 37 mile away from Magor, on the ‘white horse hill’. The 3 ele giving 6.9dBi gain.

Have fun making yours !

73

Upgrades !

I decided to add another two directors to make a 5 element yagi. I found some 22mm alkathene that would slide over the conduite and allow me to extend the boom.  The 5 ele giving 9.9dBi gain.

Director2 length 894.6mm tip to tip, solid, at 940.7mm boom position
Director3 length 885.5mm tip to tip, solid, at 1115.2mm boom position

So in readiness of the upcoming fox hunt (an exercise in direction finding), I disassembled my existing 2m ‘tape measure’ yagi and rebuilt it with some re-worked numbers. I will do a full article on the construction at some point.

I wanted to do some testing with Dale, 2W0ODS, his QTH is the other side of Newport. Anyway, 2m FM handy and the new ‘tape measure’ yagi in hand, Dale started giving a prolonged over via his omnidirectional collinear. I quickly ‘zeroed’ him in and obtained a heading for max signal strength. Just to note, my qth is low down, 6m or so ASL, and behind the rise that the motorway/roundabout/brewery sits on.

See the following for the results, quite amazing :

The blue/cyan line is the direction of strongest signal with the yagi

The red line is line of sight. As you can see it passes through Magor brewery, a large lump of metal with 100’s of smaller metal barrels.

The green line is plotted from Dale’s QTH and is hitting one of the Tesco distribution buildings and is no doubt reflecting off the side of this building.

The size of the building compared to the 2m wavelength is of many orders of magnitude greater. To get an idea of how big something needs to be to ‘reflect’ a 2m signal then you only need to look at the size of the reflector on the yagi itself, something like 1005mm.

This was great to be able to visualise the signal path, and perhaps that Tesco building is making it possible to talk to Dale on 5w the other side of Newport.

Remember, fox hunt and direction finding can at times lead you ‘up the garden path’.

73

So, at around 14:20utc, today, Tim Peake (GB1SS) was due to have a chat with a school in Bristol, Oasis Academy Brightstowe (GB1OAB).

I set up the IC-7100 to listen on 145.800 +3 or so kHz as he approached, moving to -3 or so as he left over the horizon.  The following video is the audio recording, all done through the 7100 qso recorder. The antenna being a 2/70 collinear vertical, the X510N from Diamond.  I found it interesting how his signal dropped as he was over head, obviously hitting the antenna end on.

73

So over the past few months, perhaps four months, I have noticed what can only be described as some wide band QRM on the bottom two thirds of 80m and some smaller stripes of QRM near the top end.

In this image you can see the noise, it is roughly an S point or so, but quite wide band with no real strong centre frequency.

Direction finding it will be extremely difficult if not impossible due to its ‘spread’ out nature and lack of strong signal to ‘home’ in on.

The horizontal green lines in the top section of the image are at S5, S6 and S7. Anyway, this is more of a record of the QRM to see how it changes over the coming months.

73