A little bit here, a little bit there

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I have had a fantastic weekend, that is that its been busy but fun. enjoying the best of the Autumn weather with XYL out and about in the Dorset and Hampshire countryside.

Enjoying a day out with XYL following the steps of Jack Hargreaves

I even finally made it back to Hengistbury Head, sans radio, but thoroughly enjoyed the walk and exercise, as did Sweety.

Hengistbury Head mid October is still lovely

Later on that same day, we headed off around the New Forest, ending up in the beautiful Milford on Sea.

Milford on Sea looking over to the Needles at the IoW

Today I really wasn’t in the mood to be vocal on VHF/UHF, but another day I can see myself bringing one of my handhelds and operating GB3IW from here. Its a gorgeous location and would be great to have a QSO. I dare say that /M with the 705 so near the sea would also have benefits, so if anything I have found an exciting new location to potentially operate from. Parking was ample and with plenty of distance, plus a fantastic drive thu great scenery.

Back at the QTH all my antennas have been down for a few weeks, having been away celebrating and the pace of my day job plus getting back to speed with studying, I’ve not had the necessary time to really enjoy with radio, thankfully today I did get the 6BTV back up and the IC7300 back online. There is still quite a bit of work to do, but wanted to get back ‘on the air’, the most important thing is that i have managed to ‘lift’ the shelves on my operating desk to allow the boxes to go under. It may still look a mess, but its getting there, and trust me these things take time !

shelf moved, boxes can now be stored underneath !

I still have a fair bit to do as you can see, but am glad to make small amounts of progress. I’m hoping I will have things I really want them to by next week and then continue to tune and tweak the 6btv some more.

I’m glad to at least be producing WSPR data once more for the web technologies site and am getting some interesting reports in the DX10 reports. The SNR on 40m is looking particularly good post 6btv adjustments.

SMR Report with interesting results

Whilst I have strong SNRs in the list, the SNR of 1 to HE9FER over 853 miles away is particularly impressive on 1w of power.

Hoping for good signal reports in the coming week, will try to be active on SSTV early in the morning, hopefully the 20m band wont be quite so crazy full of contesters bleeding in the SSTV frequency !

Until then, take care and stay safe.

Alan / 2E0FWE