Finding some time for radio !

Its been a busy time, and it really still is – but having plenty of work is a good thing, sadly that leaves little time for ‘hobbies’ – as such a recent hardware failure caused me to migrate my existing Windows PC to a micro PC, I’ve kept Windows on it, but have also installed Ubuntu on it. I’m mostly enjoying FT8, FT4 and WSPR, getting a good range of signal reports on 2M and 80M and automated reports via WSPR to populate the webtechnologies site.

Playing with FT8 on the IC9700 and IC7300

The work I started in September on my dual-band rotator has come to a halt, with the shorter days and busy weekends, I’ve not had the time to investigate a high SWR issue. I suspect water ingress on the splitter at the mast-head, but haven’t got around to even unplugging it ! A recent holiday saw it took me well over a week to just reconnect my radios – I did enjoy the holiday, having enjoyed a wonderful long weekend in Switzerland.

The snow in October atop Rochers de Naye near Montreux

I’m slowly working on getting apps on Ubuntu – my other favourite mode being SSTV. I have been receiving images via QSSTV which automatically get upload to the “Live” SSTV Page.

quality pictures via QSSTV

QSSTV appears to have many more features than MMSSTV, no doubt it will take me some time to learn them all. I do like how it has date-stamped and the frequency received of the pictures, I just have to learn how to use the template editor to create my own pictures.

Well, life never stops here and time is very hard to come by these days, but I’ll try updating the blog a little more often.

73 Alan.