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.

A relaxing walk along the river Stour with 2M SSTV Testing

With the recent wind and rain, with the rain being very much needed given the recent near-tropical climate, the good weather presented a nice opportunity to take a stroll along the River Stour.

Its been raining alot this week!

I’ve recently received another VC-H1 via ebay – this one complete with its cable and in very good condition. The cable fits a Baofeng UV5R and with the THD7 not having a battery suitable for mobile operation, seemed a perfect time to combine a nice walk and testing out the THD7 with the UV5R.

The River Stour near the QTH

I started off on my usual walk to the local park, which has a nice path to take me to the Stour, there is a bit of road involved, but it was a good place to start testing the UV5R. I had setup FTP auto upload to the 2M SSTV section, so was able to see via the Website – of course I did wait a little just incase someone replied !

First transmission received back at the QTH

The UV5R max power is 5W, so I left it at that. I used normal FM (there is a narrow option) but I believe SSTV is fine as FM. The 9700 receives and sends in FM-Digital mode.

I could at least see the UV5R was working fine, as it should be at this relative short distance (less than 1 mile), but nether the less it was good to see al the systems working well together, i.e. RX via Radio, MMSSTV decode, FTP Upload and available via the website.

I headed a little further down towards where I would usually turn right and start the leg ward journey back home, in this case I carried on towards the Stour River via the Kingfisher Barn visitor centre, which has lovely wood carvings all along the path towards the river.

Having my mobile phone with me and it being a little less busy I was able to generate the tone to test the RX of the UV-5R, I sent the tone and transmitted, the received picture worked really well, with a nice carving of an owl received, which was then re-transmitted back and well received my the UV5R. I’m running 50W into a Diamond X50 back home, so it should come as no suprise that I could receive the picture is relatively short distance, but still glad all the systems worked well.

I kept walking towards the river, its slightly lower and certianly well below the height of the base of my antenna, but with being 30ft up, is still within line of sight. My pictures were well recived by the replay SSTV station and Sweety was having an equally good time, playing with other dogs and enjoying the cooler air.

Given the VC-H1 is quite old and transmits in Robot72 mode, I was quite impressed with the colour quality of the camera. I will need to do some research as to what CCD, or other device, it is using for the capture, the colours in the kingfisher memorial seat are quite true to life and with only Robot72 mode being used is a pretty good rendition. We can see the difference between a modern camera on an Iphone compared to the VC-H1 Robot72, but again being able to go mobile and do SSTV is still quite a novelty for me and am just glad it works!

Having neared Cherry Tree park it was time to head back home, we had walk quite a distance and the walk back home was along the busy roads, so no chance to take pictures there whilst walking Sweety. I was happy that the UV5R at over a mile way gave P5/595 picture results on 5W of power, so I could have a true portable SSTV experience and I felt really great from the lovely walk along the river.

I shall be sure to head back again as with autumn approaching, the scenery will get ever so radiant.

A SSTV /M Test with the Arrow hand-held yagi from 2 locations

With the upcoming Hamworthy Park Festival I wanted to see if there was any chance I could reach the QTH. Previous attempts from Poole Harbour were unsuccessful with FM and the Bongos whip antenna, but having a new antenna in the armoury thought I’d give it a try.

I had already tested from the drive way of my QTH, then headed out to what is the nearest high point to my QTH in IO90BS, that of Ringwood Road near to the Matalan – IO90AS. A test of the SSTV repeater there worked well.

I then headed down to Hamworthy park, as I drove through Bournemouth and Poole the hills behind me which I knew would absorb my weak signal, but I’d thought I’ve got to give it a try.

I had the hand-held antenna quickly setup, it was fun to do it out in the field. I attached it to the THD7 and tried to reach the QTH station.

I was not surprised to not hear the pips back to transmit, but as I had driven there, transmitted anyway to see if anything would be received. I wasn’t expecting anything back as the replay mode hadn’t kicked in, so I would have to wait until I got home to see. Sure enough I had received something, albeit mostly static, but at least the application and radio could pull the signal out.

APRS Provided some interesting information. My route was entirely captured, this is due to the geography of where the APRS stations are located.

Route captured via APRS

If I compare my APRS packet reception to my location of the transmission from IO90AS, the APRS station is just down the road near to Bournemouth University.

APRS received via 2E0UXV

As soon as I go over the hill, all my packets are received from stations to the east.

G8TNU Digipeater

The hills between each location are clearly visible using the useful line-of-sight tool.

Hamworthy Park – QTH

Between Hamworthy Park and Corfe Mullen

A much better chance of reception

So it was great to go out and test, albeit the transmission back to the QTH from Poole was again not successful I was able to gain valuable experience and APRS packet data. I think I will be able to setup another solution utilising the Bongo’s 2M whip antenna and a small laptop for the actual Hamworthy Park Summer Fete, so will put those pieces together and test those out next !

Until the next time – 73s

2E0FWE

2M SSTV comes alive

Very early on 22nd of June my IC9700 let out a loud SSTV incoming signal on 144.500 – I typically monitor the 2M SSTV band in hope of some ‘local’ activity, so I was very suprised to hear something this early.

Within a few minutes several pictures had been received.

SSTV Test Card – source unsure

The first i was unable to make out the full text, but the next one provided some more useful information.

SSTV message from martellotowergroup.com 2M repeater

I had never seen this repeater before and was wondering if a new one had been setup in the locality, going to the website I found that the SSTV repeater was based in Clacton – some 232km/144 miles away ! The line-of-site rule for 2M was blown away by looking at the elevation profile between the QTH and the SSTV repeater.

elevation and distance between QTH and SSTV repeater

As the the morning went on, more signals went in and amazingly i was able to activate the repeater with the access tone and receive my own picture back. I then had an excellent QSO via the repeater with G4LVD based in Ipswich !

via MB7TV G4LVD
My sent image repeated back with the MB7TV overlay
Completed QSO via MB7TV to G4LVD

Having completed the QSO I was left wondering, how is it I could suddenly receive the SSTV repeater which is so far away. A posting to our clubs mailing list provided the insight – a temperature inversion had caused a opening on VHF between the QTH and MB7TV. Not really knowing what a temperature inversion was, I looked that up, and the met office giving a great explanation. I was just lucky to be listening at the right time and to receive the signal from so far away!

With that I wondered as these are predictable, there must be some forecast, sure enough I found a site that looked to model the inversion that was seen this morning.

https://tropo.f5len.org/forecasts-for-europe/

This means that I will be able to at least listen out at these times and try a QSO again. I’m not sure if I would ever be able to reach the SSTV repeater on mainland Europe, but with P13DFT in Delft in the Netherlands and another Germany, it will be great fun trying ! Heres to more ‘temperature inversions’ and more SSTV QSO’s on 2M!

G-0202 Garston Wood RSPB Reserve – POTA – QRP – Take 2 !

Following last weeks attempt, I headed back to Garston Park to attempt activating the park again. Armed with two lots of battery packs, mains charger and the iPad with SDR-Control loaded onto it I was determined to activate the park.

Having quickly setup, I was approached by two friendly chaps asking what I was doing with the equipment I had setup. Their initial assumption was bat watching ! (Makes senses with an antenna I guess !) We had a great conversation about parks on the air and also bat watching. Its something I’ve never heard of and with this park being quite near without a lock on it, something I wouldn’t mind trying – an overnight PoTA and bat watching. I’ve looked up some equipment and the bat watching website, so I’ll be looking into that later on in the year, probably when dusk/evening comes in a bit sooner.

Bat detectors – yes they exist !

With that I setup the IC705 to the IPad and SDR-Control – have to say that this application is fantastic – other than having to adjust the connectors in the IC-705 if I want to use the radio independent of the app, its as close to getting to 0 touch to getting on the air in FT4/FT8 modes.

Having experimented with FT4 at home and also updated my version of WSJT-X on the QTH windows machine, I was amazed at the rate QSO’s are completed. For me with a QRP radio and wanting to try battery usage where possible (I don’t always operate from the Bongo) this was great. At the QTH FT4 contacts where made in rapid succession, likewise in the field, when an opening came, the FT4 contacts came flying in ! within several minutes had equalled my previous weeks telephony contact ! I then went over to FT8 to try my luck there, sure enough, the QSO started to come in. The one problem with Garston Wood is the really weak mobile phone signal – for PoTA you really want to self-spot to get that first log on the page, then more will follow, sure enough I was determined to ‘self-spot’ and was rewarded with more FT8 QSO’s.

The SDR Control app made logging and contacting as easy as it could be, I was amazed at how well thought out this application is. It can be configured to automatically log, which I tested for the first time today and confirm works wonderfully. Essentially this means you could run FT8 & FT4 completely hands free.

I exported the log from my ipad to my icloud storage, with a bit of simple ‘grep’ and redirection I had the file in the format ready to submission to the POTA Administrator.

cat alanpota.adi | grep 20220529 > 2E0FWE@G-0202-20220529.adi

I tried SSTV with the black cat app, but it wouldn’t integrate with SDR Control, so I tried the old fashioned method of picking up a microphone, but whilst I could pick up SSTV from the IC705 with my own ears, the ipad app was pretty much deaf out in the field. As I am great fan of SSTV this is the one thing the SDR Control App is missing – if a way could be found to integrate either the black-cat app into SDR Control so they can run both the same time, or SDR Control had its own native SSTV app, that would be amazing !

I tried a few more SSB contacts on 20m, but to no avail. With the weak phone coverage self-spotting was tricky and when I could self-spot it would take another ‘strong’ station to come in over the the top of me to make that frequency out of use to me. I tried 2M and although hearing some activity (always glad just to hear something!) couldn’t complete a QSO.

So today turned into all about Data, and how important to activate a park SDR Control is, being my 2nd visit, I was determined to get the 10 contacts to activate, and I wasn’t let down by the application. Being restricted in self-spotting also meant that when I could get onto the POTA website, I was consistent, and I was rewarded with a FT8 contact from K3VAT in the US.

I’ve had a fantastic time of late travelling around to various PoTA locations and this was by far the most challenging one so far, with limited mobile coverage, varying conditions and generally being a bit busy, it was great to get the 10 QSO’s needed to activate the park.

My next ‘planned’ PoTA is quite a few weeks off, and its getting further afield to find ‘unactivaetd’ parks, but I’m really excited about it, until then I’m going to be utilizing my season ticket for Upton Country Park, with lovely weather and long evenings, I can head over after work and set up for a fun evening of ‘parks on the air’ close to home.

Until then 73 and hope to catch you in the log book !

Fulll QRZ log

First state-side SSTV contact (5/5/22)

Being up and about in the small hours in the UK I was tuned into 20M SSTV frequency of 14.230, thinking just to let it monitor and pull in the overnight SSTV pics only to find a clear as a bell TX start from W2PTH.

For those who are new to SSTV, W2PTH has been doing SSTV for quite some time, his QRZ Page states 1976 ! Those familiar with SSTV would be familiar with the call sign and the ‘Cherry hill’ location appearing in his pictures.

Having heard the call, I thought to give it a try – I’ve never had much luck in reaching the states being limited to 50W but the signals where coming in exceptionally clear tonight, so thought to give it a try!

SSTV QSO with W2PTH

As you can see the stream of pictures came in just wonderfully and I was really happy to have W2PTH in my log book with my first DX contact into the USA.

Propergation differences just minutes later

As can be seen from the picture received just minutes later, the conditions had changed. It was fantastic to have such a great SSTV QSO with a great operator!

Equipment Used :- IC7300 50W power, Multi-band End Fed Antenna, MMSSTV on Windows 10 with KE5RS FTP Widget for uploads

What have I been upto !

So its been a busy couple of weeks with much non-radio stuff going on taking up a fair bit of my time. I did get to enjoy going along the south coast, but no time/equipment with me to do any radio this time out, but nether the less I had a great time.

Waking up without a hangover on the south coast

Whilst radio activities have been minimal, mostly the weekly G4PRS net on 2M and FT8/WSPR on HF, I did give a presentation about “Parks on the Air” to the G4PRS club. This was also shared over Zoom for those unable to attend in person.

This went down pretty well by all accounts, I got plenty of positive feedback the next day which was good to see, but I could see that 2 years of lock down had effected my presentation skills for sure, nethertheless it was a good way to get people into PoTA.

With the longer days I’m sure to do more nearby activations soon, it makes a break from studying/reading. I did have some interesting FT8 contacts on 10M recently.

10M FT8 contact into Hong Kong

I hope I can get in some more PoTA before the end of April and am looking forward to the increased propagation conditions.

QRP – POTA – G-0211 – Upton Heath

With the weather being so lovely and time allowing day time operation, I headed out to Upton Heath – this is just opposite Upton Park but separated by the busy A35. Although once in either, you wouldn’t notice that it is there !

Upton Heath (G-0211) and Upton Country Park (G-0443)

I brought my wagon along to help transport the radio and accessories from the car to the heathland, with just a short walk to find a good bench to operate from it was no problem at all.

I was able to be on the air quickly with the excellent Alex Loop ham-pack antenna, I used a bungee to attach it to a direction post as my bike stand is still in the back of the bongo in North Wales, but the bungee was excellent to use and changing frequency across the 20M band was very easy to get low S.W.R. across the operating frequencies.

I wanted to get better at Telephony contacts so started with Phone on 14.241 and used the PoTA App to self-spot, within minutes I was trying to manage a pile up ! I was getting so many call signs at once, it was hard to distinguish them and get back, thankfully I got most, but some I couldn’t complete, but that’s what experience and patience will teach me ! I managed 6 Phone contacts, whilst I appreciate all of them, it was great to get a fantastic signal report from K1RO in New Hampshire ! I was so glad to have a break and a drink of water with me.

I then moved onto FT8 and completed enough QSO’s to active the park, with reports coming in from all over Europe.

FT8 – 20m

Whilst I had been operating for just over an hour, I wanted to give SSTV a try, my previous attempt was thwarted by a very busy 20m band, but today I was able to get thru a fantastic signal from HA1AD

With my water supply fast running out and time getting on, i packed up having had a fantastic time at Upton Heath. It is definitely a park I will come to again, its nearby, really accessible and lovely location to work from.

Youtube – QRP POTA Upton Heath

QRP POTA – G-0258 Martin Down

Having originally planned to go out PoTA the week before and found that the IC-705 had developed a fault with its SQL/RF/AF Gain knob, that had to be repaired, was fixed and turned around very quickly by Icom UK !

After Sales Service is important

So I lost a weekend of PoTA activation, I did make good use of the time tidying my Mazda Bongo up and enjoying time out with it still around the gorgeous Dorset/Hampshire countryside.

Having got the IC-705 back in re-instated my visit to Martin Down. Having not been there I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent video on Martin Down and more, which gave me enough information about the location without having to visit there.

Lovely video about Martin

I put my planned action on the PoTA website and headed out on the 12th of March, it was a lovely drive up and the location was fantastic. I set about setting up my IC-705 and Alexloop Hampack antenna. When I went to transmit via WSJTX on FT8, the radio and transceiver kept disconnecting ! I went back and checked over the basics, but couldn’t find anything out in the field as to what the issue was. Having not packed an external table/chair and feeling a little despondent headed back home.,

Portable Problems !

After having a nice afternoon out with XYL Monica, I got the 705 and out the bag and started working through the problems I had encountered. In the video above you’ll see how i switch out the antenna, computer and cables finally identifying the issue with the Alex Loop antenna.

Alex loop antenna ‘fix’

Upon closer inspection I was able to find that there was a considerable ‘cut’ in the coax, wether this all three (outer, braid and feeder) hitting each other wasn’t clear, but restoring the shielding by way of some strong tape and its proximity to the inner loop resulted in the transmit issues being resolved

I re-registered my planned activation on the PoTA Website for the 13th and headed back out, full of determination not only to make FT8 contacts, but also SSTV and Telephony.

Come the 13th I headed out early to ensure I got a space suitable for my Bongo where I could park in a good position to the antenna, this was easily setup and getting on everything in position is becoming very routine now. Operating from the Bongo in cold/not warm conditions is really brilliant, and means I don’t need to carry tents,etc to do an activation and keep warm/risk my IC-705 getting damaged by rain/weather,etc.

Once setup the issue with the radio disconnecting happened again ! This time knowing where to look I reapplied the ‘fix’ in the field, and was back on the air in no time. I achieved the 10 QSO on FT8 to activate the park in just over 1 hour and 10 minutes, they ranged around to the world to right here in England. I was very satisfied with how the 705 and the magloop antenna was performing.

FT8 RX/TX Report via PSK Reporter

Using the PoTA app from my phone I could see numerous people re-spotting me which undoubtedly helped in the succession of FT8 qsos.

Having gotten the 10 QSO’s needed to activate the park, I then turned my attention to SSTV on 20m (14.230) – reception was amazing, I got the IC-705 and Magloop tuned in no problem, another technique I have ‘developed’ since going portable of tuning the antenna to the frequency to get the best S.W.R and signal output (where as at home I use multi band verticals and Endfeds). I tried for an hour to have a QSO, but sadly I couldn’t make a contact this time, but did receive some great pictures. For the full gallery of RX, see here

Upon arrival at home I did receive a very nice email that my SSTV picture had been picked up my a KiwiSDR in Germany ! ( Thank you Tommy/ LB6DIĀ )

CQ POTA BW Mode on 10W

After an hour of SSTV I turned to Telephony – I’m not the most confident HF Telephony person, but doing PoTA gives me a real opportunity to improve my HF QSO style. I do find that that with PoTA people do tend to do the ‘rubber stamp’ contest style of QSO, but are nevertheless very enthusiastic to make the contact and really patient in getting call signs out to ‘activators’ (operators in the park).

In the end I managed 6 Telephony contacts all over the globe with a good mixture of reports, I was really really excited to do so well with such relative low power and portable.

2E0FWE – QRP – POTA Martin Down National Park

Once home I had the challenge of getting the log book fully into ADIF format. This is the one thing that some non-technical people may find a challenge, but I have been able to find this excellent page on how to create a mixed log using Excel (on Windows). I was able to complete the spreadsheet and run the macro to produce the ADIF file for submission to PoTA Administrators easily, so now I just need to wait for the file to be processed for my activation to be complete !

I can say that operating mobile and doing PoTA is by far the best part of amateur radio for me now, it is incredibly satisfying to go out with such lower power and in lovely locations to operate from.

POTA log book uploaded into QRZ

QRP POTA G-0157 Holt Heath

Despite the beautiful sunny start to the day and strong winds yesterday with more to come today, I was still determined to get out with the IC-705 and Alex Loop Ham Pack for some Parks on the Air.

Wind speed measured at QTH with Storm Eunice on the 18th

For this activation I only took my Alex Loop Ham Pack bag, with the IC705 in it and accessories. Every thing fitted really well, whilst not as good as the Icom bag, it was good enough for transportation in the Bongo.

I had already visited G-0157 Holt Heath with XYL the previous week to find a nice location to operate from and was easily able to setup the Alex Loop on the bike-stand without any issue. I was soon on 30M FT8 Frequency and making good contacts well into Europe with 10W of power.

FT8 transmitted by Alex Loop being well received on 30M

The QSO’s came in with rapid succession, I dare say that the POTA self spot was really helping this time out as some calls were directly at me.

I take pictures of the 73 Acknowledgement as well to ensure i have logs in triplicate, writing down the logs manually also ensures that I don’t double-up a contact, and makes hunting FT8 calls easier. I found a good mix today of calling CQ and responding to other people calling CQ. Going for stronger signals tended to result in the typical signal report/received/73 QSO. In all it took about 90 minutes to get 10 FT8 qsos on 30m – that is with breaks for fresh air and making coffee, so not bad at all.

I then went on to try SSTV around midday, by this time the wind and rain was really howling around the heathland, it was beautiful and spectacular to be operating in such conditions, and the Alex Loop was doing a fantastic job. Sadly my USB cable developed a fault and with the weather getting no better, decided to leave it for another day (i..e I didn’t want a tree to fall down en-route and get stuck !)

I had a brilliant time at Holt Heath and a place I will very much like to return to when the weather improves to setup a mast and an end-fed antenna.

I am already looking forward to my next Parks on the Air outing, but they are getting more further afield now as the nearby ones are slowly getting done…

QRP Bongo Pota G-0157

FT8 QSO Summary (as uploaded to QRZ and PoTA)

Edit – 20/2/22

Many thanks to CU3BL & CU3HY for ‘hunting’ me ! Was glad to see in the park activation that my self-spot had helped!

CU3BL & CU3HJY ‘hunters’ from Azores !