Back on Top Band – is it worth it ?

Posted on November 24, 2023 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Having got the ‘shack’ into somewhat more operational functionality I pondered adding back in the MFJ Auto Tuner – I originally purchased this when I was using home-built vertical antenna and in that it could seemingly tune anything to matching the impedence of the antenna to the transceiver. With the 80m end fed, which does a excellent job across all its designed bands, it became a little redundant and sat in the ‘spares pile’.

With the recent ‘ham shack’ rejig and spotting the tuner, I’d thought Id give it another try, as digital modes on top band can experience some interesting propergation and having recently got the weather station back on line ready to start re-building the webtechnologies for WSPR data, seemed a good reason to at least put it back in place.

MFJ ATU under the IC9700 doing its business on top-band WSPR

Fitting in the ATU wasnt as straight forward as planned – the additonal ‘gaps’ in the bookshelf paying off to allow the ‘sturdy’ coax of the ATU to the 7300 to be in place. I did attempt mounting directly underneath, but it was becoming more of a mess than it already is. With a rejig and some persusasion, the ATU was in place and functioning correctly.

I started out on FT8 – there was plenty of traffic on top-band and managed several QSO’s as well as seeing how well the antenna was doing being matched to 160M with 50W of power.

Having enjoyed a pleasent evening out and the fresh air of Poole Harbour, I resumed my work in the shack and started WSPR transmissions on 160M with 1W of power. I’ve been doing 10M during the day, and its been geat to see the data of how the propergation really varies and almost to immediate effect when the sun goes down, so it would be good to see the inverse of that. I was not to be dissapointed !

Suffice to say, the ATU was doing a great job in matching the antenna and still with a decent amount of power being transmitted on WSPR, the MFJ reported between .5 and .7W

Needless to say, as someone who enjoys digital modes and analysis of the data produced, its great to have this added functionality back. With the steady stream of WSPR data becoming available I’m looking forward to updating the webtechnologies site ready for early next year, so the MFJ will be staying for the foreseeable future ! Yes it is worth it !

A fun evening on G4PRS 2M net

Posted on November 20, 2023 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

With the 9700 setup on the egg-beater antennas, it was time to test out the TM-V71 on 2M for some Telephony QSO’s using the Diamond X9000. The G4PRS net on Monday nights is on 2M, 145.375, and pulls in a good many callers from around the region, as my QTH is on the aft side of the ‘hump’ between Bournemouth and Poole hearing folk over Swanage and Weymouth way is very rare, but most contacts are very good to at least readable, with only a few which I couldnt make out.

I got in early on the list of callers, (3rd in line I think) and net control (Peter) as G4PRS done an excellent job in getting everyone in. As seen from my ‘scribblings’ there was alot of callers ! I was greatful for the constructive input on my audio and strength, 1st time out was to quote ‘blasting the doors off’ so I got a bit further back from the microphone a second time around, which seemed to help. I will check the manual if there is a in-built setting for microphone amplification to see if thats set, mostly I’ve been using this radio for APRS previously.

It was nice that folk on the net remembered me being in POTA, which sadly I’ve not had much time for this year, but am hopeful in the new year I will be back out again, maybe even December, will see how things go. I’ve packed the 705 in its case for now, so it is a nice ‘go bag’ setup and I do enjoy radio/POTA. Also good feedback on the blog (thanks G6AKJ) and bookcase – its nice to hear that i get at least one reader of the blog ! 😀

I have HRD running on the micropc you can see just under the monitor, the larger PC is a linux box, which I might use for the 7300 to keep the 9700 and 7300 seperate as to avoid any mistaken PTTs,etc.

All in all, the effort to get the radios set back up in the book-shelf-shack has been really worth it, with HRD driving the 9700 and the egg beater setup, as well a nice 2M/70cm radio, I’m looking forward to having more QSO’s on UHF/VHF, as well as digital modes with the 7300, although 80m is very lively of late !

73’s for now and thanks for reading if you got this far 🙂 Hope to catch you on air !

A shack tidy (work in progress)

Posted on November 20, 2023 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

With my shack getting some actual usage of late, as well as the G4PRS 2M call on Monday nights, it felt like a good time to tidy things up. I’d not been particualy happy with the layout of the radios in the window, in particular it was susceptiable to any rain/water ingress. With that I orderd a budget 3 tier book shelf, having measured the dimensions, it was a nice foot print and my radios should all fit…

Having move the radios from the shelving, I then set about putting them in-situ to see how it worked out – i wasnt 100% sure where I was going to put the book-case radio shack, but the corner seemed a good idea, and put the Apple iPad that was there back into the Alex Loop pack ready for my next /P or /M use. The position worked well, but there was a clear issue of routing power and coax to the radios, so Ihad to do some ‘DIY’ on the shelves. Here goes my warranty…

The cheapness of the bookcase meant the back-walls of the compatments didnt present much work for the dremel, if it was earlier in the day, I would of done this outside tho, it generate a fair amount of dust and smoke, but I kept the windows wide open and also took my time with each section. I didnt need ‘perfectly square’ holes, just enough so that I can route the coax and other cables thru, and as can be seen in the last photo, this worked out pretty well !

The main transformer now had a nice clearance for its rather noisey fan (my only complain of this transformer, its otherwise done an excellent job) then can start placing the radios in place. I started with my 11m CB+manual antenna matcher, this went in easily enough, and then I placed the Kenwood TH-V71E on top of that. I put all the necessary data/audio cables in place in case I choose to use them, but I’m going to be using this as my main 2m/70cms rig. At the moment its using the Diamond X-9000 which has excellent gain on the 2m and 70cm bands. I am looking forward to trying it out on the G4PRS net on Monday night.

I fed in the very chunky cables for the IC9700. Currently I am running a very simple setup, with no mast head amplifier and direct to the satellite egg-beater antennas. This should become a single feed with a splitter both ends once I put the mast-head amp in place.

With the radios all connected and the basic setup up and running, I then set about using the IC9700 for what it was really designed, operating satellites. Luck would have it that the ISS would be passing over, not a particularly high elevantion at 22 degrees, but worth a try. I waited for an hour and was pleased to hear QSO’s from all over europe going into and out of the ISS repeater. I manually controlled the doppler, but there was no need to rotate the yagis liked what I used to have to do. First impressions of the non-amplified eggbeaters is very encouraging and I look forward to continue to setup the annteas and systems in the coming weeks.

Finding some time for radio !

Posted on December 7, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

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.

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.

Yeovil Amateur Radio Club QRP convention

Posted on April 25, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

An ealy start from Bournemouth as we drove upto Sherbourne – I was rewarded with a space in the nearby car-park which was free due to broken machine !

It was a chance to test out the APRS on my Bongo and I took two fellow members from G4PRS along, it was great weather for a nice, albeit bumpy ride up ! The little whip antenna on the Bongo done a grand job of reaching multiple digipeaters to send the APRS packets onto.

It was a nice stroll from the car park to the hall, its a lovely little village and there was even nice sign-posts to the hall.

Once inside for such a small venue there was plenty to see and great people to talk to. It was great to meet so many other radio amateur enthusiasts and those around QRP as well. I registered on the SPRATS desk and got a nice copy of sprats for a 40M beacon which could be a project I build later in the year..

Whilst I didn’t go with the intention to buy anything, one stall caught my attention.. Whilst the Giant Morse Code Key and a working demo of it was great, I spotted a Fluke 8125A multimeter. This was all powered up and it had fantastic NIXIE tubes on it. Knowing the reputation of Fluke kit I knew it would be pretty good. I had a chat with the seller, to get some background, turns out he restored it from broken to operating, and what a fantastic job he done.

Now the reason for the slight delay in this video is that I haven’t yet (up to today, the 25th) actually powered on the meter at home, so today I powered it up and done some basic meter readings with it. As you can see, its a fantastic piece of test equipment and I am really looking forward to use it with my future kit builds.

All steam ahead!

Posted on August 25, 2021 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

So aside amateur radio, my other ‘interests’ is model railways. My fellow rail enthusiast are building this small layout.

Whilst that hasn’t been taking all of my time, it has taken a fair chunk in trying to find all my N-Gauge track and equipment. I have how ever been very busy in and around the shack !

SSTV

I have got the VC-H1 working. Getting all the cables from around the world (Korea, Portugal, USA) was quite an adventure and took a fair amount of ‘google-fu’ to source. I have a number of videos, but this one is probably of the most interest where I done a field test and the results.

VC-H1 Field Test

The broadcasts from the park resulted in complete susses of received images from my QTH about 1 mile away.

VC-H1 field test results (approx 1 mile max)

I was using a Baofeng with 5W and other tests around IO90BS really showed how the height/hills in the town effected the reception. I think my best chances for long-distance are away from the SE direction where I am behind a steep hill. I will spend some time and do some VHF reception modelling in the coming weeks.

Shack Tidy

So with the 2nd year of my Part-Time MSc coming up time was limited to get the ‘shack’ (aka Home office) into some semblance of tidy. Getting a Radio Shack tidy isn’t just making it ‘look’ tidy, its about getting RF right, every thing that requires ferrietes to have them and good cable management, all whilst be useable, manageable and allowing for further development of other projects.

I started outside and installed good coax, as well as a general tidy up around the antennas. I then installed a thru-window panel, allowing the feed lines to be tidy into the shack. From there I took out all the transceivers, receivers and other radio devices. The bulk of the work was done over the weekend as it took a fair amount of time.

Shack Tidy Day 1

As you can see from ‘Day 1’ there was allot to do just to things in place.

I’m now have installed the transceivers onto the bonding and am looking forward to test out the bonding/grounding results.

Bonding

My next step will be to get my Windows computer re-installed with the necessary chokes and filters to operate well with the computer with no effects from RFI. When that is installed I should have a good idea of how to tidy the cables best as described in the Grounding and Bonding book.

Events

With re-opening of the Poole Amateur Radio Society and enjoying regular on Thursday evenings, I’m getting more out of my radio and understand them than ever. Its great to have good and productive conversations with fellow hams, although the conversation sometimes does drift to non-radio activities, I have been grateful to receive several courgettes which XYL Monica made into a lovely meal for me !

The club is having a field day event away from the QRM of the urban environment. I’ve very excited to be going with my IC-705 and Alexloop ham-pack. I got a new ‘mast’ for the antenna, as you can see here.

Bike Repair Stand as Antenna Mast

Results are really encouraging !

With all the equipment that will be required for the field day I got a hand cart. Sweetly and I had a great time testing it out.

Testing the trolley cart with Sweety.

So I’ve been super busy, but very happy with all with all the amateur radio activities. It will be harder after September to spend weekends like this as I start my MSc Computing Research year in earnest, but undoubtedly the model trains and amateur radio will make a welcome break when time allows me to do so.

Tidying the shack

Posted on April 26, 2021 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

So my last post on tidying the shack i had the radios in place where I thought I’d might like them, but of course I’ve made some changes as the tidying progresses !

I’m more than likely going to put a small adjustable shelf above the TS690S/FT659 and 2200H to allow for the other components that are used in connecting them.

I’ve got the build and electrical test desk with the require microscope and oscilloscope setup. I’ve not got any kits to build at the moment, but I’m glad ive got a decent area to build and test in now. Getting things sorted and into boxes/labelling really takes the most time, but worth it once done, and plenty of capacity. I’ve kept the left side for ‘components’ and the right storage box for ‘hardware’ like screws/tools,etc.

I’ve still got my HF boxes/shelves to go thru and sorting thru the larger container boxes, but slowly the shack is getting better in being tidier and managable. Once everything is in place I’ll be using velcro to tidy the cables up. Next is to get the audio sorted with filter/amp and speakers back in place.

Tidying the Shack / QRM

Posted on April 19, 2021 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Good day all ! Making this a quick one as its interspersed with Univserity Assignments and Tidying the shack !

So I have made good progress on building racking and getting things ‘generally in place’ around the shack, its still a right old mess i dont mind saying, but its getting there, and better than it ever was with the old tables.

I had some valuable input from a fellow HAM on my WebSDR that the VDSL interference was plain to see, so after a few years away from Virgin Media, I’m resuming my Internet access from Virgin, once that is in place and all my ‘essentials’ proven to work, I’ll discontinue my IP/VDSL link, hopefully that will reduce the QRM.

I did have a chance to play with the IC705 in the garden this weekend, but results on the portable antennas were slightly disappointing.

I did put on a measured radial for 40m but the nearest resonate frequence was a massive 3kHz away ! If the weather holds up, i’ll try out my buddipole, as for temporary use its worked pretty well, whats more i can configure it for VHF/UHF as well by constructing a JPole, so it might be the best antenna for the IC705 without an additonal outlay on more antennas.

I’m going to be quite busy with a couple more Univeristy Assignments and work-work, but will do my best to keep the blog going !

Until next time, stay safe, 73 !

Alan / 2E0FWE

Tidying the shack Day 2

Posted on April 12, 2021 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Its been a busy end of the week in the QTH – generally tidying up, or in the process of ! After doing a number of supporting activties, I continued to tidy the shack up !

The first task was to clear enough space for the new shelving. I used the static space where my current corner desk is to give enough clearance.

Having got a nice clear space, i then set about hoovering – there was so much dust !

As on queue, the racking arrived from Amazon – time for both me and doggo to get some exercise before building the racking !

Having enojyed a break and a nice walk in the park with Sweety, i set about builidng the first set of racks. These a shelves/racks that can go 1.8m high, i used them in a half-form factor to create two desks. Having ordered two of these, I was able to create two ‘desks’ with middle shelves, and two others with a nice bit of capacity. The build was quite straight forward and was able to complete with just a rubber mallet.

As time and the day drew on, it was time to start organizing the basic placement of where things will live, or thereabouts, freeing up the my desk and allowing me to continue working.

Having applied a number of layers of conductive tape to the top-most layer of the shelving to get started, i was able to return the radios and start placing the other items in their general locations. I was quite satisfied with the days work given the extent of how disorganized it was at the start of the day. I’m hoping I will get the cable management attached to the relevant loctions and hopefully be back on the air by Monday evening, with at least the 7300, WSPR Raspberry Pi and KiwiSDR.

QRM / Tidying the Shack

Posted on April 9, 2021 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

So for the first time in a VERY long time (aka YEARS) I’ve had the luxury of a week off work. During the week I found a USB extender was producing a horrific amount of QRM. The offending item has since been disconnected.

I went on to survey my ‘shack’ and that I had ‘allowed’ QRM to ‘sneak’ back in. I was a bit disappointed in myself to be honest as I had spent allot of time and money on virtually eliminating interference, both man-made and natural when I had my TS690S setup as my only station. I was just not paying attention to what I was putting in the shack.

So to make up for my lack of attention, I wanted to understand why this had come about. Mostly the biggest problem is the ease to just add things in and not test them, only to find out they are ruining a hobby I really love.

Looking around the shack I really noticed how even tho I had moved much of the music equipment out, it was still as not as organised as I would like it. Did I need all these computers ? Do I use them regularly, is my setup optimal in terms of service ? For many of the computers, especially my older mac, i really no longer needed it and many smaller projects have come and past.

I looked around our whole house and many things had changed since we moved here, so maybe it was just as good to take a holistic look and think ‘how can i solve this’. With that I rented some storage space nearby.

I was really able to take a big “bite” out of all the things around the house and no longer using. I wont share the pictures on here as its not strictly radio related, but fair to say I made good use of the space and freed up alot of space around the QTH.

This in turn allowed me to think about back in the shack. How can I get desks/working areas tidy and serviceable. I’ve been using computer tables mostly that dont really have the best storage on them, leading to problems of not putting RF chokes on them and ensuring the QRM was reduced. I put too much trust in the power strip RF filter to think it would fix all my QRM issues – obviously it would not.

First call – Ferrite, lots of it and the right sort. Whilst I have VHF/UHF transceivers, allot of my work is on HF. I researched the best ‘general’ ferrite for HF, and think that FT140-43 will reduce/eliminate the RF from getting in and out of the devices. With that I ordered 40 FT140-43 from Qubits. Now *everything* that is in my shack will at least have these ferrites on the power supply/leads, if not more.

I then looked at the desks. I need them to be serviceable. The power-tray racking helped, but I was still having cable management issues, and as us radio operators know, having loops of wire here and there is a great way to introduce unwanted QRM into the shack.

I ordered these Garage Shelving Unit from Amazon which can be split to make a nice height desk and storage space, reducing the amount of ‘wire tangle’ and allowing me to have small boxes to tidy things away.

I’ve also got Aluminium Foil Tape to cover the working surfaces with to ‘bond’ transceivers to desks. This had worked really well when i done it with my TS690S and having the cables from the transceiver neatly on the metal conductive surface the cables was reduced loops massively.

So I will have a very busy weekend coming up to finish up my ‘week off’ but hopefully a shack that is not only free from QRM, but is also tidy and serviceable. I promise to upload pics 🙂

Stay safe, keep well.