Having had a very nice holiday at the start of the month in Montreux Switzerland I had disconnected all my antennas to ensure no damage to equipment whilst away. With a busy schedule its taken several weeks to get the antennas hooked back up again, but I’m glad to be back on 2m/70cm and HF.
Thanks to the book-shelf shack rack, the anteannas were easy to reconnect for the 7300, Kenwood TM-V71 and CRT6900. I was back on the air monitoring SSTV in no time at all and had a good QSO with OE6XFX on 20m with a good signal report (595) on our transmissions. The 20M SSTV was busy as ever for a Saturday afternoon!
seasonal SSTV pictures on 14.230USB
I monitored the Southampton repeater on 70cm and 2M Poole gateway and plenty of activity, was nice to hear some good technical discussions goin on the 70cm repeater in Southampton, was nice to listen in.
I’m hoping for more good weather over the weekend so I can continue work on the eggbeater antennas and looking forward to getting those going on the 9700.
Having now purchased a season ticket for Parking at Upton Country Park (G-0443) I wanted to make a site-visit to check it out.
I first looked up the map available on-line to see what kind of walk I could have.
upton country park map
I parked up and headed off with my little Maltese / poodle cross Sweety to enjoy the survey!
Car Park (bongo in distance)
My objective is to find somewhere where I can work, ideally near the shore/sea as I’m sure even with a magloop that will help with the DX, as shown when I had a fantastic activation down on the Jurassic Coast at Weymouth (loads of Data and Telephony contacts!), I followed the red-path but with the purple de-tour across the bay.
this looks a nice groundsweaty had no objectionsone of many stunning viewsacross the bay
Our route took across a specially built path that crossed a marsh/bay. It was fantastic view across to Poole and many birds could be heard. I immediatly thought how nice it would be to try out the wire-meshing as a counterpoise and right next to the sea ! One to try out for sure. Sweetys paws had no problem on the wire mesh and infact made quite a nice tempo beat as he walked across.
sweaty stealtha perfect framecorgi infoEnjoying the countryside
It really is an idealic environment, its hard to image that an massive urban environment is only minutes away, its pure escapisim coming to the country park. The park/council had installed a lovely ‘frame’ to capture the scene (full pic here) I was really in my element enjoying the weather and taking my dog for a walk. There was few but nice people around (Monday evening 19:00 approx) The Corgi pictures with info about The Queens dogs was lovely touch on the Platinium Jubilee.
The perfect spot ?Some interference ?Lovely woodsThe lovely spot
As Sweety and I’s walk came to end we reached the lovely ‘picnic’ spot – which is a set of lovely wooden seat and table. Whilst its far from the sea, just thinking about operating from here made me really excited. The view was fantastic, a few pylons down the road was the only negative, not sure how much they would effect my experience. The woods was lovely.
A lovely place for anything, but especially radio !
I cannot wait to get back to Upton Park with my radio, it is so near and fantastic location to operate from. I am sure it will get me lots of contacts !
Firstly the Mazda Bongo is back from Wales after the brakes have been repaired in Bangor ! Very grateful to Kevin at Bangor Kwik-Fit for sourcing all the parts required to get the Bongo back on the road.
Replacement caliper, disk and pads on the Mazda Bongo
When I returned home I found a package from America waiting for me, which turned out to be the connector cable between the Garmin eMAP and Kenwood TH-D7. The only place I was able to find this was an on-line shop in the USA.
Glisson Cable for THD7 and Garmin EMAP
When I contacted them they was unable to ship to the UK ! I contacted a friend in Portland who was kind enough to order it for me and send it on to me here in the UK, I was really grateful to get the ‘final’ piece of kit required to use APRS and GPS with my Kenwood TH-D7.
I setup the emap and TH-D7 to produce packets via the beacon method and setup my home computer and IC-9700 to relay APRS packets.
Garmin EmapTHD7GPS CoverageGPS & APRS setup
Whilst I have a dual-boot machine, for simple reception and digipeating I’m able to use Direwolf in Windows. I was able to ensure my APRS packets are being transmitted and received before going out and doing a field test.
Windows APRS Setup
I headed out with the Mazda Bongo on a trip to one of our local farm shops and then to Poole harbour which made a nice way to spend a trip out and combine with some real data creation.
Trip to Farm Shop and Poole Harbour
On return to home I was able to look at APRS.FI and see my route had been nicely recorded and received via various Digipeaters around the IO90BS area. I was quite suprised that the coverage was as good as it was giving the hilly nature of the route and small low-powered 2m/70cm antenna on the side of the Bongo.
GPS Data in APRS received by M0VPN-1
Clicking on anyone of the data points will show all the data received and relayed, and from where. In this case we can see I was doing 22MPH on a heading of 101, this was received by M0VPN-1 whereby it was then put into APRS.FI website.
Conclusion
Whilst it took some time to get all the components I needed to get GPS and APRS working with my older Kenwood TH-D7, it has been well worth the wait. I can now setup position reporting and include useful messages, this will be in particular use when en-route to amateur radio activities (weekly club, conventions, POTA activations) and to send messages to other APRS users.
I would recommend that if you are looking to get more from your 2m/70cm experience and have the budget invest in a radio that has GPS & APRS, it may not seem obvious as to why it could be useful to start with, but certainly could be something you may well find yourself using when you have it.
So I planned my trip to Wales carefully, ensure that I had packed all that I needed for my weekend in Wales. I booked a campsite, only to find when I got there they don’t open the main gates until 8AM, so that would mean being late for lectures ! Instead I stayed at the lovely Bangor Business School Hotel – not as cheap as camping, but very much getting me there on time and a good nights sleep.
Sadly on the way up the Bongo’s breaks made the awful noise of metal on metal, so on Thursday I booked it in for a Saturday ‘break check’ – low and behold, new disc, pads and caliper required ! With that my planned PoTA activation for Snowden was off, and I headed back to Bournemouth via Train whilst my Bongo is repaired in Bangor.
Bongo at Bangor UniA very nice HSTIcom backpack is awesomeTravelling with radio pics
I unloaded my radio, alexloop and computer along with my suitcase from the Bongo, a total of 4 bags. The train required no less than 3 changes and the underground – but in all this travelling the alexloop and Icom bags really proved how good they are. The Alex loop is incredibly light and was easy to carry, whilst the IC705 and the radials was slightly more weighty, choosing to carry that one on my back it was easy to carry around. My other bag continued 2*Battery so weighed a fair bit, but wasn’t to bad.
It took about 9 hours to get from Bangor back to the QTH in Bournemouth, but I had done it ! Only thing which I had ‘lost’ is the antenna of the THD7, on the scale of things, I wasnt going to complain ! (it must of slipped out the bag at some point)
With that doing PoTA from the Bongo is on hold until I get it back, hopefully this week if the caliper arrives in time ! (which means a return train trip to Bangor, luckly I love trains 🙂
POTA 22/3/22 – Upton Park
The weather in Bournemouth is being fantastic, not wanting to bury myself in over 40 research papers the whole day, decided to go out and do a local activation at Upton Park – I have been there to visit before, but not for PoTA. As it was so nice, I really wanted my XYL Monica to come along as well, as there is plenty of facilities there, i.e. tea/coffee/light snacks and decent clean toilets, all within a short walking distance from the car park.
xk8 – faster than the bongo, but not quite so good for radio within it !
With the Bongo still being in Bangor, the XK8 is getting plenty of action, whilst I cant easily operate, it got all that I needed and XYL to Upton Park without problem.
XYL Enjoying TeaMe enjoying radioand sharing teaUpton Park
To activate a park, you only need to be within the boundary, and as the tea room is within the boundary of the park, was a perfect place to setup. There was some curiosity as to what I was doing, but no problems with putting my alex-loop in the table and then running my laptop into the IC705, we bought some nice tea and cake, plus a bottle of water as the temperature was really getting up at midday !
Even with the antenna in a compromised location, I was getting out just fine on both 17m and 20m.
PSK Reporter report from Upton Park
As soon as I self-spotted on the PoTA app, i was getting more calls, amazingly 2 from the USA ! Albeit FT8, it was really satisfying to get so many DX contacts on 10W.
For the first 30 minutes, the contacts came in very quickly, but after 12:30 there was a real slow down – i said to XYL Monica that if it was only 2-3 contacts made, I would of come back the next day (you can do activations over multiple days) but I was on 9 and need just one more ! I tuned to 20M and sure enough made my last contact there quite quickly once I had re-tuned the alex loop and found a clear part of the FT8 bandwidth to operate in.
With the 10 contacts made which are required for a park activation, I packed up and we headed out for a lovely drive around the Dorset countryside. At home I processed my manual log thru the excellent Excel spreadsheet to produce the ADIF file and sent that off to the regional POTA administrator, hopefully my results will be processed in the next day or two..
Hello there ! Well its been a while since i sat at the desk to do a blog-posting rather than a video and of antenna related results, so this evening I thought I would return to the blog and give a summary mini-update of what I have been upton !
How do I approach this.. hmm, well, lets go for by bands of operation and then methods as a subtext !
HF Operations (80m to 10m)
Well I have mostly been busy on improving the performance of my main 6BTV antenna, this is following a fantastic field trip with G4PRS (Poole Radio Society) to have a great day out and with so much learning about antennas.
As an outcome of that, I decided to improve my 6BTV and understand more about the tools that I have. I’ve made several fundamental changes to my 6BTV and initial results, well, are seeming promising. I have yet to take the X&Y measurements I wanted to take due to the inclement weather, but I think that will be this week.
I have been doing more and more telephony work on 40 and 80m. 40m via the IC-7300 and 80m via the Kenwood TS-690 into the excellent UK Antenna 80m multi band end-fed. Although its below its optimal height, it is functioning brilliantly.
Specific Modes – FT8
You would of seen from my QRZ page I used to spend allot of time on FT8. It is an interesting and exciting mode to start making contacts with. I found myself wanting more thou, so I found another digital mode to move onto. I am still doing occasional FT8, but really for what it was designed for in my opinion, getting signal reports and checking propergation/antennas, rather than solid FT8 only.
Specific Modes – SSTV (HF to start with)
I have been enjoying SSTV massively on 20m (14.230USB) – you will see on this site my most recent received images uploaded to the SSTV section. I use SSTV early and the early evening (grey line times) during mon-fri and where i can during the weekends. I have had some fantastic contacts and enjoying the pictures / QSOs massively. It is very rewarding to get a good 595 / P5 report from another operator well into DX terrority.
sstv contact from OK2ZCH
I continue to enjoy SSTV in making great contacts, I hope you could be my next one !
Specific Modes – Telephony on HF(voice)
Whilst on UHF/VHF I tend to be more comfortable with the longer QSOs via repeaters and even simplex on 2M, I still find HF QSO’s challenging, but very rewarding. At home I’m limited to 50 Watts, and when up against even legal full licence holders who can typically run 100W+ making a QSO and getting a good report, is really rewarding – lets not start about the Italians who are doing a great job of warming the atmosphere in what seems like an almost unlimited use of power of the HF airwaves.
I am doing more telephony on 40m and 80m recently (Sep/Oct 21) and really enjoying it. I’m using N1MM as a logging tool, which really helps me get the call sign down – i still don’t mind asking multiple times for a call sign until i get it right thou ! I have had great contacts with the ‘secret nuclear bunker’ and also Germany – I’m hoping the solar cycle continues to improve propagation on 40m
Specific Modes – Telephony on VHF & UHF
I use my IC705 on occasion from home on 2m and 70cm. I am very lucky to get into Southampton and the Isle of White very easily from my QTH in IO90BS. This gives me the opportunity to what must be one of the best repeaters on the south coast, namely, GB3IW. This repeater has excellent coverage with people connecting to as far west as Somerset and as far east as Brighton, inland I have heard people from Uckfield, Haywards Heath and also closer to my QTH in Bournemouth. I can take one of my handhelds out with 5W of power and get into it, with varying signal reports. From home with the X50 and 10W I am always 5/9+10 without problem.
I am working on a packet radio project for 2M based on the excellent Kenwood TH-D7 and the raspberry Pis I have. I am also into setting up a local ‘SSTV’ night,so if you in/around IO90BS and hear SSTV on 2m, it can well be me !
QRP / M / P
I continue to use my IC-705 both at home and mobile as a QRP transceiver. I have no interest in adding an amplifier to this fantastic and amazing transevier. For me QRP is almost becoming a sub-hobby in its own right. I have several very exciting antennas to use /M and /P and (/PP)
I’m hoping in the autumn and winter months to get out more with the IC-705 and my other UHF/VHF handhelds for some exciting and interesting field experiments.
Conclusion
Well I am keeping incredibly busy, its my final year of my MSc and am enjoying a new contract with a fantastic team who keep me wholly engaged thruout the day. I do hope to return to my local club when i can safely, until then i am keeping in touch with several of the members via email and hopefully when the weather gets better, back on the 2M net !
I have probably gone on for too long due to absence of recent postings, but thanks for reading and staying with me. I am hoping to do more frequent updates, no matter how busy i get, even if its just a short write up with some theory and application.
Until then take care, stay safe, and enjoy your radio.
