OFFICIAL EVENT LOG

EVENTS I HAVE PARTICIPATED IN

As a newcomer to the hobby, I am keen to join in the 'Special Events' that come about throughout the year and so I thought I'd find a place for my participation certificates. There's only two so far, but....

ROTA - Railways On The Air

Remembering Horwich Train Station

This weekend is "Railways On The Air" and instead of going to one of the usual active stations, I thought I might help commemorate a disused station in my home town of Horwich by operating from the grounds upon which it stood.

"Horwich Station" (painting by Morton Murray)

The station opened in 1870 and was closed in 1966. Almost all traces of its existence have now gone, but the original entrance remains, along with a few footpaths and 'railway relics'.

The branch connected to the Bolton & Preston line. A long single platform was provided upon which stood a single storey sandstone building, housing the booking room, waiting room, store room and toilets. The platform was linked to the town by a sloping cobbled footpath which remains in place today. The footpath led passengers to the town at Lee Lane (pictured above).

I'll be operating on the grounds of the station, closeby the loco wheels and the plaque which celebrates the station's history...

Details of the ROTA 2019 event can be found  >>>HERE<<<

Certificate Arrived

SHARK-RF OPENSPOT2

OPENSPOT2 WIRELESS DONGLE

I must admit, I was a little confused by this device's marketing. It appeared (to me at least) to be a dongle similar to my DVAP, but with the bonus of being wireless and standalone. Well it sure is wireless, but it's certainly not standalone!

SHARK-RF videos show it being small and compact enough to "slip into your pocket", making you think it works on its own, requiring nothing else to support it after the initial setup. But the fact is, it needs a power-supply! Why they couldn't incorporate a battery I do not know - especially at this price!!

So there you have it - if you're gonna "slip it in your pocket" be sure to slip a battery and a USB-C lead in there with it. Apart from that little gripe, it's a pretty impressive bit of kit. It's very compact, boots up in seconds and it will work with DMR, DSTAR, C4FM, P25 and more. So you only need to buy the one dongle for all your radios.

In the shack, it's no big deal plugging the dongle into your Mains Adapter (supplied) but outdoors you need to get yourself one of those portable USB Batteries. I've got a 7800mAh rechargeable unit, so it's no big deal, but if you don't already own one, be sure to factor in the cost of purchasing one.

The unit draws a maximum of 150mA so it's not a high-drain device, but if you're going to use it all day (or maybe over a weekend event) then you may want to think about the size of battery you're going to buy.

The OS2 transmits at approximately 20mW which is twice as much as my DVAP dongle. I suspect that it needs to pack that extra little punch because it has no external antenna option. The DVAP on the other hand has an SMA connector to permit the installation of a larger antenna for longer range around the home and garden. I'll do a direct range comparison when I get a minute.

Working from home you would normally use your PC/LapTop to run the software, but outdoors you would need to use your phone or wifi-enabled tablet. The software (which is run through a web-browser such as Chrome) is really quite good. It's pretty intuitive and doesn't bog down your CPU in any way. And I guess the best thing about it running through a web-browser is that it can be operated on virtually any platform.

So, my understanding (at this point) is that you need to carry the Radio, the OpenSpot, the Battery and the Phone or tablet whenever you wish to operate /portable. Your phone would need to have the option to operate as a Wi-Fi HotSpot (most do) and if you're using a tablet instead, then it would have to have a 3G/4G/5G simcard installed with a data-plan.

I don't know enough about it at this point because I've only just bought it, but it seems to me that to 'change rooms' say from CQ-UK to American RagChew you need to use the software. I'd have thought you would be able to do it directly from the radio, but so far I haven't worked out a way to do that on the FT3. I really do need to RTFM I guess :-) 

It's day-one, so I'll continue to experiment and come back with an update.

UPDATE!!!
I've figured out how to change rooms from the FT3 screen now, lol. 

YAESU FT3D

NEW FUSION RADIO

I had previously tried a Yaesu FT-400XD radio and the matching HRI-200 which I just didn't get along with. I tried allsorts to get it working, even calling upon the help of two local advanced operators who couldn't figure it out and so I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to work so hard on a hobby.

Anyway, having got shut of the 400, I decided to get something more compact - in the form of a handheld Fusion radio. Looking around online, I could see that the new FT3D from Yaesu was probably the best choice and so I opted for that one.

It's quite a small radio compared to my Kenwood D74 and is extremely light. It has a lovely colour-screen and it's also touch-sensitive which is nice. I find touch-screens very intuitive - you press the thing you want to change and up pops your options. You can't get easier than that. Other menu items are also pretty simple to figure out and up to now, I've not had to read the manual (although it's early days).

After a visit to my friend (G0UXF), I determined that I could easily access various rooms via his SHARK-RF dongle. I could not, however, access local Gateways - they must have been off or out of range. I'll need to look further into that, but first of all I needed to alter my Registration Details on Yaesu's Wires-X website. That takes a few days to go through apparently.

MAINS FILTER

DIY FILTER FOR EMC & NOISE REDUCTION

M0NWK has a great blog and on there, he talks about making an effective EMC/NOISE REDUCTION MAINS FILTER. It consists of a bit of mains cable and a ferrite ring (Fair-Rite type 31) which is easily obtainable in the UK for around £15.

It takes just a few minutes to put it together and it is quite effective. Inserting it into the mains feed of my shack has brought slightly lower levels of noise. It helps to stop common-mode currents from getting into the mains and also stops noise from the mains, so it could help you with both TX & RX issues.

I inserted mine just in front of a Mains Distribution block which feeds every component in the shack.

All the details can be found on Adrian Leggett's blog. Click the link below...

> CLICK HERE <

SHACK SORT-OUT #101

YAESU FT-DX3000 ARRIVES

When the DX3000 arrived, I was ill. Too lethargic to plug it in and try it even, so it was a few days on the desk before I could muster the strength to make a space for it. And because I knew that this was my "keeper" radio, I had to sort out the mess that had become my current shack.

For a start, I can only have one coax cable running across the front of my house to the shack, so I decided to install an antenna-switch to the back-side of the bungalow where the G5RV Ladder Line drops down. Why?? Because I quite often erect temporary Dipoles and End Fed Half Waves in the back garden and operate from there, but on rainy days it'd be nice to operate from the shack. 

Being able to plug a rear-garden antenna into the waterproof switch box would mean that I could experiment with antenna in the back garden and simply flick the switch to send the signal to the shack.Perfect! 

Once that job was out of the way, I started to rip out the shack cabling and moved all the bits of junk that inevitably builds up. I fitted a new 8-Socket extension and fitted it to the wall for ease of access and then started to tag every cable I could find with some very handy Cable-ID tags I got from Amazon.

Then I had to prep some new interconnects for the MFJ 993B including the (poorly constructed MFJ-5124Y interface). Once I'd got all the cables laid out (power, coax in/out, speaker, ATU interface, USB, CAT, Ground and an IF-OUT to the RSP1A, I could position the DX3000, connect everything up and power on for the first time. 

With the radio and ATU powered up, it took a while to figure out how to actually operate the the MFJ 993B, but eventually I figured it out and was achieving 1:1 matches along the range of the G5RV except 10M which was about 1:1.4 

The floor noise of the FT-DX3000 is exceptional! It really is pleasing to listen to compared to any other base radio I've had in the shack (only the Elecraft matched it). That alone makes me happy that I chose it over the IC-7300. Tuning around 20M I stumbled upon my mate G0UXF who was chatting to operators across the UK - another great Inter-G day! All signals were superb with good quieting. 

I then switched antennas to the EFHW that was on a 7metre pole in the back garden as a sloper. The signals were good and I managed a very clear QSO with a French operator before starting to feel poorly again. At least the job was done. New radio and a better shack layout :-).

BIWOTA-2019

British Inland Waterways On The Air 2019

When I heard about this event, I thought I'd participate from the White Bear Marina in Adlington (close to my home) but a subsequent call to them revealed that they were closed for the Bank Holiday weekend, so I opted to go to Glass Dock Marina instead. It's around 3.5miles South of Lancaster.

I'm very familiar with the area and have explored it many times on-foot and on motorbike. It's a favourite spot of mine and for the purposes of playing radio, it has the added convenience of public toilets, a shop, a chuck-wagon, a cafe and a pub - this really helps when you're trying to sell the idea to your Station Manager.

In the photo above, you can see the car-park on the right and this is where I reversed my truck up to the fence line next to the footpath. It meant that I could strap my mast to a fence post for easy erection and I could also attach a second mast to my towball for a 2M antenna.

Once I'd got the masts up, out came the picnic table and deck-chairs for a nice, comfortable day in the sun. And boy, was it sunny!!! In fact, it would have been unbearable had it not been for the day-long cool breeze coming in from the estuary.

Before starting, we had a bit of breakfast and a cup of tea and then the Station Manager got stuck into her book while I started calling CQ on 2. It was pretty quiet but then it was still early on a Sunday morning. Someone I know from home shouted me but he was mobile and lost me before we could could establish a QSO, so I switched over to 40M on the SotaBeams BandHopper II and put some calls out there.

My first contact was G1YPG in Stone, North Midlands. Steve gave me a 59 and he was the same to me. The band was really quiet and I'd started to think something was wrong with my station until Steve came along, so it was good to confirm everything was okay.

I briefly switched back to 2M to make sure that was working fine and had a good QSO with G7CDA (Douggie) in Morecambe and he very kindly posted a notice on the NW FUSION GROUP for me in the hope I might get more calls. He told me that many of the members liked to play 2mSSB so I said I'd put some calls out on 144.300 but I would be restricted by the fact that I was vertically polarised :-(


Anyway, despite lots of calling, I got few responses on 2M SSB so I focused on 40M again and pretty soon I was reaching people all across the UK from Ireland, to the Outer Hebrides, Wales, Devon, Kent, Norfolk and Skegness. The was an amazing amount of Inter-G on the band and the signals were just fantastic! Needless to say, many operators were using high power (300W in Ireland) and I was just running 5W on my FT-818ND.

Later on in the afternoon the Europeans started to swamp the band and some were acting rather bullishly, stomping all over well-established frequencies. I managed to make quite a few contacts in France and Germany but then decided to call it a day.

It was a great day out and was thoroughly enjoyed by both myself and the Station Manager. Glasson Dock is a beautiful area on a sunny day and there's plenty of short, rewarding walks from the car park. Highly recommended.