5kw in the shack?

5kw in the shack?

Yes I'm thinking of the temperature of my shack and since I'm trying to save money due to the massive price hike I'm thinking of buying a diesel heater....  I've seen a couple on amazon and they have decent specs ... 

https://amzn.to/3VGhCRa

Is That a FT991A ?

 Yes that's right ... a Yaesu FT991A ..... I bought it due to the new trending C4FM HF beaconing trend which you have to own C4FM HF radio to beacon.

I went out and added to my catalogue of handies which is somewhat true ...i bought a Yaesu FT5D and sold my Yaesu FT2D to a good friend of mine (otherwise i would have just kept it hi hi)

Then i added a SP-10 speaker and MD200 base mic to round off the party ...

This all came about after i had played with the FT5D and the decision was made i must have the FT-991A

So all in all if you want to play with HF C4FM beaconing this is the route i took and you will probably come to, but its a expensive purchase just for the one part of the radio to function as a beacon.

The FT991A has took its pride of place in my shack and is a very capable rig.. so much i bought one for my radio club Wears in Sunderland

for more info check out the Facebook group 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/c4fm10/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/249799482598245

Weather to make a antenna

whether weather two to too their there...

Well I decided to make a 137mhz weather antenna but have hit a wall as it looks like I need to add a preamp at the masthead .

The signal is poor and may need to even reduce the coax length, or even change it all together ( I am using 75 ohm sat cable as i read it makes no difference as there is no transmitter connected)

I am using a SDRplay for receive with a 137 mhz bandpass filter at the input of the sdr.

Software 

SDR Uno for receive 

Com0com for virtual com ports

VB-Cable for virtual audio leads

Orbitron for frequency doplar control 

WxtoImg for decoding and storing images

Pics of antenna

The curves

The preamp

The preamp above will be the tester .. first I will bypass the blocking cap so I can inject 5v up the coax to power the preamp via a bias-t

.... to be continued 

New Certificate

Woke up to a email stating I had a new award ..... thinking to myself "WHAT AWARD" anyway since it had a few details about me right and mentioned a qso and qrz I sent with it .....

Yes I had indeed had the qso but never knew it was to support our heroes in New York 

Respect to all emergency services, carers,food banks, shop and infrastructure workers... THANK YOU ... you guys rock!

Carolina Windom with bat wings

Well I needed to dust off the old Windom and though it was time to play antennas since the weather was nice

Once in place I decided to add 6 and 4 meters to the bat cave....

Once out of the bat cave the sun was getting tropical so after a quick refreshments it was back to the bat cave to make a lazy balun .....

With the balun constructed the project was finished and the tests began....

To be Honest 70 mhz did not come to much but I didnt expect miracles... but I was surprised how well 6m turned out ... oh well here we go 50 mhz is ready for action

Hustler Btv6 Upgrade

Well the old Hustler has done me proud over the years but theres a time we need to use the warc bands so here we go ...

Shes down for a clean ... and a upgrade

Supports added and wires cut to length for 18 and 24 Mhz

Heres the results on the analyser.

All in all it worked out well and a fun day was had by all

Back into FT8

Well it's been a while and the last big session I had was a few years back with PSK ... Since then I have tried JT and FT8 which was just about the same thing but times have changed with the software and its came a long way ....

Lockdown 101 .. find something to keep you busy

Set up the Icom ic-7100 with my old Acer laptop and connected the Hustler btv6  and away I went ... have some good results too