6m season

 

 

Guess what?  Its sunny and there's Es to be had about. After several months of not really touching the radio at home because of the various commitments I made to a certain cycle sportive I took a week off work and decided to catch up on the family and my hobby. After a nice long weekend away with the kids in Centre Parcs (If you don't have kids then it'll be hell on earth, otherwise I can recommend it, especially the security at Sherwood after our friends bike was pinched. The Muppet got nicked at the gate and is now at her majesty's pleasure)

Back to radio though...A few quick fire contacts on 6m soon had me back in the swing although an attempt at FSK was a step too far today. Still nice to work a few stations and to see the sun out. The Powabeam is doing the business on a Moonraker mast. Not an ideal set up but useful.

 

 

What can you do?

When your PSU gives in, a replacement part costs an arm and a leg and 6m is up?

Not a lot it seems. My ft817 was hearing a lot of eastern and western European stations but with 5w max and a home made  antenna you're not going to get far despite some patient operators on the other end.

Still it was worth a go and thanks to DL5EL for letting me have more than my fair share of attempts.

Summer contest

I never really thought I would be saying this but I have entered, or rather plan to, enter a contest. Sports radio as it is sometimes called always seems like a bear garden on HF with just about every station barking out 'CQ Contest' to claim a few more points. To me it doesn't sound like a sport unless you're keen on drowning out the competition.

I have mostly avoided contests as to me it has the perception of something where 'He who has the largest bank account wins' and the is little room for tiddlers. So to challenge this perception I shall be entering into something that I think / hope will be a bit more relaxed. The UKSMG Summer Es contest might be the highlight of the 50Mhz calendar but for I shall be operating at the most for 6 hours. The likelihood it will be around 3 hours at best as a tiddler station.

I will be operating at best 100W from my IC7000 into my homebrew 50Mhz vertical which so far has escaped the operation in anger mode it needs. Part of the reason for this is to see if I actually enjoy it. The other part is to do something different.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for 6m but have no idea why as my QTH precludes much in the way of 'proper' antennas and so far I have only made a few contacts on the magic band. Most of these contacts were a few years ago when I could put a beam up in the garden for a few weeks. This needs to change in my opinion and this weekend is the best opportunity for me for a while.

So if you happen to be on the magic band, listen out for the tiddler that is my station (operating as GM7KSE as it happens). The contest starts on the 2nd June at 1300Z

6m up and about

After a good few weeks without any radio fun I hooked up my semi-homebrew 2 ele beam and had a good couple of QSO's with CT1EAV and CT1EEB on 6m. There were a good few station out this evening and I'm glad this brief outing has proven that the flimsy beam works.

Lightweight 50Mhz Yagi

Building antennas seems to be getting to be a bit of a habit for me. This time I've bought a kit, for evaluation purposes. No really it is.

I was trying to think of a project that I could use at MX0WRC (Workington and district amateur radio club) to help give some direction to some of the members who may never have built anything other than the kit they built for their intermediate licence. So, as I've been roped in to give a talk on my portable set up, which consists of what I thought were low cost antennas I thought I'd found the right direction.

Low cost is not what I came across when researching simple antennas. It seemed that I was way off the mark for commercial offerings until I found a company in Germany called Nuxcom. They supply what look like simple yagi kits at realistic prices. By which I mean the cost of the materials isn't prohibitive (For example from a raw material supplier 25mm box section can be bought for as little as £6-8 for a 1m length, enough for a 3 element 2m yagi and round tube for similar cost - and this isn't cheap Chinese metal this is western European fully traceable materials! Don't even get me started on the price of pipe clamps)

So, to placate my ever growing concern that prices are rising higher than a bankers bonuses, without any real justification I ordered one of the larger kits from Nuxcom, a 2 element lightweight 6m yagi. Purchasing was a bit drawn out as I placed an order and the 'quote' was returned with shipping costs added in a few hours later. But at £35 I was prepared to take a gamble, even is a third of the cost was shipping.

I'm expecting the kit before the weekend and I'll do a little write up when it arrives. On the face of it the kit looks fairly simple in design without any bells and whistles, just what we need to add to the J pole, vertical and dipole designs that I plan on demonstrating.

What I'm really hoping for is a good value, simple lightweight antenna than doesn't cost the earth so that the club members can learn and experiment without breaking the bank. More later.

Weekend 50Mhz vertical antenna

One of the enduring aspects of amateur radio is the emphasis on 'experimentation' and 'homebrew'. To many people this means designing innovative circuits for their own transceivers, amps or whatever floats their boat.

My area of interest is in collecting either bent wire, off cuts of cable and odd shaped plastic parts scavenged from just about any skip or rubbish bin I can find. Some people like to call this antenna experimentation. My XYL likes to call it 'That junk in the garage'. I like to call it my continued education. Below is a teaser!

The latest in my armoury of 'stuff I've done' will never help anyone chase DX or bust a pile up for a little activated square or something else. But it will give me another band to work with when I'm away from home, either on top of a summit, at the mother in laws or operating portable in the summer Es season (I say summer because the top of St Bees head isn't very welcoming in the winter as I found out whilst operating GB4LBC).

My take on the 5/8 wave 6m vertical originally published by the UKSMG by Mike, G3JVL took a little over a weekend and was made relatively cheaply from scrounged resources. I enjoyed the job so much I've added a little project page here which I hope you enjoy.

Feel free to try it out yourself and improve on the design path I took, let me know how you got on with the manufacturing of what should be a nice project (that can also be cheap if you're scrounging skills are up to scratch)

50Mhz Vertical Antenna

With an armful of redundant wire from a previous job (Most of it either 12 or 16AWG) I set about creating a 5/8 50Mhz vertical antenna. The idea was to make a wire version of the G3JVL antenna as featured on the UKSMG website. All the parts came out of the scrap bins at work one lunchtime with the exception of the bolts. Only the hole saw and drill had to be borrowed.

The instructions are fairly self explanatory and it shouldn't be hard to follow, or so I thought. As with most of the designs on the internet I found that there wasn't much to back up the picture should anything not give the results you were looking for. Would you believe it but mine just doesn't want to be resonant at 50Mhz, 40 yes or maybe 41Mhz but 50Mhz? Not today, or tomorrow for that matter. So its to the scrap bin again to find out the problem. I suspect its down to the coil.

I knocked together a wound coil which I can tap at any of the whole coils, wound round a piece of ~20mm OD PVC pipe. I will use this to see if I can get the beasty to be resonant on 50Mhz or thereabouts by changing the tapping point. If it all went to plan then it wouldn't be any fun right?

50Mhz better with a yagi

Although I'm a sporadic radio user I've had a lot of assignments to do recently and that has meant that I inadvertantly turn on the rig by accident ;-)
The upside is that I've had a laod of QSO's with EA stations recently with the furthest being in the canaries. I can safely say that the yagi has been a worthwhile investment

6m back in business

50mhz is just one of those 'get it or forget it' bands. Either you love it or just can't be bothered with it. A while ago i bought a 5 ele yagi from trident to try my luck and then promptly moved house. The result was that the antenna sat in my garage for a couple of years and I didn't get a chance to use it. This weekend I had a few spare minutes and rigged it up on my decking so that it was blocked in just about every direction but southwest through to north west.

After some scanning through the band I cam across a few EA stations and fired through a few responses as they were a strong 59. EA1GE responded and my 6m career spluttered back into life. A good 1000 miles with a lashed together set up gave me a smile and although short lived the Es also allowed a good 59 on the CS5BLA beacon.