Radio silence

This evening was supposed to be a UKAC night for me but with strong winds and flooding earlier in the day I decided not to head up to Sandwidth with a 50MHz antenna, just in case it got nasty. Even though it looks quite down here in the valley (I’m not just talking about 50Mhz activity either- Only GI4SNA can be heard) the top of the hill will be muddy and potentially windy.

So what to do with the radio time. We’ll I’ve been carrying around a plastic case for some time wondering when I’ll get around to using it as a sturdy case for packing up my FT817 and taking on trips with. The case used to hold a complex vice but the parts are happier in my tool box. So i stripped out the old foam and measured up the insides. It measures just about the wrong size for the easy to use pick and pluck foam so I ordered a 5 mm base layer and 40mm deep top layer from eFoam. The job is fairly simple and needs only a very sharp long bladed knife and a bit of patience.

I laid out the rig, tuner, wall wart, battery, mic and a few odds and ends into the case and carefully marked out the positions using a steel rule and marker pen (making sure the marker pen was on the inside of the are to be cut as I didn’t want any left over pen. I suppose you could just as easily cut it and turn it all over  but that may require extra thinking.

So with holes cut out and the bottom layer done, like so (as they say on Blue Peter) there wasn’t much to do apart from fill it up with the goodies. So with a free(ish) plastic case and a few quid's worth of foam I’ve got a budget Pelicase. Probably just as sturdy for my needs and significantly cheaper.

Just one reminder, the blade needs to be very sharp and a light sawing action seemed to cut the foam nice and smoothly. Just one last thing to do is to raid the spare elastic department (If we have one) and form a kind of retaining strap for the bits in the lid.

Who said UK activity night should be limited to on air activity?

FT 817+AGWPE+AGWTracker+Signalink = APRS iGate

My FT 817 hasn't been used as much as it ought to and whilst I don't have too much time on my hands at the moment I was looking to add an iGate to my arsenal of ham radio tools. The time aspect put me off.

To my joy  I managed to set up the whole thing in a few hours. A couple one evening to get a handle on AGWPE and an hour to set the ft817 up. I did have an issue with the PTT lighting up and staying on when a beacon was sent but that was resolved by turning down the tx volume on the netbook.

I would love to be able to plonk this on the honister slate mine but for the time being I'm happy just to keep this running at home.

SSB on 15m

Not being one to try and get all the DX I was pleased to switch on the set this evening and make a contact on 15m without even trying. Always good to confirm that the set is working...One thing it does do is show up the IC7000 receiver when compared to the FT817. Who'd have thought