James Stevens ← M0JCQ's Ham Blog

Designing a satellite station for the home QTH

Apr

18

2018

One of my amateur radio targets for 2018 was to get setup to work satellites from my home QTH. I’m making some progress towards this as well, but I realised it’s the first time I’ve really thought about station design. Usually the shack just grows organically and you add to it over time, but wanting ...

Going for Gold with the WAB Award Scheme 6

Apr

11

2018

I’ve been a member of Worked All Britain (WAB) for a number of years, and have been actively collecting “squares” since 2014. For those unaware Worked All Britain is an awards scheme based around working amateurs within the United Kingdom, while collecting squares, which are simply the UK divided up into 10x10km squares. My operating mostly ...

Where have I been? ..and my amateur radio targets for 2018 3

Apr

5

2018

You may have noticed the blog has been very quiet recently, did I abandon? forget it? misplace it? Well, no, I’ve actually been travelling around the world for the last 3.5 months. Living it up for sure, but not playing any radio. Me and the YL visited New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia and ...

SOTA activation of England’s highest summit: Scafell Pike

Sep

1

2017

While on holiday in the Lake District with the YL in July, I activated ten SOTA summits. The focus of these walks was not SOTA, but instead all day walking, so brevity and lightweight gear was the order of the day – 2m FM was the natural choice. We chose to do Scafell Pike (G/LD-001 ...

Activating Mount Washington – Highest Mountain in N.E USA

Jul

19

2017

Each year I’m sent away to Boston, MA on a company conference, this year I decided to take the radio and activate some of the nearby (well nearish) SOTA summits. I’d planned with some likeminded colleagues to visit the White Mountains in New Hampshire, about 3 hours north of Boston. We’d arrive on Friday evening ...

Working 6m Sporadic-E Using a Collinear 1

Jun

30

2017

My hopes weren’t too high for working much on the 6m band with my Diamond V2000 collinear antenna when I first purchased it. It was a nice afterthought that I might be able to work some sporadic-E during the summer months and possibly some local stations during contests. So what’s the reason for this post? ...

Antenna Comparison on 6m During a Sporadic-E Opening on the Icom 7300 2

Jun

16

2017

This Sporadic-E season I’ve been using my Icom 7300 to operate from home. Last year I really got into 6m but could only operate when I was out portable and often conditions were hit or miss when I happened to be on a hill. This year I am QRV from the new QTH and can ...

5 Sussex SOTA Summits on a Summer’s Day 4

Jun

15

2017

This string of 5 summits along the South Downs way in Sussex had been on my hit list for some time. I’d always consciously saved them for a nice summers day. Michael G0POT had activated this string of summits before and had given me a lot of his logistical planning – I’ve built on this ...

GoPro SOTA Video from Y Garn (GW/NW-004) 5

May

29

2017

After my activation of Elidir Fawr (GW/NW-005) on the 11th of April I walked across the ridge to the neighbouring summit of Y Garn (GW/NW-004). This was to be another 2m FM activation, but I wasn’t complaining the VHF takeoff is phenomenal from these two locations. I recorded another activation video using the GoPro which says ...

Why I Chose Log4OM for Logging 12

May

27

2017

Ever since I’ve been licensed I didn’t really have to worry about logging software for use in the shack. I did very little operating in my shack previously and the built in Fldigi logger and N1MM+ were more than good enough. Of course out portable I was using RumLogNG on my iPad and iPhone and ...