Amateur Radio? A hobby for old men? Maybe, but it can be inclusive! Ryan M0RYS/N0RYS gave a very interesting talk at the Electromagnetic Field festival entitled “Rebooting a Hobby – How Modern Digital Comms are Reviving Amateur Radio”. The festival is interesting and pretty unique: Electromagnetic Field is a non-profit UK camping festival for those ...
Recently I’ve been shooting a number of videos for YouTube outlining the kit I use for SOTA and now I’ve done one showing how I go about activating a SOTA summit. It’s a step by step guide to carrying out a SOTA activation in the great outdoors. It covers the set-up, spotting, operating procedure ...
On Sunday I went out portable with my Elecraft KX3 to see if I could make some inter-G contacts on the 60m band. 40m wasn’t supporting NVIS and the Worked All Europe (WAE) contest was dominating 20m, so my QRP station was struggling to be heard with only Cyprus and Asiatic Russia worked on 10w, ...
I’ve thought about doing a YouTube film (you can Subscribe to my channel here) of the kit I use for my SOTA and Portable amateur radio operations for some time now. Yesterday I finally got around to it and made the most of calm and sunny conditions (quite rare here in England!). The selected equipment ...
While out portable yesterday I tuned around 20m, keen to see if I could hear any DX during the Worked All Europe (WAE) SSB contest. What I experienced, is I can only assume, Long Path (LP) Asian DX. Essentially the Short Path (SP) would have been within a path of darkness from East to West. ...
Regardless of opinion Contesting seems to be one of the real growth areas in Amateur Radio. Contests across the HF and (at least here in the UK) VHF spectrum are more popular than ever. What is interesting for me is the polarising nature of contesting, it seems you either love it or you hate it. ...
One very common question I get about portable Amateur Radio operation is what do I use as a battery? I have answered this question individually more times than I can mention so I thought I’d write it up as a post to help others. I’ve used everything from car batteries, Sealed Lead Acid Batteries (SLAB), ...
I’ve had a lot of questions about the portable logging App I use when out on the hills. Most of the time people can see in photos and videos that I’m using an Apple iPad or iPhone but they can’t make out the App. Since 2014 I’ve been using RumLog2Go (developed by Thomas Lindner DL2RUM) on both my ...
Update 12/07/16: This blog post has been published as an article in the August 2016 Practical Wireless magazine here in the UK. Check it out, looks better in print! Portable amateur radio operation is the reason I’m still in the hobby. There you go, I said it! Since getting licensed I’ve not lived in a ...
After writing my Yaesu 817ND & Elecraft KX3 comparison post I received a number of questions on how I keep my Elecraft KX3 protected when out and about on SOTA summits. I use my KX3 out portable, normally in quite harsh conditions on SOTA summits through out the year. I’ve also taken it abroad to 3 islands on EA8 ...