M0JCQ's Ham Blog ← Adventures in Ham Radio ← Page 5

SOTA Activation in the Middle of a Lava Field (Señalo)

Oct

31

2015

This SOTA activation demanded some dedication, Señalo (EA8/LA-011) is inconveniently located in the middle of a lava field about 3km from the nearest road on the island of Lanzarote. What, only 3km? Yep, the distance is no issue, but the terrain here is something else. Imagine a flowing river of lava that suddenly stopped and was ...

6m Antenna Options for Portable Use 11

Oct

30

2015

I’m a fan of the 6m band. It fascinates and frustrates me in equal measures, which is part of its appeal. It’s unpredictable, you can be working local stations within 50km of your QTH for some time and then all of a sudden a Portugese station will call you and they’re 59+40dB drowning out anything ...

Birthday SOTA Activation of Kinder Scout (G/SP-001) 2

Oct

26

2015

Me and The YL went up to the Peak District to celebrate my birthday. Inevitably I ended up doing two activations on the Saturday (this one and Shining Tor), while mostly out for a nice long walk. I only took a 2m FM equipment, utilising my trusty Yaesu FT-270 with the SOTABeams MFD dipole, making ...

A Raid on 5 Welsh SOTA Summits in One Day

Oct

24

2015

On Saturday 17th of October I drove from my home QTH in Hertfordshire to the south of Wales for some Summits On The Air fun. This year I’ve been to GW/SW quite a bit and have activated all the large summits in the Brecon Beacons. This trip was focused on the smaller 1 point summits ...

My First HF SSB Field Day 4

Sep

15

2015

My local club C&DARS (Chesham & District Amateur Radio Society) recently took part in the RSGB HF SSB Field Day and worked a total of 434 stations in 33 DXCC’s across the 24 hours. Band conditions weren’t great but we did get Saudi Arabia (HZ1FI/P) in the log and heard some VK’s early morning on ...

One of the Best – SOTA Activation of Shining Tor 1

Sep

1

2015

This was my second and final summit of the day (15th August) in the Peak District after activating Kinder Scout (G/SP-001) earlier in the day. Me and the YL arrived at the Cat & Fiddle pub car park at about 7pm, with the intention of a short walk and activation on Shining Tor before grabbing ...

Yaesu FT-270 vs Baofeng UV5R on Butser Hill

Aug

31

2015

Butser Hill (G/SE-004) was to be my 3rd and final SOTA activation of this day’s tour of Southern English summits. After the HF issues on Black Down (G/SE-003) previously, I decided to activate this summit on 2m FM only. Summit Factfile G/SE-004 – Butser Hill – 270m Latitude: 50 58 40 N, Longitude: 0 58 49 W Grid Reference: SU 716203, QTH Locator: IO90MX Parking: SU7117 2001 (N50:58:31, W0:59:15) – £3 pay & display! Trig: TP0316 – Butser WAB: SU72 ...

2m SOTA Activation of Black Down (G/SE-003)

Aug

31

2015

The SOTA summit of Black Down (G/SE-003) was my second of three summits on Sunday the 2nd of August. I headed here straight from my activation of Botley Hill (G/SE-005). This summit is another pretty flat summit, I can imagine the activation zone is quite wide. I chose to operate from the well hidden trigpoint ...

Fixing the Elecraft KX3 High SWR Issue 2

Aug

30

2015

A couple of months ago I installed the 2m Module into my Elecraft KX3 and after the install everything worked as expected, that was until I arrived at a SOTA summit only to find a really high SWR on all of the HF bands. On 40M the SWR was crazy at 99.9-1 and slightly better ...

SOTA Activation of Cleeve Hill on 2m FM

Aug

6

2015

Cleeve Hill (G/CE-001 – 330m) was my first of two summits on this wet Friday in July before heading to a music festival for the weekend in Herefordshire. The 2 hour drive from Hertfordshire was depressingly grey and the rain incessant. Predictably nothing changed when I pulled up into the car park (N51:55:16 W2:00:34) near ...