Radio, railways, stuff...

The Perseids are with us, peaking on 12th August apparently. Anyway, I've never received any MSK144 before so I left the rig running two nights ago on 50.280 and actually received two properly decoded CQs from a DK station. Now, if I had a decent aerial, and more watts...

So I got an Icom ID-51 so I will have DMR, C4FM and D-Star. Well why not... it's currently on its initial charge for 2 more hours or so. I though that a good time to read the manual and sort out registration. So far, not so good. DMR was simple. I can't remember what I did for C4FM but it all works. D-Star? I followed the guidance and looked for the nearest repeater in the list. But the nearest one in that list is now C4FM. Ok, next nearest. That has a registration URL which takes me to an information page on which there is no sign of anywhere to go to register. Right. Next nearest - and no way I could contact it from here - has a broken registration URL. So I started at the top of the list. I gave up after 15 - most had no registration URL, the rest had broken links or had apparently gone over to DMR. I picked a few others at random, all follow the same tale. Off to Icom UK via Google - it has a link to a registration form but it does not actually work, i.e. you end up back on the page with the link. Google finds an old form - I guess it's old anyway and I've no intention of putting my details into it. But at least the Icom page has an email option... and that worked fine and I am set to go! Well, I will be once I read up about how etc.

The bands were hyper last night, I've never experienced Es until now. 6m looked like 20m it was so crammed. I managed 3 FT8 QSOs in quick succession which is a lot for me and anyway 10W into a bit of wet string does not compare well when the waterfall is completely packed with strong signals. 10m was equally packed - I didn't try further down as sleep beckoned. I did try a couple of voice calls but ended swamped in a pile-up but hey, next time. Quite a bit of morse on 6m too... my learning is way too little at the moment but hopefully will pick up next month. There was even a bit of 4m FM about.