Radio and rails...

M0RVB

Worked All Britain (WAB)

Just recently I’ve been getting into Worked All Britain (WAB) and so logging a lot more UK stations rather than those further afield. While keeping an eye out for POTA calls (I am now up to the dizzy heights of double figures as a hunter - 11!) I believe I have made contact with sufficient UK stations for a couple of the WAB basic awards. WAB (there’s loads of information on the website) uses map squares for points, with contacts in each square adding to your score. Large 100x100km and small 10x10km squares are used and three mapping systems - National Grid Reference for Great Britain, Ordnance Survey of Ireland for Northern Ireland and the Universal Transverse Mercator Grid for the Channel Islands. This is all far better defined at http://wab.intermip.net/Definitions.php Points are also available for each Book Number - basically when one joins WAB you get a WAB Record Book which has a number which is allocated to you. You can have multiple books and working someone with, say 5 books gains 5 points provided those books were issued before the QSO took place. Again, the WAB website has all the info. My square is SE23 and book is…

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M0RVB

Radio moves

I've had the FT817 attached to the MacBook of late, just for VHU/UHF use, but the poor old Mac struggles if I dare to use anything other than wsjt-x. I want a Mac Mini... but anyway, that aside I decided to move the radio over to the Windows PC now. wsjt-x installed easily as usual and all works. The only issue I can see is how Windows messes up its USB ports if I switch the FT450D in. Currently I have that configured to switch between the Linux PC and the Windows PC so I can use VARA / VarAC and other such things on HF via the FT450D. I just use a USB switch obtained via Amazon which seems to work ok. The FT450D side of things comes in as COM6 and the FT817 now comes as COM4, no idea how Windows decides to allocate those. Time will tell...

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M0RVB

My first /A

So I finally managed to set up and work /A for a couple of days. The setup failed really as the house we were in had very thick stone walls and no opening windows so the antenna was literally a bit of wire diagonally up from an un-un on the floor, around the back of a sash window cord and across to a picture. But I managed 4 FT8 QSOs, one on 24MHz and three on 21MHz. Better than nothing, and time to learn better about portable compromise antennas. I could have set up in the garden but it was mostly raining and I didn't bring any batteries.

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M0RVB

Wet string++

With the impending trip and uncertainty of where / how I can set up an antenna I experimented with about 10 foot of wire from a 9:1 nun up to the window and down to the wardrobe. Far from idea but it's surprising just how far I got with no effort and 2.5W on 40m FT8: There is one 10m hit there too but I did not transmit in earnest. But the 10m reception plot is even more impressive: I can see how this "let's throw a bit of wire up a tree" can become rather fun!

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M0RVB

Preparing the FT817

Just making sure the FT817 + Z817 + Signalink + MacBook play well together before a trip where I hope to be /A for the odd 10 minutes here and there... not too bad for 2.5W into a bit of wet string on crowded bands:

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