Radio and rails...

I thought it would be a useful experiment to make up a 23cm groundplane antenna. There is a useful guide at https://vk1nam.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/23cm-14-wave-ground-plane-antenna/ Using some 2mm copper wire from a supplier on eBay plus a N-type female socket the construction was fairly simple. Using the dimensions given above plus a bit for fiddle room I soldered the vertical element to the centre conductor of the socket. For the radials, given it was copper wire I decided to press my jewellers anvil to work and flattened the end of each element sufficiently to drill a 2.5mm hole. Using 2.5mm bolts each was secured to the respective mounting hole in the socket, and then the excess thread was cut off with a Dremel. Bringing it all indoors - the heavy stuff like drills and hammers live in the workshop - I calibrated my NanoVNA and gave the new antenna a go. It was a bit off but then each element was too long. Trimming each gave a fairly flat SWR where I wanted it. Well, almost, but near enough to stop cutting bits off! But does it work? Yes, I can open up GB3WC from the shack holding the antenna up inside the…

Got a surprise through the door today, 12 QSL cards to my 2E callsign, various dates from February 2020 up to November 2020. Almost all want return cards, absolutely no problem and all part of the fun. I am not a big QSL'er other than eQSL but I always send when asked. Actually, I always planned to sort of back peddle on QSLing until I got the M0... now all I need is a decent design rather than the generic one I had on the M6 and 2E.

Since my last post about the SG-Labs 23cm transverter I realised I have several handhelds all of which have low power settings. Time to try some FM and get a better frequency readout. 144MHz did indeed produce 1296MHz (and some small change) on the frequency counter. Time to get adventurous - GB3WC in Wakefield is about 15 miles away and pretty much line of sight and so would make a good test. With the transverter in repeater mode with a -6MHz shift (jumpers 1 and 3 on) and the FT2D programmed for 145.375MHz simplex (WC transmits on 1297.375MHz) - the transverter does the shifting - and the necessary 82.5Hz tone I can open GB3WC and receive it at S9+ on my 8 element 23cm Yagi. In the true spirit of let’s get this new shiny box working this test entailed the use of a microphone stand, some wire and some clamps. But it works. Only a quick test today as the battery was nearly out on the Yaesu and it's kind of hard to talk into it where it is. Somewhere I have a headset for it which will make life easier until I figure out how to site it…

I’ve always been interested in microwaves and 23cm is one band up from where I currently have kit (well, ok, apart from the QO100 setup) so I got an SG Labs 23cm transverter from eBay. I thought I may as well have a play before The Powers That Be trash the band as seems threatened. Nice little box. Of course, it gives me a problem now and having just spent an hour cobbling stuff together I am a way away from being able to actually use it. But I wanted to make sure it worked, not that I suspected otherwise but it’s a new (to me) shiny box and I want to play with it. So, how to feed it… I grabbed the TR-9130 that had been relegated to the workshop since I got a 144MHz transverter and let it acclimatise overnight. Apparently this puts out 5W on its minimum setting which is borderline for the SG Labs kit. Fumble around for my attenuators - but those are F-types. And of course I had no patch leads to hand… but I did have some useful crimp PL259s to quickly make a lead up. Running the VHF set through a SWR/power…

I gave the pibox a present today in the form of a 3.2" Nextion display. It came with a bezel which I wanted because I could guarantee not to make a neat hole in the panel. Oddly, the bezel was black in the advert but came unfinished... The screen runs off a USB port on the Pi via a CP2102 USB to TTL dongle, and the wires that came with the Nextion just reach the dongle which in on the far side of the box. It was surprisingly easy to set up, albeit I had to wrestle the Windows PC to set up the Nextion editor as I did not have a spare SD card to download the HMI file directly to the Nextion. Of course, this exercise was very much a 'got a new thing, must get it working immediately' type job and I will take time now to read up on it all and maybe find different displays, but it has at least turned a boring blue box into a blue box that appears to have a purpose!