Radio and rails...

Hamshack Hotline (HH) is a FREE dedicated voip telecom service for the Ham Radio community. (taken from their website - see https://hamshackhotline.com ) I heard about this via, if I remember a post on Facebook. It sounded interesting, and free, and so I purchased a refurbished Cisco SPA504G VoIP phone from a trader on eBay. Once you register with them they send a link to a configuration file for the phone and this makes it all work. So, what do you get? Well, review the website but basically a VoIP phone and an online phone directory. The line is full featured with 'do not disturb' and an answering machine. The exchanges are set up in various places - I am connected to the European one (HHEU). There is also an exchange for unlicensed members. RF links are being set up too for those with an amateur radio licence. As the service expands this could be a very interesting facility, and for the price of the phone - around £20 - one I could not resist. They support a small range of SIP phones and I chose the 504G because it uses PoE, meaning no wall-wart as it gets its power via…

The RSGB certificate arrived today and Ofcom already had the licence waiting so I chose 2#0IGP (thus 2E0IGP from home at least, as I'm rarely out of England!). I tried other combinations but nothing that I wanted was available so I decided to keep the IGP, regardless of the fact it actually means nothing! I shall be rather more choosy when I eventually pass the Advanced exam.

Passed the Intermediate exam today - now wait for the 2E-whatever callsign... then I can wind the wick up if needed. Mind you, the autotuner can only cope with 30W digi anyway, and it's been fun seeing how far I can get with 10. Actually, the important thing to me is access to those microwave bands that the Foundation does not give, and also the ability to use homemade transmitters. Time to tidy the workshop!

The network radio rave continues and everyone will have, and will be perfectly entitled to their own views. Here’s mine. I got into amateur radio after decades of not doing so but the interest began when I could pick up strange music and news from far away. This was in my childhood. I worked in electronics for some time and understand RF and all that jazz. I went through various SWL phases including getting heavily into RTTY, at one time having a couple of Creed 7E machines, a tape reader, a tape punch, and a TU connected to either my B40 or B41 receivers. Those are long gone but the number of radios I have is increasing. People ask me why bother with any of it when I can simply use the phone? But it still tickles me that electrons emitted from a bit of wet string in our loft can be picked up in the Falkland Islands. This is the essence of amateur radio to me. Why bother? When asked why he wanted to climb Everest mallory famously and simply said “because it’s there”. Yet, I’ve seen photos of rock climbing vs climbing wall climbing used an an example…

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...