Amateur radio ⁽²⁵⁰⁾

Getting dangerously close to being portable... after having wired a cable for the Signalink (I have three now!) because the Yaesu cable is always out of stock everywhere and realising that the FT818 was set for RTTY as digital, not User-U, which is why it would not decode any FT8, I have all the bits ready except for a power pack. I do have a lead for the car, and a 40m whip antenna and magmount. The antenna is 2.2m long - don't worry it won't be used mobile, just put on the car once parked up! It all works with wsjt-x on the MacBook. So, I have just two things to sort out (apart from the power pack); how to stop the 6-pin mini DIN plugs falling out whenever they want, and why the MacBook only manages about 20 minutes on battery. While that is long enough for a few test QSOs I really want longer. Unfortunately it's not actually mine so I can't just replace the battery. Maybe an inverter, which I bet would wipe out the band... the car (electric) only has a tiny 12V battery sufficient for short periods of electronics and to 'start' the car,…

The latest toy, an LDG Z-11Pro II autotuner. I acquired this because I want to use the FT817 and a linear on the HF antenna from time to time - usually the only HF set is the FT450D which has a YT-1200 autotuner sat on top. So why the new one? Primarily because the YT-1200 is matched to the FT450D and when the button is pressed it commands the rig to send 25W AM. The FT817 puts out 2.5W the way I run it and even if the YT-1200 would tune on just 2.5W I would need to press the button and then transmit via the radio. Ok, FT8 would do that but then there is the matter of fiddling with antenna connections to get the '817 connected to the tuner input. With the new tuner it's more straightforward. The YT-1200 will now be sold. All I need do now is mount it somewhere convenient, and that, unfortunately means moving a bunch of wires and rigs and other stuff about until I get it all where I want it. So for now it will stay where it is!

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…

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...

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.