Amateur radio ⁽²⁵⁰⁾

My current issue with receiving QO100 (not got round to transmitting yet, baby steps!) is where to put the 1.2m dish. I don't really want it on the wall or at the front of the house as it's grey and huge. It can't go at the front of the workshop due to an apple tree and if it goes anywhere on the garden we'll fall over it. I'm currently thinking that the bit of land we have at the back of the garage will do and I can easily run the cables into the workshop from there, or even put all the RF side of things in the garage. But with no cable route from the garage to the shack (aka the little bedroom) it seems I will need the SDR co-mounted with the RF bits and run it via Ethernet or Wifi. Of course, there is also the wall outside the little bedroom but then we'd see it every time we gaze over at the moors... Update 11/April/20 I've worked it out. There is room at the front of the workshop to the side of the apple tree where the dish will see the sky if it's up maybe…

Finally I had time and reasonable weather to have a go at receiving QO100 today. I know I can receive the satellite because I've used my GT Media V8 and managed to resolve the TV channels. No home for the dish yet so it lives in the workshop between fiddles. Anyway, today was a bit of a comedy of errors but did result in success. First off, dish out, LNB in and aligned to the satellite. All good. I replaced the LNB with the POTY and got absolutely nothing on the V8. So I remembered I need the external 25MHz source so grabbed my Leo Bodnar GPSDO and the Windows laptop to make sure it was set up. Success, I can see the TV again. Next was to set up the bias tee, PSU and cabling, the SDRPlay RSP2 and the SDR on the PC. After a bit of fiddling I did manage to see traces but I have yet to investigate the SDR software on Windows so it was off back indoors for the MacBook. Note to self: remember to learn how to use software before you need to actually use it! The MacBook and CubicSDR proved the setup.

Just recently I've been dwelling on 30m rather than the usual 6. It's generally quieter than 20 and I've made some really good contacts via FT8, surprising as the aerial is cut for 20 and 6. pskreporter shows I am getting out all over and I've had contacts as far as Kazakhstan and Oman, neither of which I ever managed on 20 or higher up the bands. Oman, in particular is right off the end of the dipole, although it does slope a bit at the ends as it is loft mounted. Not only that but I've received signals from much further than on 20. A lot could be down to them simply being swamped in the generally busy nature of the band but if it works it works. I realise of course that I do need to get back to speech... but FT8 is just so convenient!

Those lumps you see on PC monitor cables and other PC and related cables... yes we know what they are and what they do but here's proof. I got a DisplayPort to HDMI cable for a new monitor. It works fine via VGA but why not? Anyway, aside from why on earth the PC has a DisplayPort and not an HDMI, the cable duly arrived. It's a nice cable in that it has a braided cover, feels well made and the connectors fit well and do not drop out. But no ferrites. All worked fine with both monitors - one DVI and one HDMI connected - came on fine. But when I key up the FT450D (set to 30W) the HDMI-connected screen goes blank. Completely blank. Black. It comes right back when I de-key. Ugh, no ferrites. I fitted a decent clip-on to each end with a whole turn of lead in each - no problems since. See? They do work!

I can see the fascination with the 6m band these past few days. Lots of sporadic activity waxing and waning. Bearing in mind all I have is a wire dipole in the loft running roughly east-west I see plenty of FT8 activity from Europe and sometimes the Middle East, plus almost copied some SSB this morning. Now it has drifted off with only a couple of strong EU stations left. For a week or so I've tended to leave the PC on running FT8 on 50.313 just to see how things go. It should be firing data off to PSKReporter.