Transmission1

I have fallen out of love with HF too, not because of QRM but because of manic contesters and 'band police'. In my desperation I tried JT65, the 'one minute over' mode, fortunately there were no sharp objects around at the time to cause self harm.

As a proud 'B class' operator, my love of V/UHF goes without saying, but in an odd twist of fate I am currently getting my head around morse again, something I did in the Navy days but didn't bother with in the City and Guilds days either through defiance or procrastination. All these years on, I am finding QRP CW very fascinating and am up to 6WPM at the moment, and hoping to improve, irony as all the years I mocked CW as a 19th Century mode.

Well done admiral. Stick at it. Took me months to get up to 12 wpm and now I've hit a barrier at 18wpm. I keep trying but I guess that speed is just comfortable for me. The only real free time I get for the radio is a Sunday and I find it disappointing that most weekends a contest is taking place that just puts me right off. I know I can always use the warc bands but prefer 40mtrs . Good luck.

Don't give up !!!! I have a good friend in Enfield North London in the same boat, he overcame the problem by using one of the small wire type magnetic loops. It is suspended from the ceiling when in use, about 2 feet from the window and can be turned to give a 40 degree ark, running 25 watts he speaks to the world on HF on a good day. They ain't cheap at 300.00 but they do work well and are designed to only be a few feet off the ground. When not in use he simply hangs it away in a cupboard.

73s and good luck Dave

Well things have just got really interesting, a new antenna system has just been put up on the office block over the road and I happened to be walking past when the engineers were standing outside the building and asked them what it was for!
New emergency services repeater (for data modes) with a 4G mobile phone booster on the same masts. Should be operational in about a fortnight.
Time to dig out the frequency scanner and see what its all about.

In reality Mike I think you kind of know deep down that you'll get no resolvable signals from that mast, and it may even be another source of interference causing spikes across an SDR sweep of V/UHF

Admiral wrote:In reality Mike I think you kind of know deep down that you'll get no resolvable signals from that mast, and it may even be another source of interference causing spikes across an SDR sweep of V/UHF

I know I wont be able to decode but I might get ideas of exact frequencies. Another source of interference seems obvious to me.
The only thing that seems to be reasonable is the 8 PMR channels.

Do not do a mobile install using old cable.
My bootlip/tailgate mount co-ax is knackered- had the cable for over 15 years so I suppose I should have expected it really. No radio was damaged when the center core decided it was life expired.

I was that bored the other day i was hunting 49mhz paging systems, oh wont someone entertain us and i dont mean god SXXX gary at ponty either

Magnetic Loop Antenna?

nay27uk wrote:Are you not interested in any HF

My sentiments exactly . I've never been above 30Mhz in my 32 years of ham radio . It just doesn't interest me . Give it a go . It might give you a second wind .

Sammy

QRM free here. No power line adaptors, solar farms, mobile phone masts, or other RF noisy voodoo out here in the sticks.

Admiral wrote:in an odd twist of fate I am currently getting my head around morse again, something I did in the Navy days

There's an app for that
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/1 ... _code_fix/

I've been mulling cw too..and looks cheaper..but looks hard too.

liner trope wrote:I was that bored the other day i was hunting 49mhz paging systems, oh wont someone entertain us and i dont mean god SXXX gary at ponty either

Fire and ambulance plus a LOT of other things are on the VHF pager frequencies around 153MHz

(I'm guessing you are in the UK?)

I'd like to know what has happened to all the East Lincolnshire Amateurs. Hiding away on Simplex? HF/VHF/UHF is meant for talking to people.