Due to the Royal Wedding station in the UK have been able to register for a special callsign to operate from the 19th May until the 21st May 2018, I decided to get one to see what I could do. I managed to get a couple of hours free this afternoon and thought I would…
Continue readingAuthor: Robert Dunne
1st SOTA, at last!
For the past two years or so I have been very keen to try doing some SOTA activities. I have been building up the equipment I need to do so and I have been building antennas. The biggest hurdle was learning CW. I passed my Class A RAE license back on 1989 with included 12wpm…
Continue readingPortable 3 Band EFHW antenna
So finally the UK has been granted some nice weather, so I took the opportunity to try to finish making and tune the 3 Band EFHW that I have made to go with the MTR5B cw only Trx. I got the idea from reading Michael G0POT’s blog and attending his SOTA presentation at last years…
Continue readingSotabeams Pico Traps
So since getting the little MTR 5B, I was thinking what antenna to use with it. I have the Sotabeam 40-30-20m linked dipole which works very well, but takes a nit longer to put up. I have been using a PackTenna Mini which is a 29ft end fed with my Kx2 and its easy and…
Continue readingNew Treat – LNR MTR 5B
I am enjoying CW so much and I am spending most of my operating time on this great mode. I am still learning and one of my goal has been to get out and do some SOTA activations. I have started some chasing and that ii good fun when I get the chance. So I…
Continue readingCW – Improvement continues using Morse Runner
Morse Runner is one of the tools I have been using during my CW Academy courses and still use it now. I am finding it to be rather addictive and the best thing is that it is helping me improve my copying. During todays lunch break at work I took my usual 20mins to have…
Continue readingFirst /P outing of the year
You can tell its getting to spring when you can go out and play some /p radio. This week happened to be the CW Ops Slow CWT for the recent CWA graduates. I wanted to see how I could do whilst running my Kx2 and my PakTenna. I set up during my lunch hour…
Continue readingCW Improving
My friend Andrew, G0RVM, and I have been trying for some time to get a regular Sked going on HF. He lives in Bristol and I live near London and on most bands it has always been a bit difficult to do as we are either too close for skip of to far for groundwave….
Continue readingCW Ops CW Academy Level 3 Course
Its been some time since I posted on here, sometimes I dont know where the time goes but I have been busy over the last two months doing the CW Academy Level 3 course with Jerry AC4BT, assisted by Keith G0HKC and Phil G4NVR. The other students were Theo SV2BBK, Duncan G3WZD, Grae G0WCZ and…
Continue readingRSGB Convention 2017 and Contesting
This past weekend I attended the RSGB Convention 2017 held at the Kents Hill Park Conference Centre in Milton Keynes with Andrew G0RVM. There were a number of lectures that I attended, including a beginners guide to SOTA by Michael Sansom G0POT, How to improve my contest scores and how to work SO2R in contests. I…
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