6 Jul 2013

70cm VHF NFD with a simple QRP station

4 ele 70cm yagi on car
Just for a little fun in the sunshine I took my FT817 and "coathanger" 4 el yagi onto a local high spot (actually nothing is high here in East Anglia!) to try just over an hour of operating on 70cm SSB during VHF NFD. Conditions were average, but I heard EI, F, GM and PA and worked 12 stations in just 70 minutes of casual operation with the best DX 262km.  Power output was either 2.5W or 5W.

The 4 el yagi is mounted on a 22mm PVC pipe mast that is simply wedged in the car rear window and manually rotated. The whole set-up can be erected and taken down in about 2 minutes: I don't take contests THAT seriously you see :-)  The map shows the stations worked before going back home for tea.
70cms QSOs in 70 minutes with 5W to a 4el yagi

After tea I parked the car outside my new QTH and erected the 4 el as shown in the photo. Signal strengths from DX stations (PA0 and a station in SW England) were very similar to those on my local /P site, suggesting the new QTH, on a local bump, is promising for VHF/UHF/microwaves.

70cm is a great band and sadly under-used these days on SSB. It is also sad that there are so few 70cms beacons on the air in the UK now. I believe the Bristol 70cms beacon - it was a good conditions indicator here in East Anglia - has recently gone QRT too?
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3 comments:

  1. Todd Dugdale Sun Jul 07, 03:27:00 pm GMT+1

    I was intrigued by another article that you wrote about 440, so I gave it a try. Over the course of a week in March, I tried UHF SSB with no results. I guess that nobody else is doing the same thing around here in MN. But with distances of 160 miles possible, using low power and tiny beams, I'm intrigued all over again.
    Unfortunately, it's hard enough to get sufficient numbers on the UHF FM repeaters, much less using weak signal modes.

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  2. TiéguiMon Jul 08, 10:12:00 pm GMT+1

    Hello Roger,
    propagation was open today. And tomorrow toO, maybe we'll QSO on VHF :)

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  3. Dale HarveyMon Jul 15, 04:45:00 pm GMT+1

    Hi Roger. Long time no speak! What a good spread of contacts for flea power. Well done! Sorry you missed us at GW2OP/P in IO71. Our Roger (G4BVY), would have loved to work you as he finished on 199 contacts and 99650 points, so you would have pushed him past both his targets! Keep up the good work, Dale G3XBY

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