Listening to G3XIZ's 15mW 80m beacon

G3XIZ's beacon running 15mW on 3.555MHz to his FETer transceiver was excellent copy this morning. At peaks it was running RST569 at a distance of around 45kms.

Here is the sound clip of his signal at 10.10am today, 30 Jan 2009.

RQ or CQR call for quick report only?

When using QRP there are times when all I want is a quick report in response to a CQ and not a long QSO with names. QTH, WX, power, antennas and general chit-chat. I wonder if we should have a different CQ format for this e.g. RQ or CQR (meaning CQ for report only).

Is this a good idea or a daft one? Let me know what you think.

VHF AM Yahoo group

This is a picture of G4BYE's version of my own Fredbox 2m AM transceiver design - a neat unit his is complete with proper PCB.

Many blog readers are already members of the Yahoo VHFam group. To join visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VHFam/ and follow the joining instructions.

At last VHF AM operation has got a mention in the latest UK VHF bandplans with the agreed "centre of AM activity" being notified in the footnotes as 144.55MHz. This spot in the European all-modes area is also used by some other users - I hear SSTV here sometimes - so it is NOT an exclusive spot, rather somewhere to look for 2m AM activity in the first instance. There's some AM activity on 145.8 still in Scotland but it would be good if users there would move to 144.55 so this became a UK-wide spot on which AM activity is likely to be found. Users can also be found on 70.26MHz on 4m.

VHF AM gear can be very simple to make and AM is an ideal mode for QRP building and experimenting. There's plenty of ex-PMR AM gear still to be found for next to nothing, ripe for use on 2m/4m AM.

More FETers around

Today I hear that Bill Meara N2CQR and Chris Osborn G3XIZ have built FETer, 1 FET, transceivers. Chris was beaconing his 15mW version this afternoon and it has been copied here at RST229 and in Kent at RST339. You can see Bill's version at his famous Soldersmoke blog.

Rockbound?

Walking home from the bus stop today I noticed a tiny piece of clunch on the ground, a local chalk stone from the Cretaceous age, the period of geological time approximately 143-65 million years ago. In the stone were two small fossil shells. Amazing to think these two creatures were living not far from my home all that time ago.

....and radio is only just over 100 years old.

GQRP Club and SPRAT

Attached is the 6V6 valve transceiver by Geoff, G3YVF, from SPRAT magazine number 137 (Winter 2008/9). It uses 19 parts in all.

Join the GQRP club and receive the excellent SPRAT magazine every 3 months. The fee is only £6 per year (or equivalent in other currencies) which is excellent value. See: http://www.gqrp.org/join.htm for details on how to join. You can now pay with Paypal too if you prefer. BTW, if times got hard and all other radio mags had to go then SPRAT would be the one I'd keep.

Every quarter SPRAT is packed with circuits, ideas and news of interest to those who enjoy QRP. Back issues of editions 1-132 are also available on a GQRP club CD for just £5 if you are a club member.

Help in the shack?

Contest operating was a little slower this morning as I had a "little helper" in the shack. This is my 14 month old grandson who is staying with us at the moment.

He was fascinated by the morse key, so there is hope that a future radio ham is in the making.

Update from W2UW on his 20mW transceiver

My FETer (1 FET transceiver for 80m) appeared in SPRAT this month. The circuit is very much based on a 40m transceiver created by Glenn Yingling, W2UW. His original 40m version, on which mine was heavily based, is called the FET-1. Today I got a nice e-mail from him with an update on his results.

Dear Roger, I was surprised to see your little article in the sprat mag about your FETer, it was interesting. I am glad to see that you credited me.

By the way, you might be interested in knowing that I have made 451 QSOs with my little rig. I have not met my goal of working all of the states east of the Mississippi river. HI I still have 4 to go (Fla., Ala., Geo., and Miss.) They are way down there! I may have to wait until the next "peak".

I am 81 yrs. old and still think radio is "magic". Hi

Glenn

W2UW

451 QSOs with a tiny little 1 FET transceiver is pretty good going Glenn. Well done!

2-way transatlantic QRP

Just worked VE3DJX on 14.060MHz CW. He was using 5W to a 3el and I was using 5W to my (low) 15m long end-fed long wire. Despite the poor sunspot conditions it is still possible to make 2-way transatlantic QSOs using QRP with the most basic of stations and antennas.

2m AM now on the RSGB band plan

At last 2m AM gets a mention in the bandplan as published in the Feb 2009 edition of RadCom. Sadly not as the 144.55MHz "centre of activity" on the 2m chart, but rather as a comment in the footnotes.

Still this is better than nothing and people interested in 2m AM now know that 144.55MHz is the place of preference to centre AM operations. There is still interest in 2m AM as (a) simple gear is easy to build and (b) there is a lot of surplus ex-PMR AM gear around going for almost nothing. Also it is interesting to compare AM and FM as part of self-training.

It would be good if the AMers in GM-land would migrate off 145.8 down to 144.55 now so that all AM in the UK was on/around one common frequency.