For the last few days I have been in Amsterdam.
The Cambridge radio club (CDARC) held its first face-to-face meeting since the pandemic began (a builder's evening). As an experiment they ran a hybrid meeting with people attending in person as well as others by Zoom.
I attended the whole thing from Amsterdam on my phone! The hybrid meeting was, in my opinion, a great success.
After a few days away, I hope to be on again tomorrow. Normal service should resume on Sunday.
Many people think they can't go on 160m as they need huge antennas and extensive ground systems and/or their noise is very high. Using just QRP and my earth-electrode antenna in the ground on FT8, both North and South America have been widely copied on RX and I have worked all over Europe on TX . As FT8 needs only 50 Hz bandwidth provided by the free software, it works well with very weak signals much weaker than SSB or CW. If you have local noise then you can try FT8.
My main objection in the past to Chinese amateur radio products has been quality control and consistency. Maybe this is the first of a new breed?
This radio is HF only, but look at the price!!
OFCOM has released some spectrum in the 700-900 MHz region for police use in Northern Ireland.
