This summer we went for a long (three weeks) holiday to Denmark. Near the town of Ebeltoft and near the beach of Egsmark we rented a house. When we where packing for this holiday, the initial idea was to not bring all my HAM-gear with me. Propagation isn’t brilliant at the moment and the car was already almost fully packed. But at the last moment I couldn’t resist and packed the trusty Icom IC-7300 and the FYM-deltaloop anyway. After a Continue reading “Holiday in OZ-land (Denmark)”
New call: PA8E
PA8E
After eight years I applied for a new call: PA8E. For some time I was in doubt about my old call. PA1JIM doesn’t key well in CW. It’s too long and I didn’t like the combination 1-J. A few weeks ago one of my HAM-buddies, Gerald PA9G changed his call from PE1PQW to PA9G. A while back I did played with the idea to change my call but with the call-change of Gerald this came back to life. But then the big question: what new call should I apply for?
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Standby problems with the TM-D710
This morning it occurred to me my car almost didn’t start. The battery seemed almost dead. It couldn’t be the battery itself since it is about a year old. When I was thinking about it, I did noticed a low voltage in my battery before. It had to be standby problems with some device in the car. Today I pulled one of the battery leads and put an ampere meter in between.
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Happy New Year!
Another radio active year has passed. 2016 was a pretty good year as far as my blog involved. My stats doubled since 2015! It’s a shame I moved my blog so many times since 2001, I don’t have stats from the beginning. But hey, the radio hobby is all about experiments.
Continue reading “Happy New Year!”
Aeronautical mobile as PA1JIM/AM
How cool is it for a ham to temporarily change your call to aeronautical mobile (PA1JIM/AM) during a once in your lifetime experience? Even more so when you can do that from an airliner at 38000 feet up in the air? The other day my good buddy and associate at Pepper IT-solutions VliegPiet made me an offer I could not refuse: to join him as captain in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 on a return flight from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to Sevilla, Spain.
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Radio Weekend 2016
Let’s do a Radio Weekend!
A while ago I planned Radio Weekend with a few HAM-friends; Karel PE2KDK, Marco PH4M and Henk PE1PEX.
Arriving
On Friday Marco and Karel picked me up and we put all my gear into a Fiat 500 (new model). After a 1,5 hour drive we arrived at the Hunehuis in Darp (JO32CT). That is in the east part of the Netherlands. While it is quite a remote location (especially relevant for low QRM on the radio bands) there are enough possibilities to build antenna’s.
After picking out our operating area we left for some groceries and later that afternoon we explored the lot to find good antenna positions. We had all kind of wire antennas like a G5RV (short and long version), a ZS6BKW and a MFJ1777. Also we took 2 verticals. A 40 meter mono-band and a 10 meter long multi-band vertical. First we shoot some ropes in the trees with a crossbow and pulled up the long G5RV. In the front yard we put up the multi-band vertical.
On air
Then we went on air on Friday night and were astonished because of the lack of QRM. Consequently the IC-7300 became an even more excited radio to work with in this environment. While tune in on really low signals, I was able to copy (not just my ears, also FLdigi) even the smallest signals. Rather a great experience! Therefore I immediately start searching for some rare DX-stations. Due to the involvement in searching for DX, it became 01:30 AM in no time.
Saturday
After a few hours of sleep I was back at the radio at 06:30 AM. Rather working DX then sleeping! After working a few DX-stations we headed outside again for some more antenna experiments. On the backside a 40 meter vertical was set up and in the front we hung up a MFJ-1777 wire antenna.
Because we played radio for a whole day, we went out for a bite that night in a local restaurant. When we came back I searched some more for DX-stations. I couldn’t keep my eyes open at 1 o’clock so I went for bed.
Sunday
Due to a little more sleep this time I was QRV again on Sunday morning around 07:30 AM. Still a few hours left for searching DX. Around lunchtime we broke everything up and headed for home.
First of all it was an absolutely great Radio Weekend. The location was about to be perfect, antennas where almost perfect and the company was, without a doubt, perfect!
As a result of this we will be returning on this location again somewhere next year. I think about putting up a vertical array then for transmitting and a beverage for receiving.
WSPR keynote
Last week Remco PA3FYM did a keynote at the club about WSPR. Remco explained a lot about Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and the theory behind WSPR.
He told the idea behind the WSPR-challenge which he and Rob PE1ITR organized.
As always with good quality keynotes, this one tickles me to anticipate in this WSPR-challenge. But I have to be careful not to have too many things on my agenda. With my daily Morse training this is not a good time for another challenge.
Nonetheless a great keynote and many thanks to Remco. Another item on my bucket list 😉