A71AE QatarFirst week of September I left for a little one week holiday with the family to Belgium near Froidchapelle. We rented a little cottage and I was able to get QRV as ON/PA1JIM. I packed an extendable antenna mast, a 1:10 MTFT balun from WiMo, my Kenwood TS-590 and forgot the antenna wire. When we arrived in Belgium I inspected the garden behind the cottage, it wasn’t big but big enough to put up a vertical. Just before this holiday I bought 30 meters of Aircell 7 coax, so I could put the vertical as much as 30 meters away from the cottage if needed. After a visit to the local supermarket I got 30m of clothing line which could serve as antenna wire.
First try was just a few meters from the cottage. It worked, but there was a loud QRM on 40m. Probably from the cottage. So after two days I decided to put the vertical a little further away, behind the fence of the park. It worked just okay, the loud rattle on 40m was down to S0. Unfortunately there was really bad propagation which let me to PSK31 for some QSO’s. Best one I worked was PR7BCP, Brasil. Other interesting stations I worked were SQ9UM/1, Sovjet Militairy Order of Malta and Roger Moore (!) M0AUI. At the end of the week I logged 50 QSO’s. Not a lot but I only put in a few hours of time and really enjoyed everyone of them.
I really enjoyed working PSK again. Sometimes this mode is a little lost between all the CW and RTTY I’m working normally.

PSKLast weekend I’ve experimented with psk31 for the first time. Made a really simple setup. Connected my girlfriends laptop (the only Windows one in the house) directly to my FT-817 with 2 mini-jack cable (audio in and out) and the data-cable.
Run Ham Radio Deluxe. Could get it to work very well. After a few hours of searching for the right settings, I was able to receive some signals. Just couldn’t get the rig transmitting anything at all.
The next morning I’ve tried the same setup on my Mac. This time with Cocoamodem. Same story, receiving okay, transmitting no go.
Hmmm, looks like I need to do some more googling first.