Category: Uncategorized
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A Working Solution To Not Tuning 40 Meters
Even though I now have the Yaesu FTdx101MP radio on my desk which is probably one of the best radios in the world right now the built in Antenna Tuner will only tune an SWR of 3:1 or better. On all bands apart from 40 meters my SWR was below 2:1 so making the fine…
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A New And Improved Random Wire Antenna
A few weeks my father popped over and we started the work to erect my new and upgraded random wire end fed antenna. I was hoping to increase the antenna length from 29 feet long to a much nicer 56 feet long and at the same time take it up to around 7 meter high…
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Hit By Another Solar Storm!
I switched the radio on last night to discover all the HF bands were completely closed. Even tuning down to the FT8 frequencies produced absolutely nothing. The reason was yet another massive solar storm hitting us giving a K value up in the region of 8. Hence Facebook being full of arura photographs from all…
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A New Addition In The Shack And I’m Excited!
For a long time I’ve been looking at this radio and dreaming one day of owning one. Last Saturday I sat and watched the latest video released by ML&S all about the amazing Yaesu FTdx101MP and they centred the video on a used radio they had in the store. After watching the video I did…
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Sounds Like Star Wars!
A friend of mine heard my HF radio the other day and said it sounded just like the final battle scene against the Death Star in Star Wars. I said no, Star wars final battle scene against the Death Star sounded just like HF radio. I always respected George Lucas for that little detail.
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Antenna Perfection, A Never Ending Quest!
I’m forever on a quest to improve my antenna. At the moment my antenna is down while the landlord is carrying out improvements to the grounds. While it’s down I’m going to carry out some substantial changes. At the moment I’m running a 29′ end fed random wire. One end is attached to a loop…
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A Place To Battle Demons
On the 1st January 2024 this place was a pile of papers, clothes, junk and general chaos. burred at the bottom was my laptop that hadn’t been powered up for 2 years. That’s a bad sign for a retired technical manager. It reflected my life. I have battled demons and I still battle demons. Quite…
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Gscan II Mobile Scanner Antenna
I picked up this new Gscan II antenna yesterday. The intension it to pop it in the car and stick it on the roof when I go out and about to see what I can pick up. I’m as big believer in getting an antenna outside of the car rather than using one screwed to…
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HF Was Just Alive This Weekend!
There has been some sort of big time HF competition on over the past weekend and it looked like everyone and their best friend came to the party. I switched on the radio at around midnight on Saturday and all of the HF bands were buzzing with Voice and CW calls all night long. 20…
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Handheld Antennas – High SWR
I have an use a small collection of alternative antennas on my Icom ID-51 and Yaesu FT-5D to hopefully improve RX and TX over the standard rubber antennas that come supplied with the radios as standard. When I’m at home and running the Zum Hotspot I don’t want a big cumbersome antenna so I attach…