Up at the Windfarm With The Diamond F-23 antenna

This Sunday ( 27th of may) was beautiful.

I packed all the usual stuff with the exception of the yagi beam , and drove up to Ovenden wind farm. The landscape is outstanding and  HF  VHF and UHF  do quite well from up there.

Arwen wasn't the carrier of the mast and equipment, it was the new love of my life Fraya the new Ford Focus Zetec Auto. and she acquitted herself quite well. aside from the fact her titchy battery was USELESS! 

A bigger battery is required , I need about 100-175 AmpHr battery, so an old wagon battery should do .I will have a look  on  fleabay later to see if I can acquire one .Thanks to my mate Stuzzie a soon to be radio ham I knew I was getting over to Leeds but there were no contacts from that way.

CQ 2 meters CQ 2 Meters this is MQ1PAC/Mobile 

 I was using the MQ call I have an NOV  for the Queens Jubilee event and one for the olympics.

From ovenden there were lots of contacts to be made  and if I had gotten up earlier I might have got a few more ,anyway I had approximately 21 contacts on VHF . 

A List of the contacts

1. M6NAE    Neil  in Manchester
2. 2Q1DNB  Peter at the Wakefield club
3. MQ6RIK   Richard in Brighouse 
4. MQ6NHA Sarah near Manchester 
5. G0MZZ     A benson from  Batley
6. 2E0VLS   Ray over near Hull
7. 2E0CTH  Chris from by-fleet  Surrey
8. 2E0CSD Craig from Keighley 
9. G4JJS     Simon from Bingly
10. 2E0LEV  Mick from Dewsbury
11. G7PFY    John over in  Guiseley
12. G0CJV    Clive in Grimsby 
13. M0UJD    Kevin from north Walsam
14. M0NEY    Dave   in Scunthorpe 
15. M3TVV    Dave in Allerton Bywater
16. M3ZKU    David from Hudderfield was over at HAWES N Yorks activating a hill. Nice one 
17. M6VWD   Eddie in Rochdale No QRZ page  tut tut Edddie 
18. G0NHJ     John From Crammington 
19. M3ROU    Peter in Rochdale 
20. G0MZZ     Tony in Birstall
21. 2E0RIZ     Craig over in Keighley
22. G4ONG    Bernie in Warrington 
23. MQ0IAA    Ian over in Wakefield who told me that for getting and station there is a certificate going  for   confirming 100 "Q"  stations  

What's That ! an antenna growing out of my head you say

Me and my new love.

Looks OK from here

I thought of putting it at the back but that looked silly.

(c) 2012 M1PAC productions 

Please leave a comment 

A day out in gods country

Fig ( 1 )

These are just a few pictures I took on a grand day out 

One of the  great points about visiting this site is its ease of access.I am not going to bang on about how to get there. After all, I frequent it At the top of the path on fig  (1) the height above sea level is a respectable 1284 ft and when I have my mast fully erected ( Giggity ) My new 6 element yagi  is a good 1300 feet up.

 These pictures were taken at  a place called Whetstone gate on the  land ranger ordnance survey maps , but we know it as Keighley gate. The land was  or maybe still is owned by the Keighley police.These towers were used  for  VHF communications but now the police have gone TETRA and digital they are no longer in use .

I will put together a fishing pole for HF and I will take that with me when I do go up there to spend a whole day  in this type of weather .

 I also went over to a place called gordale scar, it is a fantastic place to visit, when the weather is like this it's even better.I managed to climb the waterfall .I also made a few video's with my little video camera but this one was the best one so I post that so you can see what I mean

Well Thats all folks , thank you for reading my humble blog  and PLEASE leave a comment 

(c) 2012 m1pac productions 

Rochdale Rally

It was a nice sunny day on the 12th of may, I had seen the event on the RSGB website, I didn't have a lot of cash with me ,but I went anyway and took my little video camera with me.It  is'nt that difficult a place to find , providing you come to it the right way. I came from the M65 way up through the top of Accrington.

This is where it was held

This is the actual address

ROCHDALE & DISTRICT RADIO SOCIETY TRADITIONAL RADIO RALLY - St Vincent's Church Hall, Caldershaw Road, Rochdale OL12 7QL. OT 10.30am, £2.50 concessions for under 12 and seniors, This is a Saturday Rally!!






There was some interesting equipment there,some of it cheap some not but it was worth the trip over to see what was on offer.

Testing The new 6 element 144MHz yagi

The Trial Run

Sunday the 5th of may saw me taking the setup out to the ovenden windfarm again the location is  at least 1400 ft ASL. With the little car park it has turned into one of my favourite locations. I wanted to try out the Trio  9130 and the 6 element 2 meter yagi. I found out some things that needed changing about the yagi,putting it together was a bit hit & miss as the reflecting elements were not lined up as they should have been and the Gamma match didn't seem to look right and was bloody fiddly to get mounted .


A bit of drilling saw the Gamma match sorted, I will now tune it then lock it off and take the whole thing off when I take it out thanks to a wingnut, so hopefully it will work better now I have marked the stop points on the radials & reflector.Next time I go up there I will take my video camera and film the contacts with the beacons.

Beacon report

There are not many beacons on 144MHz there are only 5 showing here Beacon locations 

I only received signals from two of them the strongest one was GB3ANG A nice signal from the windmills

GB3ANG

Latitude	56.545848 (56° 32' 45'' N)
Longitude	-2.982709 (2° 58' 57'' W)
Grid Square	IO86mn13
Location	Tealing Near Dundee Scotland
Web Page Link	GB3ANG
QSL Info	GM4ZUK

 The other beacon  was  GB3VHF also a nice signal  not as strong but audible  

GB3VHF

Latitude	51.329123 (51° 19' 44'' N)
Longitude	0.339246 (0° 20' 21'' E)
Grid Square	JO01eh09
Location	BT Mast Fairseat, Kent
Web Page Link	GB3VHF
QSL Info	G0AFH

I didn't talk to many people, as that wasn't what I was trying to do I shouted my head off on 144.300 SSB, only to be told by  Terry G0TKJ that RF  was feeding back into the radio  and I  couldn't be heard properly, thanks terry, I have now placed a ferrite clamp in the plug of the mic lead.

In the short time I was up there I made a few more contacts on 145.500 FM  and here is a list of those contacts those with the Q in their calsign have applied for an NOV to use it , it being the golden anniversary of the queens reign.

2Q1DNB  Peter over in Morley Leeds

GQ6HFF  Glen over on Easington fell having a sota day

2E0LEV   Mick wandering about on scapegoat hill & helping to fill the reservoir

G4JJS      Simon over in Bingly  

M6SBO    Barry who was over the other side of the valley doing quite well on his setup 

I did hear a couple of stations coming from Finland and Norway but I couldn't quite make them out . It was a good trial run for the new antenna and hearing both the Kent beacon and the one near Dundee in Scotland I think it performed quite well. I hope the modifications work and maybe I can get better reports .

Thank you for  reading my blog , and please do leave a comment I need to know what you think  

 I also have a Facebook page Called Radio Hams Only ..Here you can join if you wish.

And I have joined the great ham radio nation http://hamradionation.com/profile.php?user=m1pac

(c) m1pac productions 2012 

Norbrek Rally Blackpool

A Grand Day Out 

 It was the 50th N.A.R.S.A Ham radio rally at Norbrek Castle over in Blackpool Lancashire Link to website

The sun was cracking the flag's and I was all kitted up ready to go to the 50th annual Narsa rally over at Norbreck castle exhibition centre. I was waiting for Josh M0DIT to come and pick me up from the car park.I had enough money in my pocket to be able to buy myself another 2 meter multimode radio , seeing as the Yaesu FT-480 decided to curl up it's toes and join all the other pieces of technology in silicon heaven .

The new boy in town 

Its worse than that it's dead Jim

The rally itself was quite good , lots of things to look at lots of things to buy and even somewhere to eat.
I went there thinking that I would be lucky to even find another2m multimode radio at all and  after a few goes round the tables I counted half a dozen ,three of them where FT-480's  and there were two Trio 9130's and an old Icom. I ended up buying one of those Trio 9130's .On close inspection  it needed a cleaning , and when I got it home I went online and downloaded the service manual. I spent about 4 hours servicing it and testing the voltages and re-aligning the crystal's onto the  correct frequency . I Connected  it to the 6 element yagi  and I gave a shout on 144.300, with Josh (M0DIT) sitting on the side giving me an audio report. I can't wait until I can get out onto the hills and give good old shout out on two meters SSB, so anyone who is capable of using that mode ,please give a listen out and YES we still use that frequency.

 I took a few pictures and cobbled them into a mini movie for you to peruse I have spent most of the afternoon editing them and putting a sound track on. I am getting quite good at this . anyway .......

AND NOW FOR THE MAIN ATTRACTION 

If you enjoyed this then you might like to read one of may good friends  blog Simon (2E0HTS)

Thank you for reading my blog , and Please leave a comment .

(c) 2012 M1PAC productions

Baofeng MK2 Review

 Tiny dual band similar to a Yaesu VX3R.

only £49.99 from Lamco

My radio was supplied by LAM communications  (Barnsley)and here is the web page to the radio Lamco


The Baofeng is a radio that should essentially be graded on a curve. No it’s not on-par with a Yaesu, Icom or Kenwood but that aside the Baofeng is a competent radio and the best thing about it is that you can just drop it in your pocket.


 Full output power  is about  2W and  some of its competitors have similar outputs, there are a few times where 2W won’t suffice, but 5W would. I have had little trouble working repeaters on the Baofeng .Audio reports were quite good; a few stations were amazed it was a cheap Chinese hand held , there are some better ones coming from china but I like this little radio because of one thing, the sma antenna mount, most of the others have reverse sma and require an adapter to use after market antennas.



Yes. It is missing a few features that other, more expensive radios have. There is no DTMF or dual-watch. But, this is only  £49.99 and  some of the shortcomings are offset by the addition of the  flash-light and broadcast radio   (86-108 MHz FM ) function which puts out a lot of audio so  when you are sat waiting for some one you can pop an earpiece in the radio and listen to your favourite radio station  .

The Baofeng is more than worth its purchase price. Its affordability is really its main utility. Considering that it’s so cheap and replaceable, I am unafraid to take it places I might not take a more expensive radio – like the beach. It’s not perfect and could use a better antenna, and with that in mind you can buy an after market one like I did .


With  the belt clip on the radio, it won't fit in the drop-in "charging tray" (which is barely useful for its intended purpose). I'd like to see that fixed, as well as the ability to charge the battery in-situ while the rig is actually IN the "drop-in charger." The battery CAN be charged in the charger, but you have to take the battery out of the radio, plug the charger cord into the charger and put the battery into the charger, better still  leave the battery in the radio and plug the charger  into the radio.Charge time is short & that little nokia like battery is 3.7v and 1500 mAh Li-ion and lasts quite a long time even on full power (2w) .The battery life is impressive.


The menu-driven operation and the location/function of the side and front buttons make this radio a bit "clunky" to program and operate, but using the USB cable is fast and easy. After about a week of using it, I am able to operate it without looking. Split CTCSS/DCS for XMIT/RECEIVE. 


The Encoder is a bit dodgy, but still works well enough.I haven't noticed any problems with the side buttons, and the front buttons still work fine. The plastic case feels quite thin and brittle but its not  I dropped mine and it took a lump out of the tarmac The included neck-strap is a nice added extra bonus I  think .


Programming the radio was quite straight forwards and if you have a MK1 like I have you can use the programming lead, but not the software. The software is out there on Google and I will supply a link here to a website that will  tell you all about it and supply's links to obtain the software.
Excellent value for money dual band, dual standby  with good performance V/V U/U On the whole the UV3R is excellent value for money. You’re not getting Yaesu quality of course, but they are amazing value, all things considered.  


I have noticed that a MK 3 version has just started to appear. This appears to have a different form factor and a true drop-in charger with up to 5W output power. and believe it or not that model can come with various add ons like a drip proof speaker mike and if someone supply's one for me to review then all the better. (Koff Lee Koff)




Pros
Price 


Cons
No alpha memories, no priority scan, slow scan speed,no upper and lower  VFO frequency limit can not be limited by user programming, which makes scanning in VFO mode a pain. 
There is no facility for repeater reverse frequency, but this can of course be programmed into separate memory channels. 

I have  tested it in and around my home town and I have been getting some good reports. I even used the mobile phone over the ear type kit that came with it . Earpiece audio always sounds weird to me but its better than blasting it out so every one can hear it and look at you funny. OK so they look at me funny anyway "mummy why is that man talking to himself?"

I can find few faults with it. You get what you pay for always , but I would recommend you buy one, if only to pop it in a drawer and use it in an emergency .

Thanks for reading and to Karl G1YPQ who asked me to write this review., I will say  " I didn't know what I was getting myself into"  putting all this down on here took me two weeks and I still wasn't satisfied ,and edited it again . "sigh" 

(c) M1PAC productions 2012

Solo Sunday

Going solo this Sunday 

This Sunday saw me up at  the windfarm but solo this time and no HF just me and the good old yaesu ft-8800 VHF-UHF radio I had a few contacts  

OS map of were I was 

operating conditions were tough

Its always clear here,I wonder why ?

I think I need to re-think the mast clamps

 The list of people I talked to and links to their respective qrz page via a link on their call-sign  please note you must log in to qrz before you click on the links , thank you .

1. G4ZOI       Dean out in Middlesbrough
2. 2E0CSD  Craig down in Keighley
3. MW0UPH Aled over in Blaenau Ffestiniog 
4. M0MTV     Paul  parked at Eden park Manchester
5. G8POK    Graham parked over in Holm moss looking down on me ,nice geetar G
6. G6YGJ      Bob down there in Bradford
7. G4FPS     Peter in Macclesfield (no qrz page)
8. 2E0EYP   Jimmy on a hill near Congleton (no qrz page)
9. G1NVY     Ken about 7 miles from Liverpool
10. M6BLV    John over in Ellesmere port
11. G0VWP   Terry over in York 

Thanks you for reading my blog and hello to the two guys on the Honda step through's one was trying to ride over a sofa that had been dumped and the other was filming him on his eyephone 

(c) 2012 m1pac productions