432MHz | Amateur Radio News from Jon Stow, G4MCU

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Late June tropo

Posted on July 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Having missed out on all the Sporadic E on 2 metres save IK8EVE (JN71) on 1^st June it was good to be treated to some decent tropo. Starting on the evening of 27^th June, on 2 metres I worked with my 25 watts all on SSB:

DF2WF JO30

DM8MM JO31

DF0WD JO42

DJ6AG JO51

DK5DQ JO31

On 28^th June in the evening on 2 metres:

SK7MW JO65

SM7XWX JO65

OZ6TY JO55

OZ1BEF JO46

DL3TW JO44

DL2RZ JO54

On 29^th June in the morning earlyish

DK3EE JO41

SM7YES JO67 and incredibly strong signal.

On 29^th June, SK6VHF (JO57) on 144.404 MHz was audible until about midday but faded as pressure fell so that when we were down to 1012 millibars at 1700 I knew the event was over.

I did try my luck on 70 cms with my one watt, and worked on 28^th June:

SM6CEN JO67

OZ9FW JO65

So, a little bit of fun finding and working a little way away. I seem to have some advantage with sea paths, being near to the Thames and Crouch estuaries, and reaching mainly stations near the coast in Scandinavia.

New antennas and activity

Posted on March 10, 2018 | 1 comment

View from the front of the house

After the trials and tribulations getting planning permission for my mast, and several setbacks since then I have finally got the antennas up and certainly working, at least on 2 metres and 70 centimetres. I have not yet fired up the transverter for 23 cms (I hope it still works after all these years), but I am operational on the two lower bands.

So how is the receive set-up? On 2 metres I can hear the Belgian beacon ON0VHF on 144.418MHz consistently just above the noise, but at least as well with my 7 element yagi as the Hockley shop down the road used to with their 20 elements. This is in flat conditions, even poor. I have a GaAs FET preamplifier for 2 metres and am using Ecoflex 15 feeder, but to my ears the readability is not improved by the preamp, which says a lot for the “front end” of the old FT290R I am using as the main transceiver for the moment.

Much to my surprise I can also hear ON0VHF above the noise on 70 centimetres using my 2 metres rig’s stablemate, an FT790R, also dating from the early Eighties.

Currently I have 25 watts on 144 MHz and have got into Lincolnshire with 1 watt on 70 centimetres, a distance of about 87 miles in flat conditions, and my report was 57.

There is a lot to come, especially when conditions may be more favourable.