Monday 19/11/2012

As you can see from below we were busy again.

Chris replaced the flex on his voice keyer.

Chris and the guys played with a 3d webcam, and watched some helicopter videos on YouTube.

Steve helped John set up an aerial for HF.

Monday 12/11/2012

John and I spent some time trying to get contacts on HF but the HF bands were dead. Chris was away this week so we can’t blame him for keeping us out. 

We did finalise this weekend’s training schedule for our foundation course

Monday 05/11/12

Tonight we had a very interesting talk by Bob Burns G3OOU on some of the projects he is working on. Bob told us he is trying to downsize his test equipment and plans to build a lot of units into a single nineteen inch rack system. Bob also showed us a Valve tester he is building to modern standards. All in all a very enjoyable talk.

Bob’s website where you can find out all about his designs can be found at: http://www.g3oou.co.uk/

Chris and John were playing with Johns Yaesu FT-767GX and Martin and I were trying to reprogram a Motorola HT750.

All this plus various topic discussed and lots of tea and coffee.

Monday 29/10/2012

John asked us if we could put his Yaesu FT-756GX on the air for a test to see how well it worked. Our tests the other week concluded that the receiver was working well but we did not transmit. John needed to get a power connector which he had done and was read for a full test. 

Unfortunately it was not transmitting and not drawing any current on transmit. We could not hear any radiation from the driver on our Kenwood TS-2000.

The fault was found to be a small shorting link on the power plug which was missing. Once fitted on transmit we could hear it on the Kenwood TS-2000 and the power supply was showing 20 amps on transmit. A call was put out on 80 metres and we received a 5/9 plus report from Liverpool (about 400 miles).

Denis was playing with a PIC programmer and had a working sign. The younger guys had the Kenwood TS-2000 on the air in the back room. All this and lots of radio discussion.