Monday 4th July 2011

Another good turn out as we enter the holiday period.  This week there were four main activities happening apart from tea and coffee drinking :-)

We powered up the Yaesu FT101ZD and had it running for a couple of hours as a receiver. I was very impressed how well it worked on a limited antenna. We will get on the air with this lovely radio soon.

 

Steve (G1MPW) showed us a TenTec Corsair which he purchased recently. Another fine radio we had the chance to play with.

 

On arrival at the Scout hut we found that the G5RV antenna had fallen down.  Some of the guys spent a part of the evening reinstalling the G5RV antenna back to its original location.

To complete the list of activities a couple of the guys called in to the club net on two metres.

Monday 27th June

Another good turnout this Monday evening with lots happening to keep us all interested. Steve (G1MPW) showed us  a software defined radio receiver which gave us a chance to see one in action and play with it. You control it by computer and the sound card decodes the signal.

Alan 2E0VAV had been having trouble with a digital interface box he uses with a Kenwood TS570. After spending some time with Denis (M0NDJ) the fault was traced to a broken wire in one of the plugs.

Some of the guys reinstalled a 2metre/ 70cm antenna for use at the Scout hut.

We are planning to Power up the Yaesu FT-101ZD next Monday and get it on the air.

All in all a lot of fun on a Monday night.

Monday 20th June

A busy night last Monday, as well as the usual coffee drinking and banter, Chris showed us his new £30 2W Chinese handheld radio from ebay, which comes with an interesting array of accessories.

we also set up a WSPR station and managed to be picked up in Canada on 0.5W.

and some of the guys did some aerial testing too.

Monday 13/06/2011

Monday: Another play night in Banstead.  This evening I did some more PSK31 with the little Small Wonders Lab kit. It worked better on Epsom downs the Saturday before. I think this was due to the switch mode power supply I was using. The home made antenna seems to work well.

A view of the PSK31 Rig:

 

PSK Signal:

 

Various discussions took place on a number of topics as well as some tea and coffee drinking :-)

Monday 06/06/11

Last Monday I took some Items of radio test gear to play with. Most new amateurs have not seen a Dip Oscillator, Absorption Wavemeter or an Antenna Noise bridge.  

We played with the Dip oscillator and Absorption Wavemeter and found both seem to need re-calibration. This is another job to fit into my already busy schedule.

The type of Dip Oscillator we played with.

My VHF/UHF Absorption Wavemeter

We then moved on to the Antenna Noise Bridge and while it did give us a lot of noise when switched on, we could not get it to work with the ATU and antenna onsite. I must look at this again and try and get it to work correctly.

Although we did not have a total success it was still a good evening.