Happier Ramblings

After my recent spat, I am now a bit more positive about things. I have been having a look at the shack and have made a few changes. I still do not have an HF set up but I'm determined not to buy anything until I have a good idea of what I want. I'm not so sure that I necessarily need to be home based for HF - a friend of mine is considering going QRT from home and working /p on HF instead. The idea appeals to me but the only reservation I have is that, if I have a little time to "play radio", I would have to gather the equipment up and leave the house to operate. I need to give that some thought - one idea I have is to have a Yaesu FT817 and use it from home with a wire and take advantage of its portability when out and about. Again, there is a slight reservation with the 817 as it doesn't have much power, I suppose I could use a linear from home. I'm still working on that idea - there's no hurry.

On the VHF and UHF side of things I have made an impulse purchase from eBay, this time it has turned out to be a good buy. I am now the proud owner of a third Standard radio - this one is a C8800, FM 2m radio from the early '80's. It came in it's original box, with all inserts intact and every accessory supplied when new. It has only one fault and that is an LED out on the last digit of the frequency display, but there's no issue with that as it can be read adequately. It has repeater shift but no CTCSS, so no good for repeater use, but I have the Icom IC-E208 for that. 10W or 1W output, and in superb condition. I do like the "old school" radios.

I have another Chinese radio for the car, a Baojie UV55 dual bander. It has issues with TX on high power - distorted modulation _ but it is OK on low power (15W) so it's fine for the car. I'm still not convinced that buying Chinese is a good idea but it was cheap and should be servicable as a mobile unit.

Preparations for GB2EGG are well in hand and we will have a run through of the HAB procedure at our next meeting. June 28th is the date and details can be found on the website www.skars.co.uk

73 for now.