Tuesday 12 May 2015

Updated Ramblings

It's been an eventful weekend here at the home QTH. Saturday afternoon was spent moving my 2m/70cm collinear from the military mast to it's new permanent home on T&K brackets on the house wall. Stewart, M0SDM, gave invaluable assistance - and without whose help the enterprise would not have been such a success. Many thanks to him.Now the wind can blow as hard as it likes, as I no longer need to worry about the mast coming down and demolishing the neighbours garden sheds.

The collinear is about a foot lower than it was before and that gives only a marginal drop in performance - the pole is only 6ft so I may just replace that with a 10ft one in the relatively near future. The main advantage is that my XYL is now a happy lady as she has her patio back and the neighbours no longer have to gaze upon the splendour of my Clansman mast complete with guy ropes. I thought it looked reasonably OK but on reflection it did dominate the garden quite a lot - I'm happy with the results so all is well chez nous.

With some sadness I have to report that my Standard C5600 has a fault on the UHF side of things, it has an intermittent habit of losing TX on UHF and the received signal becomes distorted.The Icom IC-E208 has been removed from the car and reinstated as the main V/UHF FM set in the shack. I have ordered a new dual bander for the car and until it arrives I am using an 8W Baofeng UV-5RTP, with battery eliminator in the car. I have to report that it works really quite well in the car, so my faith in Chinese products is partially restored.

On Sunday Andrew, M0NRD and myself had a meeting with the organisers of the Swaton Vintage Day and we took the opportunity to undertake a site survey for the SES operating location and the Eggsplorer1 HAB launch.I can report that all is fine with the site and, CAA permitting, the HAB launch should go ahead. June 28th is launch date and our SES call GB2EGG will be operatin all day throughout the event.

May 20th sees a presentation on Raynet at the S.K.A.R.S. meeting - details of that and all other club matters can be found on the website www.skars.co.uk

73 de 2E0ENN for now

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