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EUHFC – How high is my dipole?!?
This weekend was the European HF Championship. The EUHFC is run by the Slovenia Contest Club. During the contest European amateurs try to contact as many other European amateurs as posible to compete for the title of “European HF Champion”. The contest is short in duration, just 12 hours, so I decided to use it […]
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RSGB Islands On The Air Contest
This weekend was the RSGB IOTA Contest. The IOTA contest was created in 1993. This is now a major international event, attracting thousands of participants from all over the world. Radio Amateurs travel to islands around the globe, putting them on the air, making contacts with other islands and with those who are chasing islands. […]
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TinyGS Update
I previously posted here about building a TinyGS earth station. It’s now been running for three weeks and I am happy with the results. I am seeing packets on a regular basis as satellites pass overhead and everything seems to be working OK! The antenna I am using is not ideal – a wideband discone […]
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Signals from space!
I’ve previously played about with Meshtastic. I run two Meshtastic nodes from my home as permanent infrastructure contributing to the mesh on the South Coast. Currently this consists of two Heltec V3 nodes, one configured with an omni-directional antenna and one with a directional antenna pointing a a hilltop near my home. This configuration was […]
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QRP and the ‘super droopy’ T2FD
I’ve been a bit busy for radio over the last few weeks but I have found time for a few simple experiments. For the past month I have been trying to limit my HF use to QRP (low power) operation using 10w of output power on the 40 and 20m bands in the margins around […]
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I do not like the zoo!
Today the family decided to go to the zoo for the day…. I’m not a big fan of the zoo so it seemed like a great opportunity to get away for a few hours of HF. I decided to walk from my holiday cottage to Northam Burrows which is the site of a Second World […]
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SPDX – A Flagpole Of Opportunity
This weekend was the SPDX contest. In the SP DX Contest, competitors are divided into two groups – Polish stations and foreign stations outside of Poland. The aim is for operators outside of Poland to make as many QSOs to Polish stations and visa versa. As I’m currently on holiday I thought this would be […]
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A Simple Double Bazooka Dipole Design
I’ve written a lot in my other blog posts about my double bazooka antenna. It’s probably my favorite antenna for quick temporary setups. I’ve tried to make it portable, quick to set-up and easy to change bands. The original design work came from this website, I’ve refined the design by building a nice center junction […]
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The 2025 CQ WPX Contest
The CQ World Wide WPX Contest was this weekend! In preparation I built a temporary Double Bazooka Dipole oriented East West in an inverted V for the 20m band. The antenna was not perfect, one end was almost touching my garage roof and the height was only 8m or so above the ground, you can see more about […]
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Preparing For The CQ WPX Contest
The CQ World Wide WPX Contest is this coming weekend! I’m not a contest station but I like to use contests to test out new configurations and antennas when there is plenty of band activity. One of the limitations of my home location is the size and orientation of the plot. My permanent antenna is […]
