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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 […]
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Double Bazooka Bandwidth
I’ve read a lot online about the double bazooka dipole antenna and if it is more broadband than a dipole. Some folks say yes, others no and there’s a healthy dose of guesswork sprinkled over the top. So I thought let’s do a simple test: Two 5.5m masts, in a field 10m apart. Rig up […]
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SOTA/POTA
Today was my first Summits On The Air (SOTA)/Parks On The Air (POTA) activation. I was lucky enough to have the loan of a Codan Sentry 6110 HF radio so I thought I would give SOTA a try on Butser Hill. This is also a POTA location so I’m counting that as a buy one […]
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They Don’t Do HF In Africa!
This weekend was the Africa All Mode International DX Contest. I’m not a contest station but I like to use contests to try things out, in this case it was not successful! Looking at the HF predictions propagation down to Africa from the UK was looking a little tricky but the late afternoon looked like […]
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South America 10m Contest
Today I decided to take part in the South America 10m Contest… Why? Because it’s a great opportunity to build a custom setup targeted both at a specific geography and band. The South America 10m contest runs for 24 hours on the 10m band (28.3-29.3Mhz for SSB). The purpose is to encourage radio amateurs from […]
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Meshtastic Filters
So I had an interesting discussion on discord with some of the other local mesh contributors about why Meshtastic modules seem to perform poorly in locations which should be great such as the top of local hills. One theory is the abundance of other communication devices here could be interfering with the modules which are […]
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Meshtastic Firmware Update – You Might Need A Ladder
I have two Meshtastic nodes mounted on top of a mast as infrastructure to contribute to the mesh. You can read about the solution here. Yesterday I updated the firmware on the nodes from 2.4 to 2.5…. The only problem is that during the upgrade the nodes factory reset and also disabled the serial interface […]
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Meshtastic Infrastructure
It’s only temporary…. unless it works! I’ve been interested in Meshtastic for a while now. Meshtastic uses low power LoRa devices which are license free to build a distributed RF mesh communications network. I have several of these devices however the area where I live is not well served with meshtastic nodes. So it’s time […]
