I appreciate that the last post here was about the HamClock and I said I wouldn’t be providing a guide to building one but I’ve been asked by a few people if I can write some instructions, showing what’s needed from start to end so I’ve decided to do it. This is a long guide […]

For some years I’d been aware of HamClock and around April last year I decided to investigate further and built one using an old Raspberry Pi 3B that I had spare.If you’ve never heard of HamClock, it’s described on the authors page thus: “HamClock is a kiosk-style application that provides real time space weather, radio […]

It’s been a while since I posted any updates here, not because I’ve got nothing to say but because I’ve been busy working on the station and playing radio. My new aerial is up but I’m not going to say anything about that now, that’s for a future update. I’ve had a good year so […]

A few weeks ago I bought the official Raspberry Pi 7″ touchscreen display for a project which sadly didn’t work as intended, this left me with the unused display and a case. I started thinking about things I could use it for and settled on a shack clock. Long term readers of my site will […]

I love it when the courier comes. In the last few days I’ve received both my new SteppIR and the NN4ZZ tilt plate from Degen Designs. Now all I need to do is wait until the weather improves and I can start the process for replacing the hexbeam and coax. Exciting times ahead.

VP8 isn’t especially rare in amateur radio terms, it’s currently number 206 in the ClubLog list of most wanted DXCC entities but although I’ve worked it on SSB and various data modes, I’d not managed a CW QSO until recently. I made a post on the Chiltern DX Club reflector which mentioned it, and shortly […]

After much research, I’ve decided what I’m going to replace the Hexbeam with. I’m aiming to put up a SteppIR UrbanBeam which will give me the same coverage as the Hexbeam with the addition of a folded dipole on 30m. At the same time, I’m going to replace all the coaxial cable with Messi & […]

Some years ago, the ARRL decided to stop issuing a DXCC certificate for just RTTY and merged the various digital modes all together for a single ‘digital’ certificate. I obtained the ‘digital’ certificate back in 2012 with just RTTY QSOs and was always a little sad that my certificate said ‘digital’. Last year, I heard […]

In April 2012 I reported on this site that Acom had announced a new amplifier. At the time, I had an Acom 1000 and in the comments, I said “I don’t think I’ll be swapping my Acom 1000 for an Acom 1500 any time soon!”. Technically I was correct, it wasn’t any time soon. In […]

Telnet: dxspider.co.uk:7300 There are many DX Cluster nodes out there and to be fair, they’re all very similar. They all connect into the same network and they all offer pretty much the same services. I make no claims that my node is better than any others but it does have a lot going for it […]

QSOs made: 2,022DXCC entities worked: 141New DXCC entities worked: 4Total DXCC worked and confirmed: 286 Solar cycle 25 is really starting to ramp up now and this is demonstrated clearly by the fact that for the first time in many years, the country I’ve worked the most is the USA with 436 QSOs. Unsurprisingly, 15m is […]

I’ll kick off with the statistics for the whole of 2021 and then go into the details. QSOs made: 8,265Unique QSOs made: 5,776Average QSOs per day: 22.6Days missed: 0 <- This is the most important statistic, it means that QSO365 #3 was a success. DXCC entities worked: 168New DXCC entities worked: 1Total DXCC worked and […]

A short while ago, the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was announced. The original Pi Zero and the Zero W are widely used in MMDVM based hotspots and the new Zero 2 W is a direct, drop in replacement. The most obvious question is whether you need to replace your Pi Zero with a […]