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More new squares

10/12/2010

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Some more tropo last night, so I spent time on 432 again looking for new stuff, but there wasn’t much around that I hadn’t worked before. I did manage a few OZs and DLs, but didn’t want to make too much noise with my little boy in bed.  I had been hanging out on the ON4KST message system earlier in the day and during a chat with Martin GM6VXB he kindly agreed that we could try a sked if conditions looked promising.

Around 9.30pm I stuck the antenna to the north and found the GB3ANG beacon at 559 – the first time I have heard it on 432.  Back on KST Martin was good to his word and we had a quick QSO on 70cm followed by a more difficult one on 2m.

A GM shouldn’t be a big deal, but Martin is in IO97aq and as the picture below shows, there isn’t much land in IO97 for a station to sit in! 

Picture
So, Martin, thanks a lot for looking for me – IO97 was new on two bands. More to come in the 432 UKAC contest tonight?
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Tropo opening

10/11/2010

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The weather here has been fine and dry over the weekend suggesting that we were under a high pressure weather system. High pressure can mean tropo openings on the VHF bands and a quick look at the Hepburn forecast on Friday suggested that there could be some fun ahead.

Picture
I realised that the radio station was untested since I changed from PLT to a wifi bridge between the operating position and radio shack, so I spent an hour on Saturday making sure everything worked and also reinstalled the amplifiers following VHF NFD (which was only 3 months ago!). Luckily for me most of the system worked first time and I only had to spend a few minutes with the soldering iron.

I didn’t hear much activity on Saturday, but on Sunday morning 144MHz started to open between Northern G/GM and Northern Europe (SM/SP/DL) and by dusk I too had propagation. There wasn’t much new for me on 2m, so I concentrated on 432MHz, working 8 stations in SM, OZ, DL and SP. 
Picture
ODX was SP1NQN at 1186Km, with four other contacts over 1000Km. I did briefly hear LY2WR at 1664Km, but he wasn’t strong enough with me for a QSO. It looks like there is a day or two of high pressure left so let’s hope for some more!

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    A few notes on recent radio activity by Steve, M0BPQ.

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