In September, I paid a visit to Bernard, F6GYH. Bernard lives in Fayl-Billot, which is about 15 minutes of driving from my French QTH. His location is excellent for VHF and up, because he has nearly 360 degrees unobstructed sight. Even with a tower of modest height, his antennas have a clear view to the… Continue reading »
A few days ago I worked PJ7/W9DR for a new entity on 6 metres. In the past, the entity was deleted because of the change in governmental structure. The contact with PJ7/W9DR was greatly appreciated! Looking W9DR up on QRZ.com led me to a nice video of his water cooled 6 metres amplifier, that runs… Continue reading »
After putting up the 5+5 element YU7EF 6/4 metre dual band antenna, I was curious how the new antenna performs. Although I realise that a real measurement requires quite a bit of effort, a simple comparison between the new antenna and an antenna with a more or less known performance at least gives a clue… Continue reading »
Last week, I put up a dual band antenna for 6 and 4 metres. It was difficult to decide what to build. Last year, I had separate antennas for both bands. Dual band antennas are attractive, because of lesser wind load and also because it leaves some room for other antennas. Another aspect was that… Continue reading »
A short while ago, I had problems with my antenna system on 20 metres. It took a while to trace the cause. In 2015, I “restarted” amateur radio and put up a dipole for 60 metres. After a while, I decided to consider options to become QRV on other bands as well. I tried a… Continue reading »
One of the latest developments is a parser/analyser for the ALL.TXT files that WSJT-X and JTDX create. The ALL.TXT file contains all sent and received messages and as I wanted to have a tool to retrieve the data in a structured way, I decided to write a parser. It is made in Visual Studio 6…. Continue reading »
Curiosity is one of my key drivers. Copying others is a dull game. Of course, sometimes, it is easier to make a copy than to create a bad lookalike, but in general, I prefer to explore unthreaded paths. That must be in my DNA:-) Thus, with the new 60 m allocation, these radio waves started… Continue reading »