January 22nd, 2020 Tonight I met Salvo, DK3SE, in the ON4KST chat. Salvo recently became QRV again on 13 cm. He uses a 1.8 m dish and has about 50 W at the feed. As his location is on the southern slopes of the Black Forrest, our direct path is blocked by solid rock. Even […]
November 1st, 2023 The DARC in Germany offers its members to form interest groups independent from their membership in the local clubs (OVs). Hams can gather in these groups for e.g., discussions, exchange of information and lectures. The club offers an own internet platform called TREFF.DARC. So the following information is of interest for DARC […]
June 3rd, 2023 In Spring 2022 I installed a new antenna system for 2 m, 70 cm and 23 cm at my second home in Ireland. In the last days I could experience a long duration tropospheric opening to the continent. On May 23rd I noticed a large ducting area to the north, shown in […]
December 21st, 2021 The QSO BANAT Association organizes FT8 Activity Contests every 1st and 2nd Wednesday each month on 2 m and 70 cm. From 2022 on they added a 23 cm Activity Contest on the 3rd Wednesday. In respect, that FT8 is not useful with propagation modes like aircraft scatter on this band due […]
2021-11-18 Complainment about the need of having an elevated location and large antennas to become QRV on 23 cm with an IC-9700 inspired me to compare my regular equipment of: Flex-1500 TV 144 MHz TV 1296 MHz LNA 0.35 dB NF 3 m EcoFlex 15 Ringfeed 3 m dish on top of the mast with […]
November 29th, 2020 As predicted in the Hepburn forecast, there happened an opening to the west tonight. No really breathtaking distances, but at least three new squares on 2 m (two of them I already worked on 23 cm 😉 ) IN86, IN87 and IN89. On 23 cm I tried with Grant, G1SDX in IO80FL, […]
September 25th, 2020 A question in a Facebook group about a GPDSO for an IC-9700 to be used on 23 cm for FT8 inspired me for a quick test. As I use my IC-9700 for 2 m and 70 cm only from home, I connected a dummy load to the 23 cm antenna socket. Next […]
June 23, 2020 PI7RMD is on air for quite a while now on 13 cm. I already spotted it on May 3rd, 2020. Looking at the entry at beaconspot.uk wondered, why no one else sent any spots. So I had a look for it today and got some nice reflections via aircraft scatter. PI7RMD is […]
July 7th, 2019 The last contest, I participated, was in June 2018. There wasn´t much time for amateur radio since. So I was lucky to dive into contesting this weekend mainly on 23 and 13 cm, as usual, but had some QSOs on 2 m, 70 cm and 3 cm as well. I am happy […]
June 7th, 2019 When looking for EA2TZ/B during a beacon check a couple of days ago, I mentioned a signal with strong doppler shift about a khz below. As I like the challenge to identify new beacons, I started monitoring it. It became a kind of a nightmare, trying to to catch the beacons callsign. […]