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Category Archives: Equipment
Rebuilding the VHF shack
As you may have read we have two shacks at our station. One serves as the HF/6 m shack and is usually used by Uwe, DL3BQA. The other one we call the VHF shack which holds a permanent station for … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment, General stuff
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July VHF Contest ’19
Another July contest in the books. Condx were rather average most of the time. The night hours brought some nice DX so the average per QSO was 420 km which is unusually high. Around 400 km/QSO is quite normal for … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Contesting, Equipment, Propagation, Tropo, VHF
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New toys
Heiko, DG1BHA, and I decided to buy an Icom IC-9700 for the club QTH to replace our old venerable IC-7400 that served as our main 2 m radio for quite some years. We did some modifications to the latter for … Continue reading
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Rotator interface by remoteqth.com
No condx today so I used the time to finally cobble the rotator interface together that I bought from remoteqth.com last December together with the Band Decoder II. It’s a neat kit not too expensive including a nice enclosure. I … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment, PIC projects
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Old & new, strange QRM plus some 4 m contacts
Arrived at the station early this afternoon. Brought the IC-7300 along for WPX-CW this weekend as well as (hopefully!) some fun on 4 m during the next few days (a week of holidays next week). Second radio I took with … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment, Propagation, QRP, Sporadic E, VHF
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Some youth work
Well, I didn’t post much personal information in this blog yet. After all it’s about amateur radio and related activities and not my personal life. But with this blog entry both combine perfectly so let’s get a little more personal. … Continue reading
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Band decoder Mk2 by remoteqth.com
In my recent CQ WWDX CW 2018 blog post I moaned about needing to do all station switching like BPFs, antennas, etc. manually when using the IC-7300. Driving home after the contest I made up my mind how to solve … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment, PIC projects
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Remote Control Microphone for the IC-7300 & Co.
Well, today FUNKAMATEUR magazine 1/2019 was in the post-box and as it also featured a preview for issue 2/2019 which will include a new article by me I can probably already reveal some information here, too. đ In one of … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment, General stuff, PIC projects
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CQ WWDX CW 2018
This time a part time participation only. While driving the 700 km to the station Thursday night I somehow caught a painful tonsilitis. đ Waking up Friday morning I already had a sore throat. Fever and shivers added during the … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting, Equipment
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Weekend (VHF) activities … some tropo again
As the YL was working weekend shifts in QRL I had some more spare time than usual this weekend. đ Decided to spend the time in the shack and finally start working on a new project idea I’ve been thinking … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment, PIC projects, Propagation, Tropo, VHF
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A transverter interface for the ‘7300
After the quite good experience with the Icom IC-7300 during WPX-CW I thought it might be a nice idea to also try it out with a transverter on 2 m in the big VHF contest in two weeks. When searching … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting, Equipment, VHF
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CQ WPX CW 2018 & further 7300 experiences
Another CQ WPX CW is in the books! As usual I decided to do a 10 m single band operation. I just like the band, especially in sunspot minimum it offers a variety of propagation modes most people are not … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Contesting, Equipment, Propagation, Sporadic E
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IC-7300 – the first “overflow” situation ;-)
Well, yesterday I finally had the first situation with the OVF indicator making it onto the display – frontend ADC overflow! I was wondering why I got it on 6 m and first suspected some strong ES opening with TV/broadcast … Continue reading
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IC-7300 – first impressions
Now having played with the radio for a few days it’s maybe time to give some feedback on my first impressions. Setup was a breeze! Be it all the menu settings, recording voice files for the internal voicekeyer, programming the … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Equipment, Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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Current antennas
The perfect blue sky weather called for taking an up-to-date photo of our antennas today: Left to right: Tower with a 6 ele GĂKSC OWA for 15 m and an 8 ele YU7EF for 6 m at about 14 m … Continue reading
IC-7300 – a new radio is “in da house” ;-)
Recently I sold my Elecraft KX3. While it was not a bad radio (except a few glitches like the poor speaker) it was mostly collecting dust. I do not do that many portable ops anymore after having built quite a … Continue reading
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CQ WWDX SSB 2017
Well, this one was a real mixed experience! Got to the station Friday evening. Peter, DM5DX, was already there having some fun chasing all the different DXpeditions. After I had installed all of my stuff I turned on my K3 … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Contesting, Equipment
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CW-Fieldday & WRTC antenna tests
Spent the weekend up in JO73 again. Met with Paul, DL5CW, Falk, DK7YY and locals Heiko, DG1BHA, and Uwe, DL3BQA. Wanted to do some antenna setup testing for WRTC 2018Â which Paul is the Antenna Director for. Lots of stuff to … Continue reading
Posted in Antennas, Contesting, Equipment
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Antenna work on Aruba
Quite good progress on antenna work during the last two days. Pictured left are Ben, DL6RAI (left), and John, W2GD (right), on two of the towers. They both arrived Monday evening here on Aruba to take care of the antennas. Ben is … Continue reading
Posted in Antennas, Contesting, Equipment, Expeditions, General stuff
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STEW PERRY TBDC 2015
After being at the station anyway I decided to take some time to also install my RRC-Micro again which was just laying around after some initial tests and a review in FUNKAMATEUR magazine a few years ago. I really do … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting, Equipment
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