Group Donation

A couple of our members went to do some antenna work for Darwin G3JAH this weekend. Darwin is a "white stick" amateur and is unable to sort out any work himself nowadays. He has very kindly donated an ex-army section mast to the group which can be used as two 19' sections or as a 38' mast. Our thanks to Darwin for his kind donation.

FT897/857 Meter (G4LDS version)

Recently I upgraded my station to a FT897D, which like most rigs these days are fully menu controlled and can be operated via your PC.

To ensure that I can fully understand and operate the rig, I not only read the handbook (how many can say that!) as well as joined the yahoo FT897 group. Having read on the yahoo group about the FTmeter from LDG, I investigated further. The 897/857 has an output of 1mA to drive an external analogue meter. The LDG FTmeter is a 500µA meter in a box measuring 3.6W x 3.0D x 2.6H with a backlight that requires 10-14V @100mA. The meter comes with a 3.5mm mono plug on a one meter cable for connecting to the rig. (The meter is in series with a 10k trim pot). There is also an on-off switch and 2.5mm socket for the DC supply for the backlight. Cost of unit in UK = over £42! It can measure on Rx: S meter, discriminator, DC voltage or 1 mA calibration “signal”, on Tx: it can measure SWR, Power out, ALC or DC voltage: selectable via the rigs menu.

My version.

I decided to make a version without a backlight so I then purchased on e-Bay a 1mA meter for around £5-00 a nip to Maplin’s to buy a suitable case for around £3-50. I downloaded a suitable scale from the Yahoo group and glued over the original scale. Connecting the meter to the FT987, the menu allows you to generate a 1mA source to calibrate the meter (ie if using the 500µA meter, set to FSD using the pot). As you can see the attached picture my meter.

The meter I used has a black surround and the option of a backlight is not possible. However if you use a meter that can have backlighting (like the commercial version of this meter), then a 2.5mm DC panel mounting socket (Maplin JK10L)

plug 2.5 x 5.5mm long (L49ay)

a push on push off switch (N91ar)

backlight (PG77Jr) and a series resistor of around 270-500 ohms and cable is all that’s needed.

Chris

G4LDS

A Fabulous Rally

We had a great time at this year's Blackpool Rally. This year it was held a month later than normal but was very well attended indeed. Our tables were very busy indeed and we managed to raise a good amount of money to pay for our repairs and other projects we have "on the go". Plenty of our members found time to help with the stewarding of the event and also to spend time behind our tables whilst other members were socialising or spending their hard earned cash. One of the star attractions was Ian's Begali Morse paddle which seemed to be the centre of attention. The Elecraft display was also much admired.
Everybody was very tired by mid afternoon but it was well worth it. For a couple of our members it was their first big radio rally and Faris was hardly able to walk under his weight of purchases!! Our thanks go to the organisers and everybody who made the day a great success!

Quad Bike Mobile

Here is a  photo that I took this afternoon at the Portable location on
North End Scar. I am using a 5 element 2 metre SOTA Beam vertically
polarised, as I only had my Yaesu VX7r with me. It will go up horizontal by
just changing it round on the pole, only takes a few seconds. I have just
lashed it to the back rack on the ATV with cycling toe clip straps, they are
very useful for portable work as they are massively strong and have a quick
release mechanism on them.

I was limited with time, otherwise I would have taken my 817 with me which
is much better particularly now that I have a power supply from the ATV,
next time I will get more organised.

Barrie G1JYB

Rally This Weekend

This Sunday is the Blackpool Rally at Norbreck Castle Hotel. Sands will be there with two display tables and a selling table. We will have a range of Elecraft Transceivers on show and also a collection of vintage radios. We are hoping to be in the main hall. Please come and see us, just look for our banner! It is always a pleasure to catch up with friends both old and new.
It has been a busy week for all of us. We have been back up to the contest site to recover the radios and antennas. We have also taken delivery of our Club Clothing, our thanks to John GW0SYN of Logo king for a superb job! Tomorrow will be spent sorting out various boxes to take to the rally!

WPX Musings

This weekend's contest has been really enjoyable. After the disasters at the start of the month, we all needed some fun. As both our masts are now considerably shorter than they were and the Spiderbeam is still out of commission, we decided to work with simple verticals and to put up some low dipoles for 40, 80 and top band. The plan was to have some fun, play with the verticals and give the new members a taste of contesting. We were not planning on a serious entry.

There is a saying in the country about the month of March which says 'in like a lion, out like a lamb' which basically means if the month starts with strong winds and storms, it will end gently. Well when we put the aerials up the day before the contest, you would not have believed it! It blew and blew. It was also rather chilly!
Anyway, by the end of the day we had verticals up for 80m, 40m and 20m. The 80m was based on an 18m fibreglass mast from Spiderbeam. It was designed for our use on our Jura dx-pedition and worked just as well here. The 40m vertical was based on a 12m fibreglass mast from Spiderbeam and was a simple wire with 4 x 5m raised radials. This aerial was our best performer over the weekend but propagation was good on 40m. The 20m vertical was based on a simple cheap fibreglass pole using 4 x 5m raised radials.
These verticals were so good we did not use the 40m or 80m dipoles at all! We were also pleasantly surprised by the top band dipole which returned about 75 contacts over the weekend. Not bad for a half wave dipole whose centre was only at about 25 feet! We joked about it being a short beverage :)

Starting at midnight, the low bands did very well and VK, Greenland and Iceland went into the log in short order. The morning brought a beautiful calm day with sunshine whic was fabulous. We soon realised that we had nothing that would work 15m very well and had not really expected an opening. However we managed to use the 40m dipole to make a couple of contacts. This was rectified the following morning by throwing some more wire at another fibreglass pole.
It only took us about 15 minutes to make and trim this quick and dirty aerial but our first contact was Tanzania!

I think we were all astounded by how well the verticals worked and we now plan to look at phased verticals to give us some 'front to back' rejection.

40m was wonderful giving us several VK's, ZL, OX and other contacts in Hawaii, Andorra, East Malaysia and the States. But all bands were good and we had a ball. We finished on 753 Q's and just under 750k points in the Multi-Single category without the use of a second mult station which was a lot more than we expected. We broke several pile-ups with the verticals and a maximum of 400W (sometimes less as the bottles are getting a bit past their best in the 811!) most notably Andorra which had a massive pile-up..

All in all we had a great time and it just shows you what can be achieved with simple aerials and legal power. There was a good bit of banter between the group members on who had the best contacts and who slept far too long :)

Thanks go once again to Barrie, G1JYB for the use of a fabulous contest site and a really nice warm shed for the shack!

Ian G0VGS

And So To Bed!

Sunny Sunday

A beautiful day in North Yorkshire for a change! All is working well and we have also managed to put up an antenna for 15m as the band opened fairly early on Saturday. We have had some super contacts so far and everybody is enjoying themselves, whether it's operating the station or just enjoying the company.....

The 40m Vertical Rocks!

What a night! Already worked several Australian stations, Greenland , Iceland and other exotic DX. We can safely say that the 40m vertical works very well indeed! Kev and Brian are now off to bed and are letting the morning shift take over.....

Windy....Must Be Contest Time!

No it's not Time Team!!

The CQ WW WPX contest is this weekend and guess what? Its blowing a gale again! We are up at the contest site erecting some verticals for the weekend. The plan is to put up separate verticals for 20/40/80 meters. For once this will not be a serious contest for us but more a time for experimentation with antennas and a chance for our newer members to get used to taking part in contests. Again this is a long contest of 48 hours with British Summer Time coming into force in the early hours of Sunday morning. On a good note the sun is shining and the forecast is for the wind to abate by Sunday. Barry has promised homemade Chilli Con Carne for the troops on Saturday evening! It feels like its going to be a good weekend whatever happens.....

Constructing Simple Verticals

A lovely sunny day was ideal to start constructing some verticals for contesting and portable work. Using the tools we had to hand we managed to put together two verticals, one for 40 meters and one for 20 meters. Both are very lightweight and very inexpensive to build. We took the 20 meter vertical down to the shoreline and it performed beautifully. Stateside was very good and plenty of DX to be heard. Gary's Elecraft K2 is ideal for this sort of thing, just 10 watts and a built in battery gives a good few hours of operation!

Looking on the Funny Side!

We were all devastated, nay heartbroken when we saw the extent of the damage to our masts after 75mph + winds last saturday night, yet one XYL saw a funny side to our situation....... It may have taken a week for her to think of this but I have to admit it even brought a smile to my face.

Whilst thinking of us and being genuinely sorry that antenna's and masts were bought down in a tangled heap, she would like you to know that...

Her shed is still standing!!

G0RDH

Welcome to Chris

Welcome to Chris G4LDS who officially joined the membership yesterday. Chris has helped a lot over the last week or two and has plenty of skills to bring to Sands. Lets hope the next few contests are a little less stressful with a few less problems.

Damage Assessment

It's still blowing a gale up here today and it's freezing as well!

Surveying the bent 50' Spidermast

This is one of the fibreglass Spiderbeam spreaders!

Aluminum bent and sheared!

Abandon Ship!

Last night we were again hit by another storm, driving rain and severe gusts. Both masts and the Spiderbeam again suffered damage. It was at this point we decided it was time to abandon the contest and go home to our warm beds. The contest has been hard work and its a shame that a lot of work was put into the set up of the station by our members. These things, unfortunately, happen! Today we will assess the damage but it looks as if its going to be quite expensive to replace the parts for both masts. At least we have a local radio rally coming up in the next few months which will help raise our funds.