******** The Official amateur radio thread ********

Painting the repaired top mast section today, not worth galvanizing the inserted tubular section. I finished welding it up yesterday and it was a bit of a nightmare keeping it all straight and true. So hopefully a magnificent 60 foot erection tomorrow, don't you just love Saturdays ;)

I am now an official expert on the original tube specification and construction techniques for Strumech / Versatower masts, much good may it do me ... And gobsmacked at today's price of Galvafroid cold galvanizing paint :( Had to buy just a small tin, it was that or not eat next week!

I am giving it another week for the ground water table to drop some more, then digging the holes for the satellite dish post and struts, I am getting a bit old for mixing 2 cubic meters by hand so have blagged the loan of my pal's concrete mixer. I have probably enough sand and stone here, so not worth getting ready mixed.
 
Radio telescopes sound interesting. I haven;t done much Ham radio I got a bit bored of the silence with the odd chat here VHF/UHF. HF to noisy. DMR not much at all, also having nothing to talk about. Sometimes people star conversations with me about things I have no interest in.

I'm into Astronomy. I'm not an Astronomer by any means but I've always been interested in Space related things. I wonder if I can build something to where I can get live images from the Mars rover or something?
 
Retro6 said:
HF to noisy
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Tried running any of the data modes, there's still a bit of activity on RTTY/PSK even though FT8 is the data king these days.

The bands are waking up nicely as we move into cycle 25 and with the Es season coming, there will be plenty of signals on 10m which won't be as noisy as the lower bands.

Chris Wilson said:
Painting the repaired top mast section today, not worth galvanizing the inserted tubular section. I finished welding it up yesterday and it was a bit of a nightmare keeping it all straight and true. So hopefully a magnificent 60 foot erection tomorrow, don't you just love Saturdays ;)
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Yesterday (Friday) was my Saturday. One end of the 20m element on my hex had come off at the centre posts so I dropped the mast, fixed it and got it back up in time for WPX this weekend and spent a couple of hours this morning just tuning around and working some of the more distant stations that were about. No real DX but plenty from both north and south america along with a fair few far east as well. 15m was nicely active and at time of writing this, 20m is still heaving.
 
I managed to get the main post and the tripod support leg bases concreted in a couple of weeks ago, using just over 2 tonnes of concrete. Easter gave me the chance of getting the dish itself up and very roughly aligned. Now I have to machine the parts for the LNB and transmitter aerial supports and legs. All hardware is stainless, dish is 3.2 meter overall diameter. Much still to do, but the heavy work is now done. Needless to say my wife just loves this new obelisk :)

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Upgraded the radio a few weeks ago and loving it so far . Also got a new antenna which passed the station managers approval !! Need a bigger garden to do anything else :P

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The 101 is highly acclaimed, a very nice set up! Is it the V dipole that's new? What bands does it cover?

I now need to get my cubical quad back up after it was badly damaged in the last high winds. The mast is repaired and back aloft, but I was anxious to get the satellite dish hardware concreted in during the dry spell when the ground water was fairly low.
 
Chris Wilson said:
The 101 is highly acclaimed, a very nice set up! Is it the V dipole that's new? What bands does it cover?

I now need to get my cubical quad back up after it was badly damaged in the last high winds. The mast is repaired and back aloft, but I was anxious to get the satellite dish hardware concreted in during the dry spell when the ground water was fairly low.
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The dipole is made by Pro-sis-tel in Italy . Covers 10/15/20 and 40m
 
Feek said:
Go for it!
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I was actually thinking about you yesterday. I now work at NPL and one of our labs is an Anechoic Chamber. Yesterday we had an open day and I had a proper nosey around, proper interesting stuff, you'd love it.

Here's a photo (from their site however, weren't allowed to take photos):

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(Yes, the white thing is a mobile phone signal antenna).
 
Debating installing my Yaesu FTM400 in my Golf R. Just don't know whether I dare attempt putting wire through the firewall...! Can't think of any other way of getting it powered to the car battery...
 
arjgrundy said:
Could be a plan. Just looking for an idiots guide of how best to do it
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YouTube/Google for your make model and year I’m sure something on there.

You could tap into cig lighter. I did on my BMW 1 series. I added a relay off it linked to the ignition. This way radio only comes on and off with the car. Saves running out of battery.
 
Erm yeah that’s hard to pick one said:
YouTube/Google for your make model and year I’m sure something on there.

You could tap into cig lighter. I did on my BMW 1 series. I added a relay off it linked to the ignition. This way radio only comes on and off with the car. Saves running out of battery.
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Yeah that's not a bad idea. Always makes me cringe with a newish car doing things like this.. haha
 
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