Long overdue update

Due to personal reasons radio has not been at the front of my mind, nor has a lot of things to be honest aside from work where I have been exceptionally busy, my last radio activity was the "big net" for a year of legal AM/SSB CB, I set up at Tan hill but had no replies whatsoever, was also still too windy to put up the T2LT and my fibreglass mast is in need of a little TLC.

On the Amateur front, I am still attending the club, however not been on air so much lately, however I am making some major changed to the shack, first and foremost attaching the computer monitor to a wall mount to free up some extra desk space, the main 7A PSU has been moved from the shelves to the desk, above it is an ageing Unilab variable voltage PSU with both AC and DC outputs though I've not connected any load to this yet, and on top of those is my Midland BaseCamp446.

The Moonraker FA5000 CB will be removed from the shack, as it still works I may sell it on, my Midland Alan 78 Plus Multi B may also be sold on as I have my President Grant II and may be able to pick up another legal AM/FM/SSB CB as these come onto the market through the usual outlets.

Antenna wise, only my loft CB antenna and tuner at the moment, I still have the part-finished 446 bazooka antenna but have not put it on air or even tuned it properly, I still have a slim-Jim for 2-meters lying about but I was thinking for the sake of discretion to build an extremely lightweight 2-meter groundplane antenna out of nothing more than some bits of copper wire and an SO239 chassis socket, a new 2-meter rig is needed in the shack so I don't have to worry about handies and the batteries running out, I may be able to pick a used but working unit up from the National Hamfest next month.

Going back to the CB rig side of things, my Grant 2 developed an unusual issue during the "big net" weekend back in June, normally on SSB there is no power unless you speak, not according to the S-meter on the Grant 2, which was generating some sort of noise, this may have been the mic as it has since stopped after I did some fiddling, on AM and FM audio seemed to be fine, but despite this the fiddling with the mic seemed to have cured the problem for now.

I am making steady progress to get back into more radio, and maybe get my significant other interested, after all if we're both licensed we can do anything Amateur radio related together, and I would like that as I do know there are plenty of couples out there that are both licensed, so why not me and my significant other

Right, I'm caught up, probably be next posting from or about the National Hamfest unless I have some major QSOs in the mean time, also I may get some HF work done if I can get a suitable HF antenna built and a suitable rig acquired, another hamfest one I think.

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730