National Hamfest 2016 - The car gets the all-clear to travel to Newark

Today was the day I submitted my current car for MOT (after removing the antenna and disconnecting the Yaesu FTM-400XDE from the power and taking the control head off the windscreen), and it passed with a clean bill of health, just one advisory but that I will keep an eye on, so it is all clear to travel for the second time to Newark.

Last year I had only just got the car (only a couple of weeks prior to the Hamfest), and I had no Amateur radio equipment installed, most I had was my handies, now I have the Yaesu FTM-400XDE installed I may be able to use the talk in in the Newark area, I believe this should be on S22 as normal if they have one, but I can find out later.

So with no other issues I should be at the Hamfest on the 1st October.


73 de M6RSQ

Results of the Bank Holiday of radio

As mentioned in my previous post I decided to play with System Fusion and WIRES-X, with some success, I initially positioned myself close to the repeater closest to the home QTH, GB3CD, and managed to make contact with a station over near Chester, which was nice but I was hoping to make contacts in the US but I run out of time, I was also hoping for simplex contacts and through the repeater with WIRES-X disconnected, but I can try again another time, as I managed to be able to open the WIRES-X on GB3CD from my usual radio playground near the home QTH I now don't have to drive for miles to play with it all being well, and I found a couple of American nodes of interest on the WIRES-X website but one of them was offline on Sunday but I can try again

Bank Holiday Monday I decided to see if I could expand mobile RF based APRS beyond my Yaesu FTM-400XDE, so I cobbled together a cable out of the speaker mic supplied with my Wouxun as it was hopeless audio wise for Amateur radio, a piece of cable I had lying about, and a suitable connector obtained from Maplin the same day, the results of this endeavour are on YouTube and attached below to this post, this has inspired me to pick up a Bluetooth TNC to make it permanent, along with another Baofeng handheld as I still wish to keep two HTs available for voice just in case one day my significant other gets her Amateur radio licence too,

So, Yesterday's endeavours are below, I'll leave you to watch

73 de M6RSQ

Bank Holiday weekend of radio

So, the final Bank holiday weekend of the year before Christmas, a good excuse to do radio, my interest is System Fusion,WIRES-X, IRLP and Echolink so I am more than likely going to be found on 2 metres and 70cm, naturally I will start with WIRES-X and pick up from last week, and see how that goes, later progress to IRLP and Echolink on GB3IR, WIRES-X will be on GB3CD unless there are other close nodes nearby which I can find out on Yaesu's WIRES-X website

IRLP is something that I have just started to use, I tried during a quiet time on the repeater the other night to connect to British repeaters on the system for the time being, I will branch out to American and Canadian nodes later on, my first attempt resulted in no contact on the first one I tried and the second one did not work, so worth a try later on.

Right, it is time for me to have a coffee and prepare for going out, I'll be monitoring GB3IR while I have my coffee so you can give me a shout if you so wish as long as you are licensed

73 de M6RSQ

WIRES-X

Yesterday I had a go with WIRES-X, the Internet linking system that goes with Yaesu's System Fusion, with limited success, I was only really able to get it to work as I'd like closer to GB3CD, which meant a bit of a drive to position myself close to it (as I am limited to 5 watts on the radio at present).

I managed to get into the WIRES-X system no problem once I was close enough, and have a look at some of the rooms, but no one came back to me, however it did disconnect mid-way though using it so I decided at this point to drive home and put some calls out on the repeater as normal to see if anyone else in the area was on with System Fusion, no replies, my final call was FM but I had not realised this until I glanced at the display of the radio mid transmission, I intend to give WIRES-X another go and also see if I can suggest that someone puts a node on down here, of course on 2-metres because I have discovered that repeaters and gateways on 70cm are impossible to put on air in the area around my home QTH.

I look forward to having a QSO with you on WIRES-X soon, should also be a perfect way to get my inaugural System Fusion QSO as this has not happened no matter how much I have tried.

73 de M6RSQ