Post-Ripon rally and pre-Blackpool rally post

The Ripon rally took place yesterday yet nothing immediately caught my attention, I did buy a new coax stripper and a SMA-M to SO239 adaptor that appears to be of better quality than the one I had in which the centre pin sheared off in the SMA socket on my NooElec NESDR SMArt. and the stealth antennas book by the RSGB for members price of course.

I do have video footage that I am working on, it isn’t much because the rally was far too crowded to film effectively at, and one gentleman did try to sell me another camera but having two JVC Everio camcorders already I don’t need another camcorder, just some action cams to fit to the car for a new element I am introducing to my videos (which will be seen in the Ripon rally video)

Radios I took on the day were pretty much all except the UV-5R, BF888 and all my PMR446 annd CB gear, the radio that ultimately went into the rally was the AnyTone AT-D868UV, and the very company that sold me it was actually at Ripon selling it, the QYT KT-8900D, and Baofeng speaker mics and a Bluetooth adaptor, the speaker mics unfortunately were all Kenwood fitting, I require a multi-pin type for the network radio, which just so happened to be in the car anyway, and the Retevis RT87 which is actually waterproof to a degree, a Blackpool purchase I think.

With me being in Blackpool for the weekend of the Blackpool rally, I plan to do some radio while there, now if you recall I wrote about a video done by Lewis M3HHY on his Ringway Manchester channel, in which he and another Amateur went to the top of Blackpool Tower and attempted to put out calls from there but were hampered due to the poor design of the Baofeng UV5R and UV82 series of radios (the latter of which my GT-5 is a reskinned variant of), Lewis also later went on to test the Retevis RT87 (which is partly why I ended up buying it in the first place) and he did this from a place called Werneth Low, which is a high point within Greater Manchester full of transmitters, he found the radio handled that environment with no big deal, so I intend to take it, along with my Wouxun KG-UVD1P and my AnyTone AT-D868UV up Blackpool Tower to see if they get absolutely battered by the RF environment up there OR they overcome what Baofengs, based on the RDA1846 radio on a chip and with dire front-end filtering (or a seeming lack of it) cannot do, hopefully they will prove better than the Baofengs and just in the interest of fairness the GT-5 and the UV5RC Plus will be going up there too, otherwise the operating conditions from there are good if you don’t factor the transmission antennas at the extreme top of Blackpool tower

Prior to this all I had was Baofengs and the Wouxun, though when I last went over to Blackpool for the rally I solely had the GT-5 with me and though I did go up the tower I did not operate, and as it turns out I chose wisely as I would have suffered the same problems as Lewis did.

I also plan to add a bit of the music of Andy Kirby, who as it turns out is a fellow Amateur with an M6 callsign I cannot remember off the top of my head. to some of my videos, subject to usage rights of course, I have seen his music used in Ringway Manchester videos and a couple of videos by ‘knoxieman’ G7LNK, so I do wonder whether they asked him for permission or it is simply a case of the music can be used as long as it is credited to the source, I’ll have to look this up or contact Andy myself.

73 de 2E0EIJ