Blackpool Rally 2022 attendance confirmed and possible activation of Blackpool tower (not with an unfiltered Baofeng)

So I have made arrangements to be at the NARSA rally at Blackpool on the 24th April, I will be spending that weekend in Blackpool at the Norbreck Castle Hotel, and I plan to go up to the top of Blackpool Tower and do some operating, following up on Lewis M3HHY's "Baofeng the fatal flaw" video's technical aspect, that being Baofeng radios lack front-end filtering or it's woefully inadequate, whereas my Yaesu FT2D should be a little better up there but of course all radios are subject to desense from strong out-of-band signals.

So to add some extra help to get rid of the nasty stuff I will be getting hold of a SOTABeams bandpass filter that screws into the antenna socket of the radio and the antenna then screws onto that, the idea here being that this filters out the worst of the offending out-of-band signals, these being broadcast and commercial from the top of Blackpool Tower.

I will be beaconing APRS from up on the tower should I make it up there as my FT2D can do that, of course this depends on weather as the top of the tower is usually closed during really bad weather and my previous visit to Blackpool did not take me up the tower for this very reason and I was hoping this was going to happen in 2020 but certain virus issues got in the way as we know.

I look forward to the weekend and if I make it up the tower and can get through the mush at the top contacting stations far and wide and poitentially as far as GD (Isle of Man) and you'll see my results and the rally on my YouTube channel after the rally

73 de M0WNU

The fatal flaw of cheap Chinese radios for 2m and 70cm

YouTuber 'Ringway Manchester', Lewis M3HHY, posted a video of himself and another amateur attempting to make contacts on 2-meters simplex from Blackpool Tower, something I myself wanted to do but decided against and, as Lewis revealed, I too would have failed as on the day I had only a Baofeng with me.

Radios made by Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu all have good front end filtering on them and a superheterodyne receiver, with a couple of the really cheap Yaesu radios being an exception on the latter, cheap Chinese radios tend to have a direct conversion receiver and poor filtering, as I demonstrated with my Leixen VV-898 this leads to interference from out of band signals.

Lewis had this problem from Blackpool Tower on a Baofeng UV-5R and another Baofeng which I believe was a UV-82, 10 stations came back to Lewis' calls but he was not able to hear them on either radio.

the other part of the problem is that there are antennas on Blackpool tower, to higher powered transmitters, though these are higher up than what the public are allowed and should have not caused a problem in theory, as I plan to get hold of a Yaesu HT (or an analogue Icom or Kenwood) hopefully before next year's Blackpool rally I hope to be able to give this a go myself and see if a Japanese made radio will be able to do what the Baofeng cannot do, work contacts from Blackpool Tower, also I really hope Lewis gives this another go with another radio, as that is a video I would very much enjoy seeing.

Chinese radios, you do get what you pay for, though don't get me wrong, I do advocate the Baofeng radios as they are very good starter radios for the newly licensed that cannot afford a radio by one of the big three.

Search YouTube for 'Ringway Manchester' for Lewis' video from Blackpool Tower and you'll see the difficulties he was having, after all the tower should make a very ideal place to get into the repeater on the Isle of Man, just Baofeng skimp on the filtering and use an SDR chip in the radios though all radios are prone to front end overload and desense from strong transmissions.

73 de 2E0EIJ