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

GB3HG success

I am pleased to report that I am able to access GB3HG and access it well from my home QTH, had a short QSO with a station in York before the Baofeng's battery hit critical.  You may now be asking why I did not switch to the Wouxun, this was for one very good reason, my previous attempt to access GB3HG was with the Baofeng, and in the interest of a fair run I thought it best I stick to this radio for today.

Tomorrow hopefully will see another go on HG, this time the radio will be my Leixen VV-898 in the car, paired to the cheap Moonraker antenna on the roof, the rig can hear HG no problems in Richmond and Catterick, so it's only fair to see if the rig can open HG.

I will let you know how I get on.


73 de M6RSQ

GB3HG access tests

As regular readers may or may not know, I am within range of two 2-meter repeaters, GB3IR, which I can hit very easily with 1 watt as it's just down the road from my QTH, and GB3HG on Sutton Bank near Thirsk, so today I decided to give HG a go.

Test conditions was set up using Baofeng UV-5RC Plus with stock antenna inside my flat.

Keying up at 1 watt was not sufficient enough to open HG, releasing the key there was no response. 5 watts appeared to be enough to open the repeater, upon releasing the key the repeater appeared to be open, however there was no one else listening to give me a report on how well the repeater was actually hearing me or even if it was at 5 watts so I may give it another go, for fairness I will use the same radio with the same antenna with the same power output.

Another nearby repeater is GB3CD but I am not within range of it at my home QTH as far as I know (was unable to hear it before they switched it over to Yaesu System Fusion, not tried since but suspect I still cannot hear it), though it doesn't matter if CD is out of range as it is on Echolink like GB3IR so can do one of two things, connect IR to CD or connect to CD through my phone or computer(s)

I'll post more on this as time permits

73 de M6RSQ