Advanced exam results

as you know I took my Advanced exam on the 14th August, and I am pleased to inform you that the good news is that I passed the exam, after chasing it up with RSGB a short while ago, because they had already sent out the paperwork, to my old address, they were able to give me my candidate number to log into Ofcom's website and get my full licence, I now hold the callsign M0WNU, the letters being from the callsign of Charles Ring W3NU SK in his memory as I know he would have been proud of me to make it to this point and now I have.

I will get that callsign aired as soon as I am able to do so.

Though now I am duly licensed I will have to put my igate plans on hold because of an emergency situation involving my XYL which involved a trip out to France and Germany, inconveniently while I was waiting my results, however I hope to have the issue rectified before I know it, it has been a stressful time and this has come as some great news.

73 de M0WNU

hopefully saving some money on the QO-100 RX project

now in an earlier post I mentioned about my intent to attempt to receive QO-100 using off-the-shelf hardware for Sky UK's television service, I've not come across any cheap dishes anywhere however I could potentially construct the Bias-T out of parts I have lying around as all I need to do this is a ceramic capacitor to block DC but pass RF and an inductor to to pass DC and block RF, preferably inside a metal enclosure (I have an Altoids tin in mind for this), and what I intend to do is splice the existing Sky coaxial cable and hard wire this into the homebrew Bias-T with a BNC output for the receiver, the RTL-SDR.

The LNB can obviously be tested however it won't really receive anything because it is not fitted to a suitable dish, I just need to feed it with 12-volts, my bench supply can do 13.8v which should be fine for this task, if nothing goes bang it is good, otherwise it is scrap.

So all I will need now is a suitable satellite dish and away I go, however with an old Sky LNB I do not expect the best results, but we will see, this hobby is about experimenting after all.

73 de 2E0EIJ

Advanced exam taken

Last night, on day of posting, I went up to the local club, Colburn & Richmondshire District Amateur Radio Society, and sat my Advanced exam, assuming the paperwork is sent on time, as it is a paper exam and not one of the newer online ones as we don't have a club PC to use nor Internet access it means I have to wait to see if the big envelope comes through the door, however I am feeling chilled out because it's no good me worrying myself over this.

This means it could be only days now before I operate as 2E0EIJ for the final time though that callsign, as well as M6RSQ, will remain valid and I can still use them, however should I get the big envelope I am eager to start operating with a full callsign, M0, straight away.

I have a callsign in mind already and have done for some time, the reason for the callsign I had in mind will be explained should it actually be available and should I receive the big envelope.

The XYL has shown support too, and even wants to go on to get the advanced, of course that would then be under the new syllabus, however with my XYL spending a year in DL to do some studies not related to radio in any way,, it may be a while before that happens.

The next 10 days should be quite exciting, though who knows, I could hear back from RSGB much sooner and if it is the big envelope I will get then I will obviously update my callsign on here, my YouTube, my twitter, and, lastly, QRZ.com, as well as, of course, all the amateur radio related services that require my callsign such as DMR, D-STAR, Echolink and APRS.

73 de 2E0EIJ (for how much longer though?)

setting up receive for QO-100 at my QTH

The Es'hail-2 geostationary satellite, the first of its kind to carry an Amateur radio payload, designated QO-100, has been in orbit for some time now, and I listen to it now and again on the BATC WebSDR hosted at Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall and have got a rough idea of when it is active, I've had a look at how to receive it and it would appear it can be received with a Sky UK 60cm Minidish and LNB connected into the RTL-SDR, however the RTL-SDRs that can power accessories on the coax only can do so with 5v, a satellite LNB requires either 12v or 18v, the polarisation is selected using these two voltages, 12v for vertical, for the narrowband transponder, which I am interested in here, 18v for horizontal, this calls for a Bias-t which essentially supplies voltage to an accessory up the coax however at the same time prevents that voltage going into the receiver (or transceiver in some cases), a Bias-t simply has a capacitor to block voltage and an inductor to block RF).

LNBs generally have a LO of 9.75 GHz unless a tone is fed to them as well, which is not required for QO-100 as the 9.75 GHz LO is suitable, the downlink frequencies being around 10.4 GHz (though generally these LNBs specify a minimum frequency of 10.7 GHz), so on the RTL-SDR for me to receive the narrowband transponder requires me to take it's frequency of 10489MHz and deduct 9750MHz, this should be around 739MHz.

As I already have an LNB, which is designed for an oval shaped dish, the Sky UK Minidish, the biggest size they are in is 60cm for the north of the country is what I need, though there is a dish and LNB already on the building for my flat I cannot use this as it needs to stay set for the Astra 2 Satellites used for Sky UK and Freesat, so I need to buy another dish and this is what I had in mind as the LNB I have, a quad-output Visiblewave unit with Sky branding on the sticker, will fit this with no modification, this gives me an option to receive both transponders as the unit had a length of twin cable terminated in F male connectors, which I intend to splice and fit a Bias-T inline for each, powered at 12V and 18V respectively, however I'd need two RTL-SDRs of good quality, the NooElec NESDR SMArt is a perfect choice as it is more frequency stable than the standard stick, as reference I'll use the Goonhilly hosted WebSDR to ensure things are on frequency, LNB skew and dish alignment is obtainable from BATC.

There should be a YouTube video of my success (or failure) of receiving QO-100 with a Sky Minidish, nice to experiment with, if not I've got a portable satellite dish to take camping with me for television use.

73 de 2E0EIJ

Belcom AMR-217B, my advanced exam, and a couple of other things.

I visited the Hambleton Amateur Radio Society last night on the day of posting this, they were having a junk sale, my guest was with me and they also saw a few things in the junk that they liked and thought was cool, one of these was a Belcom AMR-217B VHF/FM Monitor, which I picked up for £5 and that money went back into that club's funds, along with a Heathkit meter and a set of spanners that my guest liked, nice to have some Heathkit stuff in the shack, though I'll have to make it electrically sound first.

I have some pics of the scanner receiver, front, inside and back, there is a sticker on the back that suggests it was sold at one point by a CB shop in Shildon, County Durham which as far as I am aware is actually still trading to this day

The receiver front panel, cardboard to protect tablecloth

Inside the unit, looks to be in good order, all but 5 of the crystal positions are occupied

The bank of crystals in close up, a couple of these don't have an RX frequency on them however I will be investigating this later to find out what frequencies these are on, though the rest suggest 2-meters

The rear panel, showing a serial number, a slightly damaged AC input connector, a fuse holder, a Uniden CB type power connector wired inside as per Uniden CBs, and an SO239 connector for the antenna

I plugged the unit into my power supply using the President Grant II's power lead and the unit fired up and scanned through the channels and a receive test done without the antenna plugged in worked fine, I'll be doing some further testing with this at a later date.

I have my Advanced exam booked for the 14th August so now have a deadline to work to regarding this, I hope to have it passed at the first time of asking and will be revising and doing two outstanding mock exams ahead of time.

I have had some external stress as well over last weekend so little time for radio and related however I am settled and the cause of the stress is now sorted, and I can now focus on my guest and radio

I also with help from my guest got our CB antenna up higher so I can be in communications range via radio from a bit further until, of course, they get their M7 which may be a couple of years yet sadly.

And that should be everything up to date for now

73 de 2E0EIJ

A creative solution to my 11-meter station problems.

Myself and my guest jointly cobbled together an antenna for 11-meters that we have dubbed the 'spider antenna', this takes the old DV27 on biscuit tin concept, adds radials made from galvanised steel wire used in gardens, 4 of these folded in half under the mount, which is a Sirio fixed body mount, this whole assembly is screwed onto the top of the wood.

The antenna was erected by way of cable ties to the window frame, and the SWR is actually not too bad considering how low and close to the building it is, the antenna is my springer/orbitor type antenna which has not seen use since 2015, an adapter converts the SO239 on the mount to take the orbitor's threaded connector, the whip was found to be seized up so a bit of fiddling got it out and got the SWR down (it was still set for the 106's roof).

not sure if it operates up on 10 but it seems fine on 11.

My guest and I settled on UK channel 11, the channel number is a reference to Netflix series 'Stranger Things' which features CB heavily.

73 de 26CT730/2E0EIJ

Quiet on the posting and radio front

Due to having a guest over at present I've been taken away from my radio activities, however I am still trying to get active when I can as my guest has in the past expressed an interest in the radio hobby.

I am also in the process of tidying up the shack, with some help, and hope to get that done soon too and a perhaps a stealth antenna for 11-meters to get my guest on the air and in contact with me without resorting to Skype.

I also as a result have not finished the video on the Yaesu FT2D, and just about to finish off my work for the Advanced exam and hope to get that passed soon so I can do all the things I still want to do.


I hope to get more active on air in the coming weeks

73 de 2E0EIJ