Practical Wireless Magazine March 2024
English | 72 pages | pdf | 29.08 MB
Here in Somerset at least, the weather has been pretty miserable for much of the winter. High winds blew down my 20m Spiderpole, but fortunately it survived the experience – however, I have yet to put it back up.
And my SteppIR was taken down at my son’s place late last year while he was doing some work close by, and hasn’t gone back up yet because the ground is so waterlogged! Hopefully, all will be put right before too long but only after I get back from East Africa – I will be off in February to join Alan G3XAQ in Uganda for the ARRL CW Contest, and we then travel to Kenya for a ‘CW Dinner’ being organised by Andy 5Z4VJ (G3AB). I hope to be able to report on the trip in due course.
>Ofcom Consultation
As you will see in our Letters pages, I have been taken to task on my interpretation of the rules regarding regional secondary locators (RSLs). I apologise if I have misled you, the readers, but I still find the wording confusing! And Steve G0FUW has told me he has spotted a few inconsistencies and omissions in the wording of the new licence proposals, which he has pointed out to Ofcom. As the leader of the (very successful) Bath Distance Learning courses, Steve is also concerned about the timings of any changes insofar as the training they offer needs to reflect changes to the licence examinations resulting from the new regulations.
I hope you enjoy Chris’s tale – as well as being a long-time radio amateur, he is also an experienced and enthusiastic pilot (having been trained for service in the South African reserve Air Force) and, more recently, has taken to some serious running (Park Runs and marathons). He was also here in the UK over the Christmas/New Year period, to add some more ‘countries’ to his collection of places from which he has operated radio and flown – expect his write-up on that one in a couple of months or so.
Antennas and 10m
I hope you are enjoying the monthly Antennas column from Keith G4MIU. Over the past couple of months he has described building a two-element Yagi for the 10m band, a band that should really be coming into its own over the next year or two as we reach the peak of the emerging sunspot cycle. I have always enjoyed the 10m band when it is open, with worldwide propagation possible from modest stations. I recall an author in Short Wave Magazine referring to 10m disparagingly as ‘a gimmick band’ simply because worldwide contacts can be made very easily when it’s open but, to my mind, that’s what makes the band so much fun. After I got married and we bought our first house, with a very limited garden, I constructed a two-element quad antenna for 10m out of garden canes – it must have cost me all of about £2.50. Being a quad, it had a very short ‘wingspan’ so it fitted nicely into the space available and was light enough to be mounted on top of a 20ft steel pole which I could hand rotate from ground level. It was my first ‘gain’ antenna and completely transformed my operating – with 100W I really could ‘work the world’. I never looked back!
Rallies
Finally, do you find our Rallies listings helpful? We rely on being notified of upcoming events, usually by the organisers – the good news is that I have recently received notices of several rallies coming up over the summer period.
DonFieldG3XTT
Editor, Practical Wireless Magazine
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