2E0RMI - page 2
My final HF aerial for the moment is a home-brew 20 metre aerial. This is made from the old Chelmsford Calling broadcast aerial, extended to 18' by one of Michael's fishing pole rods with a wire taped to the side. To the radials I have connected 3 x 18' length wires, & the aerial is fixed to the fascia board with a redundant satellite bracket. Seems to work well on 20 metres, although I don't have a lot to compare it with until I sort out the other HF aerial.
The 3 HF aerials feed into an MFJ 949E ATU & from here to the Icom IC-718.
Also taking an important place in the shack is my Logik IR100 wifi radio - not amateur radio, but for anyone interested in radio broadcasting & programming, this is an unbelievably good piece of equipment. Through the 'Reciva' website
(see my links page) this enables reception of over 12,000 broadcast stations via your internet wifi connection, & includes stations from across the world as well as amateur internet stations. Probably the way radio will develop in the future, or is this the betamax / minidisc of radio ? Either way, this means I can listen to obscure clandestine radio stations or major broadcast stations from the USA to New Zealand with ease - excellent if you're interested in listening to the programmes as much as or more than the actual DXing.
Well folks - that's all for now on the amateur radio pages - I will add more here in the future when the rest of the site has progressed & when my experiments have gone further. Oh yes - I've also now fixed the computer in the shack to echolink - happy to receive calls - my node number is 400094.
Some more random bits & pieces...
Anyone recognise the 1970's sinclair 2000 amp ? This takes the audio from the computer in the shack & still works well...
Here's another picture of the 2 metre slim jim on the 18' scaffold pole in the chimney stack - the feed cable passes up through the centre of the pole after entering the stack through a hole drilled from the roof. At the base of the pole there is an access panel on the outside, & in the access chamber the pole base sits on a bracket in the centre (to stop the pole wobbling around...).
27/09/08 - with friends from P.A.D.A.R.S. at the Welsh Highland Railway in Porthmadog, North Wales, as GB0WHR for 'railways on the air' weekend. A very short stint on 2m whilst we waited to catch the Cambrian Line train to Tywyn. Alan was having more success than me on HF !
Our train journey was spectacular, along the coast line through Harlech, Barmouth & on to Tywyn. Look what we found when we got off the train at Tywyn - Ann just didn't believe me when I said I had no idea there was such an impressive aerial system here ! Funny how some of our journeys end up in radio related places - I put it down to coincidence...
The BBC medium wave aerial array at Tywyn for 882kHz (BBC Wales) & 990kHz (Radio 5 Live) plus a rather ominous sign at the site entrance.
