During our Road Trip to Scotland I hope to make at least a couple of QSOs from the summit of Ben Nevis to activate SOTA GM/WS-001.

I will be taking my IC-706MKIIG, a couple of sealed lead-acid batteries and will most probably be active on Sunday 12 August around 1300 UTC on following frequencies and modes:

• 14 MHz SSB (using inverted V)
• 144.300 MHz SSB (3el Yagi)
• 145.500 MHz FM

Please keep an eye on SOTAwatch Alerts, I will post updates there.

Submanager work is a voluntary one; submanagers only receive £25 per year from RSGB as a small incentive. The submanager then sorts the cards by callsigns and stores them. Any ham that wants to receive QSL cards via the bureau can do so – whether or not they are a memeber of RSGB – simply by sending self-addressed stamped envelopes (SASE) to their submanager.

Now, a few weeks ago I found out that my submanager, Simon, GØSJH, had given up the position due to extra work commitments. I immediately asked at RSGB QSL Bureau if the position was still available and expressed interest to take over. Quite luckily a person approached before did not reply, so the position was awarded to me. I was confirmed as a QSL Submanager for callsign block MØPAA-MØZZZ on 23 July 2007. I’m happy I will be able to contribute to the amateur radio society here in the UK!

More information can be found on the page QSL for MØPAA-MØZZZ.

As you may have read in my “Me and Amateur Radio” introductory posts, I have already taken part in one big contest – 2006 CQ WW SSB Contest. However, it was my first shot at contesting and I was only operating for a few hours. This time I wanted to take part properly, take it a bit more seriously.

IARU HF Championship is a world wide contest organised by ARRL (American Radio Relay League, main amateur radio organisation in the USA) on behalf of IARU (International Amateur Radio Union). It is on every second weekend in July for full 24 hours – from 12:00noon GMT on Saturday to 11:59am on Sunday. I wanted to try to operate as much as possible, with only short breaks. In the end I spent about 22½ hours at the radio. Honestly, about 5am I was thinking about giving up and going to sleep for at least hour and a half because all the activity dies down around that time and it’s not as easy to find a station not worked before. My hope was to make 1000 contacts, but I found that to be a bit too optimistic ;) Especially because I was too “shy” to call CQ (general call, soliciting contact) with low power (only 100 W). But when I finally started calling CQ on 10 and 15 metres, I found it to be very productive – it saved my score and brought me about 200 contacts in the last few hours.

In the end I only (?) made 623 contacts with a total of 163 multipliers (ITU zones and HQ stations /stations set up by IARU member organisations like RSGB in the UK, ARRL in the USA or CRC in the Czech Republic/) resulting in a claimed score of 275,238. Now let’s just wait and see if I placed reasonably well at least in the low power category in the UK :)

The highlight of the contest was that I finally worked VK (Australia) – and even on two bands! The first contact was with VK4WIA on 20 metres around midnight via long path – it means by aiming away from the station, over the “other side of the globe” :) In certain times, this long path, although being substantially longer (short path to VK is about 17,000 km – long path therefore about 23,000 km), can present much lower attenuation to the signal: 1) it goes more over the oceans, and 2) it goes more over the daylight area of the globe. The other contact was with VK7GK on 40 metres – very surprising for me as I only have rotatable end-loaded dipole quite low over the ground.I made the contact about 6am – if I wanted to go to bed before that, this really cheered me up and gave me new enthusiasm.

I really enjoyed participating in IARU HF and will definitely be looking forward to the next big contest – the earliest being RSGB IOTA Contest on 28/29 July. Hope to meet you there! :-)

From the previous part you know I had a G5RV aerial. It was my main aerial for quite some time and was working pretty well. I was just trying to get it higher, so I used longer fishing rods – which on the other hand snapped more easily in strong winds. After some time, my lady boss decided our roof needs to be checked and repaired. At the same time she got worried about excessive load the aerial mast could put on the chimney. I was trying to argue it’s just normal TV aerial mast with a light weight fishing pole, but to no avail and in the end I had to take the aerial down.

As I only had simple wire aerials until then I started thinking about a better, directional aerial with gain for higher bands – so called beam. After some time I bought an old 3 band (20, 15 and 10 metres) 3 element beam made by Mosley off eBay. It was pretty cheap, but not in a great condition with some parts missing. Anyway, I was able to fix it and put it up on top of a very light (and flimsy) 8 metre portable aluminium telescopic mast. I used a cheap crappy TV rotator, but it was sort of working :-) You can see how it looked in our tiny garden on the right.

OK, so I had a tribander – but not for long. One day this winter we woke up and everything was lovely white! Unbelievable, we had about 5 centimetres of snow… It was really funny to watch English drivers with summer tyres on in action, struggling even with light slopes ;) Anyway, it lasted only about 4 days – and when the snow got wet, it was quite heavy too. Unfortunately it was too much load for the light mast; it bent and the beam fell down.

After some time without an aerial again I realized that if I want a good one, I will inevitably have to spend some money. When I accepted the fact, spending itself was quite painless :-) I found a very smart aerial design on the Internet – a Spiderbeam. It’s basically a type of yagi aerial, a beam, but instead of traditional straight elements (which then need to be made of aluminium tubing) its base is a fibreglass cross (boom and spreader) supporting wire elements that are bent from their centre on the boom to the end of the spreader. The big advantage is much lower weight and wind loading. Computer modelling also allows for the beam to have full size elements (monoband) – the multiband aerial is in fact a number (in my case 5) of single band multi-element beams. I have ordered 5 band kit – my Spiderbeam is actually a 3 element beam on 20 metres, 2 el on 17, 3 el on 15, 2 el on 12 and 4 el on 10. With 14 elements in total, this aerial still weighs just about 7 kg (15 lbs)! I ordered much sturdier 15 metre aluminium telescopic mast at the same time and also bought a Yaesu G-650 rotator to swing this beast – it might not look too large in the photo, but the main cross measures 10 x 10 metres :) I’ve had it up for about 4 months now and I must say I’m impressed with its performance! It’s so much easier to work DX with a proper aerial and it’s a great feeling to break through a pile-up with just 100 W. It might sound like a marketing talk, but be sure it’s true. In those 4 months I worked over 100 new DXCC countries! At the moment my logging program says I worked 153 countries and 79 of them are confirmed – 21 to go for my DXCC :-)

Before I finish, a few words about radios. As you know, my first HF radio was Icom IC-706MKIIG. It’s a nice small radio with detachable front panel, ideal for mobile/portable operation. However, because it’s small not too many controls fit on the panel and apart from the very basic functions everything else must be set in menu. Also, as it combines HF/6 m/2 m and 70 cm in such a compact case it must inevitably be a design compromise. When I become more active, I naturally started thinking about getting a “bigger”, better radio. First one I found on eBay for a good price was Icom IC-746 (see picture on the left) – according to reviews at eHam.net it’s a solid performing radio. I must say I was very happy with it – it’s really a lot easier to work with a proper desktop radio. However, I kept looking and after some time I found my “dream radio” for sale for a reasonable price – Icom IC-756PROIII (on the left). It’s a former Icom’s top-of-the-line radio (now superseded by IC-7800/7700) with large colour LC display, full DSP IF filtering (no additional filters to buy) and real-time spectrum scope. It’s a real pleasure working with it!

If you made it up to this point – congratulations to your patience! I’m sorry for another long post but there is simply so much to write about… Can’t help it, I’m just crazy about amateur radio :)

Let me finish with an amateur radio greeting – VY 73 Petr

In July 2005 we moved to the UK for some time as you probably already know :) Quite naturally it wasn’t possible for me to take the rig with me straight away (and we originally planned to stay here just for 2 months anyway…), but upon returning from our first visit back home in September I brought my rig with me. I installed a 40 metre dipole sloping from our flat on 11th floor to a nearby tree. I was able to make a couple of contacts on this aerial until the house manager noticed the aerial, made it a big issue and I had to take it down immediately. I was operating as M/OK1THA (M/ prefix meaning operation from a different country, M stands for England in this case).

Fortunately, we moved to a much nicer place soon – to a small bungalow near the riverside in Stourport-on-Severn. It has a small garden (and even a small pond :-), so there is some space for experimenting. It is actually on the same land as our lady boss’ house (she generously offered the rental to us), but fortunately she’s been very understanding to my antenna-building experiments so far.

The first reasonable aerial I put up was G5RV, a simple multi-band wire antenna designed by Louis Varney, G5RV who first described it in the November 1966 issue of RSGB Bulletin. Today, after more than 40 years, it is still very popular due to its simplicity and decent performance on multiple bands. The full size (102′, ie. 31.1 m) version works pretty well on all bands from 80 to 10 metres. I installed it on a glass fibre telescopic pole attached to a metal TV mast on the roof with the centre at about 10 metres over the roof. I attached the legs to a nearby tree and a wooden phone mast opposite to it. At this height, I was quite happy with its performance. I made a couple of hundreds of contacts mainly on lower bands (simply because I didn’t have much time to operate during the day and in winter, the higher bands are closed at night). One night the propagation on the 80 metre band (3.5 MHz) was so good that I was able to call CQ (general call) even with my 100 W and had about 20 North American stations come back to my call in an hour. What an incredible experience for me back then! :-)

As I become more active on the bands, I started thinking about applying for a UK call sign. Czech Republic takes part in the CEPT/HAREC agreement, so it is simply possible to get the local amateur radio license and call sign issued on the basis of HAREC certificate in many European countries. However, I needed to apply for a new Czech license first as it expired in September 2005. When the new one arrived, I immediately applied for a UK license and was issued a call sign MØWTF.

Shortly after receiving my new call sign I took part in my first big contest. Contests are amateur radio competitions taking place either locally or worldwide and are on for anything from couple of hours to two full days (48 hours). I took part in CQ World Wide DX Contest, SSB part, which belongs to one of the biggest events. Last year’s CQWW SSB started on Saturday 28 October at 0:00 GMT and ended on Sunday 29 October at 23:59. It is a world wide contest, so amateurs from around the globe take part in the contest at the same time. The goal is to make as many contacts (or QSOs as hams say) with other amateurs from as many different countries as possible. Anyway, I wasn’t taking the contest too seriously, I just wanted to try it so I spent only a couple of hours at my rig. I made 336 contacts with amateurs from 56 countries. It was a great fun, the bands were incredibly crowded all the time! Next time I’m going to take it more seriously and see how many contacts am I able to make.

This concludes the second part of the introduction – and there is still more to come :-)

In case you haven’t heard about it yet – amateur radio, often called ham radio, is a hobby enjoyed by about six million people throughout the world. An amateur radio operator, also known as a ham or radio amateur, uses advanced radio equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs for recreation and self-training or public service (emergency or disaster communication). To become a ham and be able to communicate on the designated frequencies (familiarly called bands), you have to pass an exam at your local authority (CTU in Czech Republic, Ofcom in the UK, FCC in the US). Then you would be issued a call sign which you would use to identify yourself during communication.

I was first licensed in the Czech Republic in summer 2000 and I received a call sign OK1THA (spelled as “oskar kilo one tango hotel alpha”, or “Oto Karel jedna Tomas Helena Adam” using the international or Czech phonetic alphabet). At that time, certain license classes were in place. I decided to take an exam for class C which comprised of a technical test (mostly electronics), legal test (restrictions and legal requirements) and practical Morse code test. Quite surprisingly I passed all the parts of the test although the only one I was confident with was the first one.

After officially becoming a ham I had a problem getting hold of a suitable transceiver (receiver-transmitter, or rig for short) to actually start making contacts. I didn’t have enough knowledge and equipment to build one myself and at the same time didn’t have enough money to be able to afford a professional one from one of the leading brands (Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood). Therefore it wasn’t until late 2003 that I made my first amateur radio contact at last. By that time I was able to save some money, so I looked around eBay and found a used Icom IC-706MKIIG for a reasonable price from an American seller. Fortunately my friend Zuzka was working in the US on a Work & Travel stay so she brought me the rig and saved me the trouble with shipping.

Shortly after that I finally started making some contacts! At first on 2 metre band (145 MHz) in FM mode on a local repeater just to get used to the way the contacts work. I couldn’t wait working on the HF (high frequency, 3-30 MHz) as the way it works is completely different and in favourable conditions you can make worldwide contacts quite easily. The trouble then was an aerial – for these bands, antennas need to be quite bulky (e.g. 20 metres long for 7 MHz band) to be efficient and at that time I was living at a student dormitory Strahov. The best opportunity to get on HF was during Christmas 2003. Shortly after Boxing Day we usually go to our house in Sumava near the German border. So this time, I packed my rig, power supply and about a kilometre of cables with me :) Before that I had prepared a simple multi-band aerial called Windom (it is basically an off-centre fed dipole – two lengths of wire connected to a coaxial cable via a simple 4:1 transformer). I put it up as soon as we arrived at our house – and on 26 December 2003 at 15:53 GMT I made my very first HF contact with OK1DOT on 80 m band in SSB mode. During next couple of days (and mostly nights :) I made contacts with amateurs in a lot of European countries including Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, UK, Ireland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Ukraine and more. Oh, what a thrill! :-) Now, these are merely local EU contacts for me… but back then, I was simply amazed!

After that I was struggling with putting up an antenna again. For some time I had at least a dipole for 40 metres on which I made a couple of tens of contacts, including my first DX (a long distance contact, on HF it means basically a contact with a different continent) – I worked an Israeli station 4X6HQ on 15 metres. Then I had to take my antenna down, so I wasn’t active on the bands at all.

I see this article is getting rather long, so you can read more in the following one if you’re not too bored yet :-)