2metre contacts

New square last night, 2metre FT8, only a tiny bit of land in this one.
French stations down in this area seemed to be working Es to Scandinavia.
This is a tough direction for me as there are 400feet of Downs in the way.

18:12 UTC F8BON IN86 90Watts to a Create Logperiodic

Great stuff there Mike and good to see a 2 metre contact posting going.

I've just set my old Yaesu FT290r back up, made an antenna switch so I can switch over between horizontal and vertical and finishing a digi-mode interface for it. Having a play with an EDZ dipole but now toying with stacking it for a Lazy H.

I may well be adding some contacts to this posting soon.

Give it a  go Victor.
Will be nice to see what you can work.

FT8
13:11utc F8BON IN86 450km, not much land in this grid.

Worked Pat before and signals bit dire this time at -18 and -19, not bad
I suppose beaming through 400feet of chalk.

Never had a squeak on 2m only contact ft8 that is was with a m8 trying it out.
I am in the shack early morning but lock up around 6pm to 7pm so miss a lot of the night action lol.

I normally beam east and most times I can hear some PA, ON and the odd DL under what would be called flat conditions, sigs are in the -17 to -20 range.
If I beam south I can hear close F stations and sometimes ones further down, about middle of France.
I hear quite a few Gs off the side in IO90, 91, 92, sometimes 93 and one or two GWs in 81.
Quite often hear nothing from any where.

Some evenings it appears that there is a lift but nowt on SSB.

You really need a horizontal beam Alan but I've picked up a fair bit with my Halo and the new Horizontal EDZ.
(Need to undo my FT290r SSB voice processor mod though as my FT8 signal is un-decodable!)

Worth listening out on the first Wednesday of the month for the RSGB FT8 evening which runs much in the same vein as the SSB first Tuesday :-

https://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/readcal.pl


All good fun and can't wait to get my backside into gear for some 2m log entries.

Wonderful to see some 2m postings 

Only really use 2m from home  for chasing SOTA mainly regions G-NP / SP/ LD and GW-NW , usually just FM but do have the capability for SSB and data modes 

For some reason always manage to work anybody on the Great Orme Llandudno 5/9 lol which is getting on for 90 miles away , must just be a near perfect line of sight 

Craig

Ps Antennas used atm 

Comet GP-1 dual band 
Diamond X6000 tri band mounted on top of the tower above hf yagi 
Comet 6 element mono band yagi ( H and E plain )

Always love hearing of your SOTA activities Craig.  

Not much goes on down here in the flats though!


My FT290r 2.5 Watts doesn't carry far but the receive is great and although I've been shopping around for VHF/UHF SSB gear it's pretty much thin on the ground. Got to agree with the sentiment regards 2m postings though, always good to see.

You have got me thinking now Victor.
I have a rotator under my bench ????????.

Yesterday on FT8.
Other stations were working into SM,OH,EU and SP but nowt here.

15:31utc OZ5NJ JO45

FT8 My full 10w, but only into my homemade wire j-pole which was laying horizontal on the loft floor (5m agl approx). I'm dumbfounded. The direction it was orientated, my signal would have had to pass through all the junk on the loft floor, the header tank, and then through two neighbours' lofts containing who knows what, and then a brick wall before even getting out into the open. In short the same direction I do rubbish in on CB and HF I guess for the same reasons.

10:47utc F4FET JO00 275km

I'm happy

Well done Neal.

(I have a feeling that another radio has joined the bedside cabinet? )

Amazing what can be achieved on 2m and especially with a bit of tropo on the go.

I'll have to pull my finger out and get my own VHF setup sorted again!


All the best mate,
Victor

SangueG wrote:

FT8 My full 10w, but only into my homemade wire j-pole which was laying horizontal on the loft floor (5m agl approx). I'm dumbfounded. The direction it was orientated, my signal would have had to pass through all the junk on the loft floor, the header tank, and then through two neighbours' lofts containing who knows what, and then a brick wall before even getting out into the open. In short the same direction I do rubbish in on CB and HF I guess for the same reasons.

10:47utc F4FET JO00 275km

I'm happy

Well done.
You just never know, always worth a go.

Victor wrote:

Well done Neal.

(I have a feeling that another radio has joined the bedside cabinet? )

Amazing what can be achieved on 2m and especially with a bit of tropo on the go.

I'll have to pull my finger out and get my own VHF setup sorted again!


All the best mate,
Victor

Tropo appears on 2metre FT8 when nothing else is going on.
If you hear it go for it because it disappears as quick as it appears.

Victor wrote:

(I have a feeling that another radio has joined the bedside cabinet? )

Indeed. A few bits have had to be packed away as part of the deal as I was starting to get the corner of the room quite messy with additional cabling for trying digi modes and other things.. For my birthday my better half and children clubbed together and bought me a relative of CT220 Alan's twins. Over the moon to receive it. Almost anything I could want in one small box. I know half the world seem to be using these, but for me it's a massive jump up in equipment and not something I could ordinarily just buy myself on a whim. The G90 needs to stay though as the 991A doesn't go as low in power that I like to use sometimes, and I want to do some real life receive comparisons.. the G90 actually rates higher on the Sherwood list, it is newer tech I guess than the Yaesu.

After the French contact, am looking forward to see what else might pop up on 2m.

Nice one Neal and good to hear about. I hope the Yaesu serves you well.

I've never taken much notice of the Sherwood ratings or other 'top trumps' lists but I just took a look and my old 757gx is surprisingly there.......down the bottom of the list somewhere!


As you know, a radio is nothing without a good antenna.

Some tropo to scandinavia yesterday afternoon but only managed one FT8 QSO.

16:07utc SM6VTZ JO58

There's been some awesome conditions over the weekend. I know I missed a lot of action as was busy doing family stuff for a good part of it. I managed to listen into a bit on the uv5r though on Saturday, sat in the car in Cricklade whilst my daughter was doing some dog training I was listening to very strong French stations coming through on PMR446. Could even make out quite clearly FT8 sounds on 2m and 70cm, or at least the best you can through an FM receiver.

Ecstatic to make a few distant 2m FT8 contacts though when I got the chance to operate the homebase. Quite a few UK contacts way out of my local community, and these few European which totally blew my mind..

Fri 3rd:
19:11utc F0GOW IN96 558km
21:00utc EA2XR IN83 933km

Sat 4th:
09:04utc EA1U IN83 931km
09:07utc EC2BBS IN93 929km
18:38utc EA1UR IN52 1059km

Definitely all about the conditions. Not using a beam, just this homemade wire horizontal j-pole in loft. Total cost £1.50. Not much to look at is it? lol



Did anyone else have any good contacts over the weekend?

Anyone with experience know if conditions like this happen often? What's the betting they subside for the contests on Tues evening

Awesome 2m contacts there Neal.  

(Especially with the loft mounted homebrew 'special'.  )


I still haven't pulled my finger out with regards VHF work after concentrating recently on my HF antenna setup. Really should as I have a Halo and EDZ antenna up there currently doing nothing! Postings like this from yourself and Mike are enough to spur me on now and then.

There's some good tropo prediction maps available online and I know that when I was last playing I used to listen out for the GB3VHF beacon. On my Halo I get it at S3 or so but when it jumps up to S9+ I know that there should be some fun going on up there!

Yesterday afternoon with almost a dead band.
FT8 90Watts to a DUAL 9elements on 2metres.

17:47utc MM0ABM IO75 just over 600km

Impressive stuff there Mike and looks like the new antenna is doing a fine job.

Some Sporadic Es Monday 5th June, missed a fair bit was doing tea.
Caught these two via FT8

17:29utc YO5AVN KN17
17:31utc UW8SM KN28

Caught some more Es in the evening of 29th June.
Two metres was going very well and others were working stuff not audible here.
But I had a nice session to Italy that gained some new grids.
All these are FT8 btw.

18:28 LZ2TDF KN13
19:06 IZ8YBS JM89
19:08 IU5PSY JN53
19:09 IZ8OFO JN70
19:11 IW0FFK JN61
19:12 IK0WMJ JN61
19:13 IK0FTA JN61
19:45 IK7UXY JN90

Another very good Two metre Es session this afternoon.
All the below via FT8

1707 9A7W JN65     
1656 E76C JN84        
1653 IV3GTH JN65       
1638 IZ7DPB JN80        
1636 IK7UXW JN80        
1633 9A7JCY JN74        
1626 9A2KS JN65       
1615 SV8PEX JM99        
1614 IW4EGP JN64         
1553 IK5RWX JN52       
1551 IW8FEN JN70