UK Antennas 20m End Fed on Test and more 145mhz FM activity – 23/05/2023

Another enjoyable evening of Ham Radio at the Club this evening. With news breaking that Chippenham will hopefully soon have it’s own DMR Repeater (GB7WW) there was a lot of excitement about this new project.

Tonight’s HF operating used a new antenna, a UK Antenna’s 20m end fed with the Kevlar wire upgrade. On test with our IC-7300 SWR was <1:2:1 on 14.200Mhz and the internal ATU worked fine on 40m/17/15&12m bands.

Jenni M0HZT our Club Secretary worked several stations on 20 & 17m.

Jenni operating HF as GX3VRE

Meanwhile our regular 2m FM activation continued apace with half a dozen stations in our log book this week. Best DX being George G8AOJ in Coleford.

Phil 2E0CXH brought some Chinese handhelds in for programming but only one was updated as the version of Chirp we used did not have a UV10R Programme. Nice radio Phil but it wasn’t to be this week.

Jack M0PLS recently took part in his first 2m SSB contest and was keen to share his successes. Jack made 31 144mhz QSOs and his best DX was Sheffield. Not bad for 50w and a 9 element tonna!

Gary M0OTL provided advice on rotator servicing and shared his knowledge on how to bring a broken one back in to service.

Club member Mike 2E0OND provided us with QSOs on 2m FM and also 20m SSB. Great to hear you’re on the mend Mike.

UK Antennas 20m End Fed on the drive on mount and Spiderbeam 12m mast.

Well that’s about it for this week. Another enjoyable evening spent with friends. Great to see Karen M3KIR and Vicki M3HUI back at the Club after a period of absence.

73 till next time. Have a great week folks!

GX3VRE was on the Air 16 May 23

Tonight at the Club we operated both HF and VHF. Brian G6HUI arrived early and set up the Hawkins 20m Vertical with Alan G6YCG. SWR was perfect and the scene was set for some HF Ops.

Hawkins antenna on the Fibreglass Pole

Meanwhile on 2m Jon G0IUE set to work on S20 and called CQ working 3 stations, Mike 2E0OND, Eddie G6MJG and Vic G7RRQ. Nice signals all round.

Alan G6YCG was keen to check signals from GB7BS and focused on the SW Cluster DMR Tuesday Net from Andover and he reported plenty of stations active on the network. Joined by Phil 2E0CXH and John 2E0GTQ Alan demonstrated the DMR signals from the Cluster and explained to Phil and John how it worked.

Meanwhile back on HF Brian worked several stations including Mike 2E0OND nearby in Chippenham and several overseas stations.

Brian operating as GX3VRE

This week we also had the 5/8 wave 10/12m Hawkins with us and at 8.30pm we swapped out the 20m one for 10m. Brian and Jon quickly worked a number of stations from South America and demonstrated the benefits of 28mhz with improving conditions. No Sporadic E but good F’s to Brazil and beyond.

Our faithful ICOM IC-7300 busy working the DX on 10m.

That’s about it for this week. Stay tuned for more updates next time round. Best 73 to all.