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- Written by: Maintenance Guy
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Apologies, but as part of the migration of the website from Google Invisible reCAPTCHA to Cloudflare Turnstile, I broke it.
It's late and I need some sleep, so I'll come back to it when I get a moment. If you don't know what I'm on about, then don't worry. Just know that the contact forms for both 'General Enquiries' and 'Website Registration' are currently producing an ugly error.
Sorry about that, but it will be fixed soon!
Update
I gave up on Cloudflare. Way too complicated and time-consuming for such a small website as ours, so I did the sensible thing and farmed the task out to Jotform. I'll let them handle the CAPTCHA for us!
Should be fixed now, but I'll test it properly later this week. Still a little bit of tidying up to do too, with some broken redirects.
Berni M0XYF
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- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
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First, many thanks to Berni for making these notes possible. Last month’s illustrations that he found helped a great deal.
The first few days of July were quiet with my first DX with Philippines on the 3rd, then mostly locals till the 8th when Brazil, Asiatic Russia and Borneo went into the log. Close by Borneo I worked Hayling Island! Then San Salvador for a new one this year, the icing on the cake was C94RRC on Inhacamba Island off the Mozambique coast for a rare IOTA, AF-103.
On the evening of the 17th the same group were activating a second Mozambique island, AF-098. Their generator had gone AWOL the day before, so the team had a day on the beach. After much hunting around the bands, I heard a signal on 30M that was a steady strength, I set the computer to call in 'Fox & Hounds' mode and sat in front of the screen while the 'management' was watching England playing Sweden. After an hour I needed a short break for comfort and a beer. When I returned, the screen was showing my call with 'RR73'. Whooppee! Another new one in the log.
The weekend of the 26th and 27th was the annual IOTA contest that I like to have a go at, however this year I had to give it a miss. As a consolation prize, I was able to work the last two Brazilian subdivisions for the 'Worked All Brazil'. This is not too easy as some of the areas include the Amazon rain forest, and some very low inhabited coastal strips. So now to try for all the Argentine areas as my next challenge.
This month’s illustration (below) is from 9M1Z, not the card but the envelope! The stamp must have cost more than the $3 postage, however I doubt this is made of real gold.
So to sum up, another quiet month for DX but the Russian Polar ship is always worth a call.
Cheers & good DX, Chris
G4ZCS
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- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
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In my experience, June can some years be a bit dead for DX with only some local contacts, usually on the lower bands. This year seems to follow that trend. On 60m the first few contacts were; G0WSJ, on EU-005. EI8KN on EU-115. OJ0L on EU-053 and 7 other European mainland contacts.
Following on from my May edition, the postman had another surprise for me. I mentioned I had worked 9M6NA in East Malaysia on the 25th of May, well on the morning of the 9th of June the card arrived having been posted in Japan on the 4th. In the 'good old days' it took a year or more!
Illustrated is an example of the new electronic QSLs, however at the present time they are not accepted for the major awards schemes. But, they are still good to show friends and family who you have been contacting. In this case, Namibia in southern Africa.
On the 8th I managed to work Madagascar, a new one for the year, but try as I may, I couldn’t get a confirmed FT8 contact with T88TJ on Palau island.
It took until the 27th before I worked another new one for the year. Out of a dead band, a rising signal from JX appeared. Jan Mayen island is well north of Iceland and not heard too often in the UK. The only population is a team of Norwegians who run and maintain a metrological station and the airfield. This is good for IOTA as EU-022, and grid square IQ50.
Image credit: Gernot Hecker, 21.08.2005, licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (image scaled).
With not much to work on the bands, I have been looking back through the logbook. It is noticeable that The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which used to be quite rare has been a hot bed of new calls who seem to want to work everyone. Ukraine, likewise, is still very active in spite of their troubles. Islands appear regularly and this month I worked 6 EU, 3 AF, 2 AS and 3 NA.
Hopefully July will produce a better score and some real DX, as it is coming up to the DXpedition season.
Cheers
Chris G4ZCS
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Our President, Ken G3WYN has kindly offered to donate two straight Morse keys to MSARS members in an endeavour to promote more CW operation - first come, first served!
Please contact the Webmaster using the 'register' button on the quicklink menu above, or contact Ken directly if you already have his details.
--... ...--
Berni M0XYF
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I don’t know how many of my readers work HF but there have been many stations celebrating the centenary of the IARU with special calls. I didn't count the number I saw on air but a quick tally of 25 DXCCs is my rough score with more to come. Likewise, there are many remembering the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2 with over 200 Russians listed!
My perennial problem started again a week into the month with poor reception and loss of power. The main symptom was that testing with a CW carrier, I was watching the power meter dropping from 200W down to 100 in 10 seconds and down to 50W in 20 seconds. As usual I suspected the box down the garden, so a couple of trips out in the sunshine with an assortment of screwdrivers & spanners to check the antenna switches and the Balun. All seemed OK with no burning smell. Next, I checked the twin feeders and the exposed ends of the coax, again all was well. Then into the shack to inspect the HF choke and the ATU - still no visible fault.
Then the obvious! The PSU feeding the Amp’ was showing 13.4 volts instead of 13.8. The 12V car battery I use as a capacitor was showing little if any recharge. I took the lid off the PSU to have a look & found that the negative terminal was not even finger tight; it rattled when I shook it! The voltmeter is connected to the PCB side of the terminal so had not shown the drop in voltage with the key down. With the aid of an 11mm spanner I tightened all the connections. A quick test showed the PSU output back to 13.8V and a two-hour battery charge current of nearly 30 Amps! Problem solved, and all the systems have now been given a birthday check-up.
On another matter, I was reading an astronomical mag’ that was reviewing cycle 25. The general opinion is that we have just passed the peak. However, the huge storms we had last autumn might have distorted the data. So, I’ll keep taking advantage of conditions while they last.
Now to the DX. Over a two-week period in the middle of the month I managed to work a VK2, 11 Chinese, Chile, South Africa, Hong Kong, 5 Japanese, a (very) far-eastern Russian, 2 Taiwan, Cape Verde, Nicaragua, Iraq, Bonaire, and Mali.
The weekend of the 24th & 25th was the CQWW CW contest. Loads of stations to be worked, but I had not prepared myself for quick fire contacts so only a handful of contacts made. However, the first one I did make was with 9M6NA on OC-133 which I had worked before but not confirmed. This time I’ll ask for a card! Talking about cards the postie has been kind again with an early 'Christmas' card!
By the end of the month, I had managed to add another 5 DXCCs to my annual total, but still a long way to catch up with the 'leaders'.
Cheers all
Chris G4ZCS
