Peter Goodhall, 2E0SQL - M3PHP » Peter

EUMETcast Setup Ordered

Peter — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:56:28 +0000

So after visiting the Newbury Rally and Boot Sale and seeing the The Group for Earth Observation demo of the EUMETcast weather satellite system, I decided along with Dad that we should really get the system to do it so thats exactly what I’ve done in the evening I ordered

Group for Earth Observation Membership
DVB World USB Receiver
Dish + LNB
Satellite meter
EUMETCast Client Software
EUMETCast Key Unit

The EUMETCast stuff is currently being approved by their legal department once that’s sorted, they’ll phone and take payment and sent it out from Germany. The rest of the equipment will be arriving in the post hopefully this week.

National Field Day at G5LO/P

Peter — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:55:59 +0000

The weekend is coming to an end after playing host to the annual CW national field day, although not really being a CW operator like normal I helped the Oxford & District ARS setup for the event from late Friday afternoon to get the antennas setup and ready for operating and also got a bit sun burnt due to the lovely weather that day.

Field Day Station View

Then returned back during Saturday while Dad (M3JFM) and myself were out cycling enjoying the Oxfordshire/Edge of Buckinghamshire country side, most of the station was finally setup when we arrived although the generator died just as we arrived on site 2 hours before the contest started thankfully we managed to get one hour before the start, returning home later that evening via a pub stop to refuel for the 10miles cycle home.

Friday team busy at work!

During the weekend I also managed with the help of MixW to work 38 field day stations mixed across 80/40/20/15/10m which I was more then happy with, hopefully next year will be just as good!

You can find the rest of the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/m3php/sets/72157624080291655/

Not given up yet with Callbook.org.uk

Peter — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:13:04 +0000

So I’ve restarted my efforts in getting the UK amateur radio callbook data to make a “callbook” available online, how? by making yet another request for it under Freedom of Information and another asking for it under commercial licence; how Ofcom will respond who knows but I really do live in hope.

The wait continues!

Alessandro Volta RTTY DX Contest

Peter — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:45:43 +0000

After spending the morning out with Dad taking photos of stream trains on the Saturday morning. I decided to have a dabble in the Alessandro Volta RTTY DX Contest, this was a purely search and pounce affair to get some QSOs in my logbook as contest activity from me has been somewhat poor.

Conditions seemed rather bad, rates even for S&P where terrible but never the less QSOs went into my logbook, what I was surprised at was the 3 strong signalled JAs which I managed to work first call on 20m, after a couple of hours I ended up with

Total QSOs: 53
Best Stations: JA, VE1, W1

WSJT (JT65B)

Peter — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:31:50 +0000

The last couple of days I’ve been playing around with the WSJT software in JT65B decoding GB3RAL’s 6m beacon signal, Okay distance wise its just down the road, but I’m now hoping to maybe try a proper QSO on 6m if I spot anything.

Launch of DXCluster.co.uk

Peter — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:11:13 +0000

Just under a week ago Paul (M0TZO) said that he’d found a domain available and I’d love it.. He wasn’t wrong either the domain in question was http://www.dxcluster.co.uk I’ve spent some time getting a prototype of the website up and running using a lot of the back-end code which was already in place on DXAnywhere.com.

The features for the site is open for comments either post them in the comments below or use the feedback tab on the site. I’ll be posting some more news in the feature about progress being made.

January Goals Recap

Peter — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:26:45 +0000

Being as its now officially the end of January I thought I’d share some feedback on how I’m getting on with my goals for this year. I guess at this point I should be coming up with some good excuses but I can’t think of any and I’ve not done so well.

I’ve yet to seriously start revising for the Advance amateur radio exam but the Harwell ARS Rally is coming up this month, and I’m hoping I can kick start it then by purchasing the latest edition of the training book, my plan then is to write up my notes as blog posts and stick them up here.. I guess we’ll see how this works out at the end of February.

I have started on learning CW using http://www.lcwo.net, but struggling slightly as I find after I get to about lesson 6-7 and more letters/numbers are introduced they all merge together in my head and it confuses the heck out of me, it’s something I’m sure I will overcome in time.

My targets for 1 QSO a day was for me optimistic, some weeks I’ve managed to get on lots and others I’ve failed miserably I can report I’ve made 230 QSOs which to me seems like a small amount and I want to improve on it. Maybe with some improved sunspot numbers it will help?

So let’s hope February can set me on the right track.

BARTG Sprint RTTY

Peter — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:30:33 +0000

This weekend was host to the yearly BARTG Sprint RTTY, I decided to spend a couple of hours in the shack working the odd station I could hear. What I was pleased to find was that 15m and I made a number of QSOs into North America, 20m was also reasonable maybe a sign of conditions starting to pick up who knows.

Ended up with 80 QSOs, mixed across 40m to 15m.

Summary:

	QSO	DX	JA	W	VE	VK	Cont
40m	8	7	0	0	0	0	1
20m	67	28	0	4	1	0	4
15m	5	1	0	3	0	0	1
Total	80	28	0	6	1	0	4

Score: 80*(28+0+6+1+0)*4 = 11200 points

ARRL RTTY Roundup

Peter — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:50:21 +0000

Last weekend was the yearly ARRL RTTY Roundup, which I decided to have a dabble in, I found conditions very poor at best although managed to work 9M2 and E21. I was pleased that I managed to work some stations on 80m as the Windom seems to preform very poorly on this band.

Total operating time was around 4 hours give or take and summary below shows a very poor effort in my view.

 MODE   QSO S/P DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
   80     3   0   2   0       3  1.00
   40    51   1  19   0      51  1.00
   20    48   0  10   0      48  1.00
   15     0   0   0   0       0  0.00
   10     0   0   0   0       0  0.00
--------------------------------------
TOTAL   102   1  31   0     102  1.00
======================================
         TOTAL SCORE : 3 264

Equipment: Yaesu FT950, 80m Windom, MixW for logging.

Goals for 2010

Peter — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:01:06 +0000

As we move into another year I’ve decided to set myself some goals to give me some focus, I hope I can achieve them and I’ll keep everyone regularly updated.

Revise and sit Advance Exam

After sitting the Intermediate exam at the RSGB Convention back in October 2009, I’m feeling keener then ever to finally take the last step to get a Advance (Full) UK amateur radio licence. I know from others that its quite a lot to learn and remember but I’m willing to give it a go and try and sit the exam at the 2010 RSGB Convention. this gives me 10 months to soak in all the information and swat up on my math skills.

Step 1: buy the revision book!

Learn Morse Code

Finally learning the code is something I want to do, and the guys down at G6PZ keep telling me to sort it out so I can take part in the CW Contests with them.

1 QSO Per Day Target

Last year my QSO number wasn’t that great outside of contests so this year I want to make at least 1 QSO per day every day so that’s a minimum of 365 QSOs personally I’m hoping to do more then that plus contest activity, it would be well into the thousands..

Launch Callbook.org.uk

Callbook.org.uk has been plagued with issues from the start mostly caused my Ofcom revoking the application process to access UK Callbook data and never doing anything more about it. I’m keen as ever to start this project and I’m going to be looking further into gaining the information from Ofcom and also including a number of other countries around Europe (If anyone has sources please let me know).

This will be no doubt a long process but I’m willing to give it another go, I can only hope Ofcom has a change of attitude in the coming months.