After getting the first SSTV image over the UK at 3am on the 4^th of August, I was hooked and most passes listened and accessed the transponder when it was in sunlight, my first QSO was with Gavin (M1BXF) on the 22^nd of August 2011, this was a pre-arranged and we both noted how good the signals where even for a short antenna on the satellite.

I then had further success having QSOs with DG0ER, GW1FKY, LA1BNA, IW4BIF, DG1EA, PD0RKC, what I did notice was how quiet the transponder was which gave me the impression lots of people didn’t bother trying it, but the day before it de-orbited I was able to speak to Ken GW1FKY on 3^rd January 2012 at 15:20 I think this might have been at least the last QSO from the UK via the satellite.

Not only was there the transponder, voice and SSTV beacons but telemetry which could be decoded using the freely available software. I didn’t spend too much time getting this data but successfully decoded lots of packets using the IC-910 and the Funcube Dongle.

Overall a successful mission it looks like lots of hams listened to the beacons available and decoded lots of images, I just hope it’s the first of many satellites kicked out of the ISS!

The first leg was CW, I will admit I know very little CW, I can make out my callsign and 59 but that really is my limit so I setup MixW and CW Skimmer to act as my ears, which like normal worked perfectly. After 5 QSOs, I got into the flow of things and started working my way up the CW portion of the band, within two hours I managed to work 58 QSOs. Conditions seemed reasonable and every station I called came back.

The QSO amount was also an improvement over 2011 where I’d worked 43 stations using a 80m Quarter Wave Inverted L so least I managed to increase the total for this year slightly.

This weekend saw the SSB leg of the contest, at dead on 14:00 I worked Rob (M0VFC) operating G3PYE and then started to work my way back down the band. Which worked well slowly getting more contacts in the log, there was the usual QRM from stations splattering each other but even so there was only two stations who I didn’t manage to work, this might be due to conditions, QRM or my antenna not being that great even so the half size G5RV with 80m traps worked well.

I wasn’t worried after two hours S&P, I’d put 60 QSOs in the logbook and called it a day. What I did learn was that I needed to sort out keying the FT950’s DVK within Win-Test so I’ll be sorting some LUA scripts out in due course as it will be handy for other contests as well.

Overall very enjoyable two weekends, now need to look at what other contests I want to take part in this year.

Since the 27th of December APRS.fi reports that I’ve digi’d 13 stations and the coverage seems to be Banbury in the North, Abingdon in the south, Burford in the West and out to Stokenchurch in the East so roughly 20miles in each direction which covers exactly what I wanted to do which was get some decent coverage for Oxford.

The next thing I’m wondering about doing is applying for a notice of variation so I can leave it running and RF digi’ing so during the next few weeks I’ll be looking at the paperwork and seeing what that involves. But for the time being will have it running when I’m in the Office and the PCs on.

Belows some highlights

Building a Satellite Ground Station

If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll have seen at the start of the year I got a satellite ground station sorted out at the QTH with an ICOM IC-910HX, Rotator and Yagis, much to the disapproval of my bank account! but its been a ball and I’m looking forward to operating some of the new satellites that are due to launch this year.

GS3PYE/P on Isle of Arran

In May I was fortunate to join the Camb-Hams on a trip the the Isle of Arran to operate for a period of one week, this has got to be one of the highlights of the year as it included lots of radio (9100 QSOs) and great company.

Cloudlog

Cloudlog started out as a project to allow me to access my Ham Radio Deluxe logbook anywhere, after a few weeks it developed into a nearly fully fledged php web application that anyone can download. Best of all development still continues on a daily basis and its open source and will stay that way!

2011 will bring new mobile features and hopefully some basic QSLing functions.

DXCC Mixed

In November I applied for DXCC 100 Mixed on the using the LoTW system.

Contesting

Major contests which I took part in were SSB Field Day as G8PX/P results showed that we came 5th out of 15 entries in the open section and also CQWW SSB at G6PZ where we hope we set a record or two.

What’s coming in 2012?

• Trip to the Isle of Mull with the Camb-Hams.
• More contests! I’ll be taking part in ARRL RTTY Roundup coming up this weekend to start this goal off.
• Try make a QSO every day, I seem to manage this well only missed a couple of days in 2011
• More blog posts about activities around the shack.
• Try some new modes (open to suggestions)

Since getting the transmitting side functioning I’ve made 1,672 QSOs the main bulk being on AO-51. I was lucky enough to have 385 QSOs on before it finally stopped working in November, this satellite was clearly the most popular because it was easy to access & every pass was busy or more appropriate manic.

With everyone shouting over each other specially at the weekends. The next most popular satellites for me where SO-50 (137 QSOs), VO-52 (143 QSOs) and FO-29 (134 QSOs) nearly matching QSO totals. Sadly out of those three only SO-50 & VO-52 are active due to FO-29 not getting enough sunlight I believe but VO-52 is very reliable every pass for a couple of contacts although sometimes with regular people

Next up is AO-7 with a total of 111 QSOs, this has two modes either a VHF or HF downlink. I only use the VHF downlink but I’ve made two contacts into North America KB1RVT and K3SZH which was exciting and a first for me. Followed by AO-27 (95 QSOs) this again is a reliable FM satellite although turns off early in its pass over Europe, and is plagued with interface from repeaters on its uplink.

Lets not forget SO-67 which I’ve only managed 15 QSOs, and is currently off due to a fault on the satellite but hopefully will be back in the new year if they can fix it. To round things off I’ve been luckily enough to have 5 QSOs on Arissat-1 and collect telemetry and SSTV images. Its due re-enter in the new year but I’m pleased to be able to say and prove that I’ve been able to have a couple of QSOs on this satellite.

In the new year of course comes new satellites with the launch of PW-Sat which is a transponder on board, and hopefully the launch of Funcube and UKube-1 in the later part of the year and not forgetting the Cubesats which transmit useful telemetry to college students round the world working on there research projects.

Cloudlog works either along side the Ham Radio Deluxe logbook MySQL table or as a standalone system giving it lots of flexibility, when using it but the core features of being able to add QSOs, explore your logbook and have visitors interact with it are all there. You can find out more on Cloudlog’s dedicated website at http://www.cloudlog.co.uk  where you can download the source code or find out more about the project.

I found conditions hard going, but they didn’t look any different to the usual averages; so I’m guessing this was purely related to the antennas 1/2 G5RV and a 80m quarter wave L and the 50w from the Yaesu FT-950 none the less I had fun. This was also the first contest where I used Win-Test, for the whole operation with MMTTY and it worked pretty much flawlessly. Only one issue where clicking on the DX Cluster spots; it would switch the rig to LSB which got very annoying, but this was down to operating in AFSK I believe.

Total operating time was 7 hours 26 minutes according to Win-Test, and I can report some reasonable stuff worked including Japan and Mexico and lots of North America (All bands but 80m!) ending up with 200 QSOs.

Summary:

 BAND   QSO DUP MLTS   QTC  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------------
   80    14   0    5     0      14  1.00
   40    55   0   21     0      55  1.00
   20    83   0   34     0      83  1.00
   15    18   0   13     0      18  1.00
   10    30   0   16     0      30  1.00
-----------------------------------------
TOTAL   200   0  209     0     200  1.00
=========================================
          TOTAL SCORE : 41 800

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): 2E0SQL, G6PZ, GI0RTN, IZ1LBG, M0CLW, M0DXR
Station: G6PZ

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Somerset
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  189    13       66
   80:  650    24       91
   40: 1035    34      120
   20:  914    40      144
   15: 1917    39      150
   10: 2296    40      155
------------------------------
Total: 7001   150      726  Total Score = 15,773,520

Club: Chiltern DX Club

Full write up can be found at http://lists.contesting.com/_3830/2011-11/msg00035.html

During the RSGB Convention, I decided to join the ARRL not because they had a slick stand at the convention (because they did), but because it will be interesting to read the different articles and hopefully learn some new stuff.

After spending about a week looking around the internet and reading the The ARRL Satellite Handbook (Highly recommended), I decided to settle on buying a Yaesu G-5500 rotator and a set of Diamond Yagi’s these being a 10 elements on 70cms and 5 elements on 2m not overly large nor crossed but a good starting point.

Once these items had arrived along with large amounts of cables, I got to work setting it all up with the help of my Dad (M3JFM) who was in charge of doing all the soldering work on the plugs and connectors. The antennas are only 17 feet above the ground and not in full clear view but it’s the best it can be for the current location.

Using the Yaesu FT-817 and the FT-7800, I was able to work through the FM satellites easily – at first manually tracking them and leaving the uplink frequency fixed and just adjusting the downlink either by tuning the VFO or using AFC on the radio, but later automated using CAT control and the addition of the Fox delta ST2 tracking unit allowed automated tracking of the antennas which I was using alongside the Ham Radio Deluxe package.

Next stage in the development of the station getting on the SSB satellites and start thinking about being able to-do general SSB/CW contacts on VHF/UHF, yet more research required the black box options seemed to be either a Kenwood TS-2000 which not only did VHF/UHF but HF aswell but I decided I wanted a dedicated radio.

So that only left the ICOM IC-910 after mentioning to Gavin M1BXF that I was after a second-hand one, he soon found me one – from one the Camb-Hams and a price was settled and by Friday the 14th of March 2011. I was heading to Cambridge to pick it up, and operate in the March 144/423MHz contest (in which we came second!) which was also a good time to try the radio out on the 2m position and after working all around Europe I was more than happy!

Next step was actually operating the radio on the SSB satellites, at first I was doing this manually by settling the downlink frequency and adjusting the uplink to make sure it was in the same place. This although worked fine, it wasn’t ideal and using the Ham Radio Deluxes Sat track I couldn’t get automated Doppler correction working to my liking so since June, I’ve switched to using SatPC32 which works far better in my opinion of course everyone’s different so I’d recommend you have a play with all the packages available.

Now I’ve got everything to my liking I can happily work through AO-7, AO-27, AO-51, SO-50, FO-29, VO-52, Arrisat-1 transponders without any problem and have a large amount of QSL cards building up from QSO’s! Looking at my log I’m heading towards a 1000 satellite QSOs this year alone, you can see a pie chart of qsos per sat at http://www.m3php.com/logger/index.php/statistics, or read my regular reports in PW.

What I’ve now been thinking about is how I’m going to take the station forward, what I could really be done with is a couple of preamps for 2m & 70cms and then perhaps look at switching to Wimo X Yagis, this all highly dependent on my bank balance.