tj and I figured that to fit the 3 Moray coast hills we were interested in climbing, now that the restrictions are eased, an early start would be required! The longest walk should go first and the activation times on each hill would be limited. Predictably, we left at 1030, got a bit lost and I got too excited on the radio, so none of the self made rules were followed! …

Previously, I wrote about building a battery for my portable radio operations. This project has been a long and agonising one. Batteries are really difficult, and I spent a good chunk of June, July and August thinking about them. The Winning Design As I discussed in that last blog post, the architecture I settled upon was: I’ve learned quite a lot, made a large number of wrong assumptions and joined a lot of dots in my head as this has gone on. I’ve also made a large number of observations that will be helpful to other people interested in battery powered radio operation. …

Here’re my first sota trip reports. I made some mistakes and have lots to learn still, but they were great days out and I’m dead keen to do more. Most importantly, I’ve got better at radio in general - I’m much more comfortable on a microphone, I understand the flow and format of an HF contact far better. It’s very different from the datamodes I’ve been doing for years! One thing that I’ve noticed, and it probably deserves mentioning, is that the SOTA web infrastructure is some of the best I’ve seen in ham radio. Modern looking sites, coherent single sign on and services sharing data in a really clever way. I upload CSV format logs generated by my logging program, cqrlog, and the SOTA infrastructure handles them and shares them with services like sotamapping, to show me maps of my contacts. SOTA spots appear on APRS, and I can spot myself to sotwatch using APRS messages. I’m super impressed! …

This post is part of [tj]’s blog more in June challenge. You should join us and take part - just make 4 posts in June! I have an amount of portable, HF radio equipment that I don’t use enough. One reason is just how awkward and cumbersome it can be to move everything around. I would like to have a small bag/box I can attach to a backpack or my bike before I go out. Powering things in the field is a significant part of that problem. …

This has been a few days of mildly successful radio fidgeting. Few issues diagnosed in the setup, few things fixed and a few things done. First up, the 6" cable I use to connect the FT-100 radio to my tuner has broken. This was replaced (thanks to Ed) and things tuned nicely. This must have been borked for some time - I’m now able to tune up my (roughly) 20m dipole on 30m and 40m no bother - both matching with swr of less than 1.1. No bother. …