M0TEF - QRP and Amateur Radio

Today was that day we all have to go through but all put off as much as possible. The dreaded shack clear up, it had to happen and today was as good as any other day. Of course before I did anything I worked a station in Oman on 10m FM A41LD/ND, Waleed, oddly he was calling CQ but had no takers, it as nice to have a decent QSO with a DX station without having a 59 - 73 type QSO and moving on. I started my shack clearing work by taking everything off the bench and emptying the small computer desk I use and then slowly built the whole thing back up, once it was done I noticed that the bands seemed to be poor despite them being much better before I did anything. It turns out I had some losses somewhere from a combination of switches and patch leads. I undid the whole thing thought up a new plan and started again. Thankfully now it all works well and to test it I had a nice QSO with K8NY ( Bob) on 12m using the Drake TR-7 and Butternut HF-9V. The new setup has the Drake set up perman...

This morning I have visited the Lincoln Short Wave Club shack at Aisthorpe in the hope of infecting a few of the members with the QRP virus, sadly the shack was in use to check a repaired linear amplifier. No luck there to convert them to QRP then. I got talking with Mark M0ZLE about his training sessions planned to get some trainees on the air for the practical part of their exams. I offered to make sure I could monitor their activity to call in should they struggle for contacts, as it was they created their own mini pile up of short contacts wishing the well with exams and encouraging their progress. I had a chance to discuss with them that low power can work. Here in the UK foundation licensees are restricted to 10w PEP and sometimes don't see that it can work as well as it does. I had decided this weekend would be a chance to catch up playing some radio and relaxing from the stresses of everyday work. So far it is a success. Part of that was to fire up the Drake TR-7 for a...

I have had a rather boring weekend stuck mostly at home feeling sorry for myself since my youngest daughter passed me her cold. I did however get a chance to enjoy some time playing radio. I worked EA3EVL on sunday morning on 12m using 2w. When I exchanged my conditions and power output details with Pablo I was met with a comment of very fine business with 2w QRP for a 59+10 report. Now I wish I had got around to building the attenuators I have been looking at plans for. I am sure I could quite easily have worked him with 100mW or maybe even less. My Sunday afternoon however was spent fault finding for RF problems at the shack of M0SIY, Simon is not really a huge fan of QRP and likes the dials turned full right most of the time. (Although I have seen him work several occasions QRP and, dare I say it, have fun.) Simon has a new installation at his place and we were trying to get something set up to reduce RF problems for him, we almost got there but his current setup seems delicate ...