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Yesterday, Rob M0VFC, Steve M1ACB and I left the rest of the group in the shack while we took a trip to the Russian settlement of Barentsberg here on Svalbard. The excursion was organised by Svalbard Travel and is moderately expensive, but well worth the cost for a long day on a boat with an…
After two flights (London – Oslo, then Oslo – Longyearbyen), we’ve arrived in Svalbard. This is the view from the shack, taken just after we arrived (about 00:30 local time). The midnight sun is very real! The first surprise, we have mobile phone signals and the shack has internet. So, our fears about lack of…
From 10th-17th July 2015, I will be one of six operators activating the JW5E shack on Svalbard. We’ll be operating on 40m-10m (and maybe some 6m if conditions allow), mainly on SSB and CW, using JW/{homecall}. We won’t arrive in Longyearbyen until late in the evening of Friday 10th, and we depart very early in the morning on…
On 26th May 2014, the RSGB Contest Committee announced a Whitepaper containing proposals and suggestions for various rule changes. [Whitepaper] I really welcome this development. It’s great to see the Contest Committee so engaged and keen to hear feedback, and also I like having a clear timetable for the decision-making process based on this feedback.…
One of the things I like to do shortly after a DXpedition is to do some fairly detailed statistical analysis on my log. This helps highlight openings or areas of the world I might have missed, and helps me consider improvements for the next trip. It can also help identify where propagation predictions did, and…
As many of you will be aware, I’ve recently returned from operating as VP9/M0BLF in Bermuda. Overall, it was a great trip but it was marred on a few occasions by some discourteous and unruly operation by a small proportion of the DXing community. A lot has already been written about pile-up behaviour but I…
As many of you will be aware, I’m currently on a DXpedition to Bermuda, operating as VP9/M0BLF (other operators on the same trip are VP9/G3ZAY, VP9/M0VFC and VP9/G7VJR). About half-way through the week, we’ve made over 6000 contacts, which is a great result for a part-time holiday-style operation. That is, we’re having time to do…
I’ll be part of a group of five operators from the Cambridge University Wireless Society (along with M0VFC, G3ZAY, G3VFC and M1BXF), operating from Ascension Island as ZD8UW next week. Here’s the ‘official’ announcement: ASCENSION ISLAND, ZD8. A group of operators will be QRV as ZD8UW from Green Mountain from December 2 to 6. Activity will…
In Cambridgeshire Raynet, we recently noticed that one of our failings as a group is that only a small proportion of our membership had any experience in operating as a Control station. This reliability on particular individuals was starting to limit our flexibility and so we have embarked on a training programme in the last…
It’s probably fair to say that, since the demise of UIView, APRSIS32 is the most advanced APRS software for Windows that’s under current development. Unfortunately, it’s also got a really steep learning curve, partly because of its origins in the Windows CE world, which means it breaks many of the conventions common to Windows desktop…