Category Archives: Equipment

DH8BQA SO(A)SB10 HP – CQ WWDX CW ’22

Posted on November 28, 2022 by dh8bqa

I can only partially understand the many comments about how great 10 m was. I was rather disappointed. Geomagnetics were severely disturbed at times, which is certainly more noticeable in the north of DL than in the south, not to … Continue reading →

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WAE-RTTY ’22

Posted on November 13, 2022 by dh8bqa

Made a few QSOs in this weekend’s WAE-RTTY contest today basically to try out a mixed Windows/iOS setup for the Flexradio after the troubles before WWDX-SSB. This time used an iPad for TRX control, i.e. tuning, finding stations, a.s.o. while … Continue reading →

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MM/DH8BQA: IOTA Test from EU-123, Isle of Arran

Posted on July 31, 2022 by dh8bqa

Actually, the IOTA contest would have been a non-event for me this year. Since my wife and daughter only got vacation for the last 2 weeks of July, I had already written off the contest in my mind. The plan … Continue reading →

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May VHF & a few NODERED dashboards

Posted on May 9, 2022 by dh8bqa

Another VHF contest. Again not too motivated to operate but brought the special event call DM60UEA (60 years of Amateur Radio in Angermünde) onto the air on 2 m & 70 cm. Made about 250 QSOs, people had difficulties with … Continue reading →

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Chasing down 2 m QRM

Posted on May 24, 2021 by dh8bqa

Occasionally we have some annoying QRM on 2 m over here making working to the south quite hard. 🙁 Tick, tick, tick. Ticks about a second apart, sometimes just s2, sometimes as loud as s7. It’s driving the transceiver’s AGC … Continue reading →

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A new 4 m Band Pass Filter

Posted on May 23, 2021 by dh8bqa

Having changed the 4 m antenna to a single band one there’s no need to use my trusty coax diplexer anymore (one half of it was described here). It served very well eliminating all the interstation interference between 6 & … Continue reading →

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Antenna work during VHF contest May ’21

Posted on May 3, 2021 by dh8bqa

We had planned to do a multi op entry in May’s VHF contest last weekend again. Besides this I also wanted to do some antenna work. It turned out antennas were more interesting 😉 and we were not in the … Continue reading →

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A band-pass filter for 144 MHz

Posted on July 3, 2020 by dh8bqa

To cure our severe RFI issue described in one of my recent blog posts I decided to order an 144 MHz BPF. Found it on Ebay first but finally ordered from the seller’s Italian web shop directly and saved another … Continue reading →

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Chasing down our RFI issue – success!

Posted on June 1, 2020 by dh8bqa

Spent some time with Heiko, DG1BHA, and Uwe, DL3BQA, chasing down our RFI issue this afternoon that I had reported about in my WPX-SSB blog post. Some systematic testing revealed that it’s worse with a modified TS-590 transmitting on 15 … Continue reading →

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Rebuilding the VHF shack

Posted on August 24, 2019 by dh8bqa

As you may have read we have two shacks at our station. One serves as the HF/6 m shack and is usually used by Uwe, DL3BQA. The other one we call the VHF shack which holds a permanent station for … Continue reading →

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July VHF Contest ’19

Posted on July 7, 2019 by dh8bqa

Another July contest in the books. Condx were rather average most of the time. The night hours brought some nice DX so the average per QSO was 420 km which is unusually high. Around 400 km/QSO is quite normal for … Continue reading →

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New toys

Posted on June 13, 2019 by dh8bqa

Heiko, DG1BHA, and I decided to buy an Icom IC-9700 for the club QTH to replace our old venerable IC-7400 that served as our main 2 m radio for quite some years. We did some modifications to the latter for … Continue reading →

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Rotator interface by remoteqth.com

Posted on May 29, 2019 by dh8bqa

No condx today so I used the time to finally cobble the rotator interface together that I bought from remoteqth.com last December together with the Band Decoder II. It’s a neat kit not too expensive including a nice enclosure. I … Continue reading →

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Old & new, strange QRM plus some 4 m contacts

Posted on May 24, 2019 by dh8bqa

Arrived at the station early this afternoon. Brought the IC-7300 along for WPX-CW this weekend as well as (hopefully!) some fun on 4 m during the next few days (a week of holidays next week). Second radio I took with … Continue reading →

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Some youth work

Posted on May 19, 2019 by dh8bqa

Well, I didn’t post much personal information in this blog yet. After all it’s about amateur radio and related activities and not my personal life. But with this blog entry both combine perfectly so let’s get a little more personal. … Continue reading →

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Band decoder Mk2 by remoteqth.com

Posted on January 12, 2019 by dh8bqa

In my recent CQ WWDX CW 2018 blog post I moaned about needing to do all station switching like BPFs, antennas, etc. manually when using the IC-7300. Driving home after the contest I made up my mind how to solve … Continue reading →

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Remote Control Microphone for the IC-7300 & Co.

Posted on December 30, 2018 by dh8bqa

Well, today FUNKAMATEUR magazine 1/2019 was in the post-box and as it also featured a preview for issue 2/2019 which will include a new article by me I can probably already reveal some information here, too. 😉 In one of … Continue reading →

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CQ WWDX CW 2018

Posted on November 26, 2018 by dh8bqa

This time a part time participation only. While driving the 700 km to the station Thursday night I somehow caught a painful tonsilitis. 🙁 Waking up Friday morning I already had a sore throat. Fever and shivers added during the … Continue reading →

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Weekend (VHF) activities … some tropo again

Posted on November 18, 2018 by dh8bqa

As the YL was working weekend shifts in QRL I had some more spare time than usual this weekend. 😉 Decided to spend the time in the shack and finally start working on a new project idea I’ve been thinking … Continue reading →

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A transverter interface for the ‘7300

Posted on June 24, 2018 by dh8bqa

After the quite good experience with the Icom IC-7300 during WPX-CW I thought it might be a nice idea to also try it out with a transverter on 2 m in the big VHF contest in two weeks. When searching … Continue reading →

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