Category Archives: General stuff

MM/DH8BQA: Visiting Jim – GM4FVM in Scotland

Posted on July 28, 2022 by dh8bqa

Summer time = holiday time! This year the three of us decided to spend a week in London, then move on to Edinburgh for another week together with a few friends making it a group of seven. Had a very … Continue reading →

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WPX-CW ’21 ending in hospital

Posted on June 4, 2021 by dh8bqa

Good ES condx on Saturday last weekend, worked about 700 QSOs on day 1. A lot worse on Sunday, needed 6+ hours for another 100 QSOs. Then around 12z I went QRT as I suddenly had severe chest pain feeling … Continue reading →

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CQ WPX RTTY ’21

Posted on February 15, 2021 by dh8bqa

Well, no radio activity after ARRL-10M in mid-December until last weekend when entering the WPX-RTTY. There’s a simple reason: We were moving house again. So lots of other priorities (besides some heavy QRL as well) during the last few weeks/month’. … Continue reading →

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The NECG X-MAS Event

Posted on December 28, 2019 by dh8bqa

It’s been an over 20 years old tradition now: We meet up with the NECG (North Eastern Contest Gang) members every 27.12. for a small party, recalling the past, meeting friends and their families, making future plans, a.s.o. I did … Continue reading →

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More youthwork …

Posted on December 8, 2019 by dh8bqa

Time for part 2 today. As I mentioned in my recent blog post I bought two small kits for some more solder fun with Annika. She built up the second one today, a small blinking christmas tree. Meanwhile she’s soldering … Continue reading →

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Some youth work again …

Posted on November 17, 2019 by dh8bqa

Another fun afternoon with Annika! I had ordered two small kits recently. Decided to build up the first one today, a wooden manger with some lighting electronics. 😎  

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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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Cleaning activities and antenna alignments

Posted on May 31, 2019 by dh8bqa

Another day without any interesting VHF propagation so we used the time for some cleaning activities long overdue. Heiko (DG1BHA), Uwe (DL3BQA), Peter (DM5DX) and myself had blocked the days after Father’s Day for several small to medium things that … Continue reading →

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Father’s Day / Ascension Day activities

Posted on May 30, 2019 by dh8bqa

Today was Father’s Day (Ascension Day) which is a nationwide holiday in Germany. We usually use it for some gathering of one of the local radio clubs here at our clubstation. Lots of discussions over coffee and cake in the … 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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Adding TG – Guatemala to my DXCC by Feet

Posted on February 14, 2019 by dh8bqa

Made it over the border to Guatemala today. Good for another point on my DXFC journey (just a small pistol there). 😉 No radio activities there but a day trip only anyway, just to visit the Tikal Maya ruins. It … Continue reading →

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Big Rock Falls

Posted on February 13, 2019 by dh8bqa

Exploring the Mountain Pine Ridge Reserve today we got the tip to visit the Five Sisters Falls. To be honest I was rather disappointed, there’s not much of waterfalls to my mind. But as chance would have it we saw … Continue reading →

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Pileups vs. Sightseeing … and the winner is?

Posted on February 11, 2019 by dh8bqa

Was QRV on 20 & 17 m this morning. As mentioned in my contest report condx are worse now than a few days ago so didn’t work too many QSOs on 17 m. Twenty was more reliable but the pileup … Continue reading →

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V31FO QRV – safely arrived in Belize

Posted on February 8, 2019 by dh8bqa

After our flight from Frankfurt to Dallas/Fort Worth and staying a night in Texas we safely made it to Belize City Airport on Wednesday afternoon. From there it was just an 1,5 hours drive to the Maya Hill Lodge in … Continue reading →

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V37DX from Belize, too!

Posted on February 4, 2019 by dh8bqa

Besides my V31FO callsign Belizian PUC just confirmed usage of V37DX as a special callsign, too. 🙂 As far as I know the V37 prefix has never been QRV before so it should give some additional dB of callsign gain during … Continue reading →

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QRV from V3 – Belize soon :-)

Posted on January 23, 2019 by dh8bqa

Looking forward to this year’s holiday! 😎 Frauke and I decided to go to Belize this year. We’ve booked one of the two Maya Hill Lodge huts for rent by Andre, V31DL, of German origin, who decided to emigrate to … 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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Nice X-mas present: 4 m allowed in Germany again :-)

Posted on December 19, 2018 by dh8bqa

Bundesnetzagentur (the German equivalent to FCC in the USA and Ofcom in the UK) released it’s note 414/2018 today allowing the use of the 4 m band by radio amateurs in Germany again! 😎 Two facts make it even more … Continue reading →

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2017 summary & HNY

Posted on January 1, 2018 by dh8bqa

I haven’t been very active last year most of the time. I usually spend more time on the radio during summer to catch some Sporadic-E on the VHF bands, my favourite playground. Besides this it was mostly contesting but also … Continue reading →

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BBQ @DP9A

Posted on August 20, 2017 by dh8bqa

Sorrily I couldn’t make it to the annual BBQ at DP9A last year so was glad to make it this year. Only drawback was the traffic. 🙁 Was going the 550 km trip with the YL on Friday afternoon but … Continue reading →

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