Archive - June 2025

The time has finally arrived. In less than 24 hours I , along with Charles (M0OXO) and Ady (G6AD), will be setting off on our annual adventure to London Heathrow airport (LHR) and the journey to Ham Radio 2025 in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

The day will start for Charles at around 04:00 when he leaves home to come to my house and then on to collect Ady from his home. We then go on to LHR and the Premier Inn on Bath road for a night ready for our flight at 06:30 – but this means we have to get to the airport for 03:30 so a second short nights sleep for us all. This first day is a relaxing day, usually spent out on the hill at the hotel watching and photographing the aircraft as the arrive or depart, depending on which way the wind is blowing, where it feels as if you can touch the aircraft. Last year I was there with my camera and a 24-120 lens, no need for my big zoom lens as is usual on aircraft photo shoots. And sitting in the hotel coffee lounge having a drink and some lunch, allowing us to get our social media up to date.

Wednesday at the airport usually allows us time for breakfast while waiting following the usual security and passport control, or a look around the duty free shops for a bottle or two for sharing on the IOTA stand at the show. Yes this year folks we will have some drinks available on the Friday and Saturday to welcome our friends as they pay a visit. The flight to Zurich usually takes about 90 minutes and we change our watches to the European time arriving in ZRH at 09:30, disembark and gather our luggage before heading to the train station in the building across from the airport. Another chance to grab any last minute needs as this is a shopping centre with a good selection of shops and eateries.

Grab the train ticket, go to the platform and if it is as quick as last year we will be on the Suisse Rail service to Romanshorn within the hour. This is a lovely relaxing rail journey taking in the beautiful Switzerland countryside and takes just over the hour. Once in Romanshorn it is a short walk around the marina to the ferry, which again is usually there waiting as we arrive. Onto the ferry for the cruise across Lake Constance to the ferry terminal at Friedrichshafen. A brief walk up the hill to the hotel and hopefully have lunch.

So breakfast in London, elevenses in Zurich, lunch in Friedrichshafen – that is if all goes to plan. Relax and chill out for the afternoon and check into the hotel before a nice meal in the evening sat outside a restaurant overlooking the lake and enjoying a couple of beers. Thursday will be a visit to the Messe and set up the stand and a little explore of the local area with maybe a trip to the Dornier museum near the airport. All nicely chilled for the show and fun over the weekend. 

If any of you reading this are in attendance then please do come and say hello on the IOTA stand, you never know but there may be a gift waiting from the Hinckley Amateur Radio and Electronics Society (HARES) as a souvenir. 

The ARRL have just put this announcement out. So remember next weekend their system will be off line. 

ARRL LOTW

System upgrade & temporary downtime

ARRL’s Logbook of The World® (LoTW®) is the 2nd most popular benefit among members. It is also an extremely popular service internationally for non-members, as it is the primary means for providing confirmations for ARRL Awards, such as DXCC and Worked All States.

As a part of the ongoing modernization of the ARRL systems infrastructure, LoTW will be receiving major upgrades to the operating system it is running on, the relational database system it uses to store and access logbook and awards data, and server hosting, where it will be fully migrated to the cloud. These changes will, among other improvements, ensure LoTW performance needs can be better met based on user demand.

LoTW will be unavailable from June 27 to July 2, 2025, to complete these upgrades. We will bring LoTW back online if it is available sooner than July 2.

Logbook of The World can be found at lotw.arrl.org. More information about the popular service is available at www.arrl.org/logbook-of-the-world.

If you are a user of LoTW and not an ARRL member, please become a supporter of LoTW by making a $20 (or more) donation to the ARRL LoTW Fund or visit www.arrl.org/donate.

Very 73, and see you on the air!

David A. Minster, NA2AA
ARRL CEO

About Logbook of The World®

Logbook of The World® — LoTW® — is a web-accessed database and repository that enables you to submit electronic logs for amateur radio contacts (QSOs) and for confirmation (QSLs). Users can view submitted QSOs and resulting QSLs online. Radio amateurs can use LoTW to track their progress toward achievements and awards, such as The ARRL Worked All States Award, and amateur radio’s premier award, DXCC®, in which membership is achieved by confirming on-the-air contacts with 100 countries. LoTW was introduced by ARRL in 2003. Today, over 2.1 billion QSO records have been entered into the system.

Since 2020 and the lockdown for Covid I have had a passing interest in operating through satellites on the VHF/UHF bands, each year meaning to get the necessary antennas and radios together to set up from home. This still hasn’t happened, but maybe it will in the next year. Then following a trip to Bletchley Park with my radio club (Hinckley ARES) and operating the QO-100 station the RSGB have in the National Radio Centre I decided I was going to get on the air and set up my own station.

When I got home I started doing research on what was needed and found out that it is not that hard to get on the air as first thought. A basic station can be up and running with minimal outlay to start receiving signals. It is then a little more difficult to start transmitting, unless you are a home constructor or already capable of transmitting on the 13cm band.

Basic receiving station

So I needed a satellite dish to start the station build. I put a question out on my Facebook profile asking if any friends had the old-style Sky TV dishes still attached to their house that they no longer use. Tony, G7FSD, one of our club members messaged me with the offer of his old satellite tracking and receiving dish he had as he no longer used it for watching any TV and it was just up in his shed rusting away. Answer “yes please”, with the usual “how much?” etc, but he kindly gave it to me as it was only going in the scrap as he was clearing it out. So we have the first parts of the build. I then sprayed the dish with car primer after rubbing it down and getting rid of the surface rust to make it look prettier and give better reflection, again this followed research on the best way to paint the dish. 

Ady, G6AD, was the next donor with a tripod and short stub mast to put the dish on. This not only meant I could get it off the ground, but I would be able to get it above the neighbour’s fence and in clear sight of the satellite. Another bonus. 

At first I bought a DX Patrol Low Noise Block (LNB) and receiver/LNB rectifier and Bias-T kit. This enabled me to set up my dish with the LNB and point the dish in the general direction before tweaking to see how well I was receiving signals, and to learn the protocol of using the satellite. I connected the DX Patrol receiver to my SDR Play RSP-1 that has been laying around in the shack redundant into my laptop and SDR Console software.

This worked fine to listen to the satellite and get some ideas. But I wanted to answer the callers and be able to call myself, so I looked at an alternative to the 70cm transceiver, with a transverter, that had been my first thought. I looked again at the DX Patrol website and their complete station in a box, which would give everything I needed. I also joined the QO-100 User group  on Facebook and asked for advice and any hints/tips that would be the way forward. Plenty of replies with answers and pointing towards YouTube, where I found David Trewren’s (G7IYK) videos where he basis his QO-100 on a Pluto + SDR.

A few notes written down and a search on the internet for the parts and I could get set up and build the kit with a total outlay of around £500.00, which was considerably cheaper than the other suggestions I had had. The Pluto + came from Ali-Express that has a multitude of choice at very reasonable prices, make sure you get the one with 2 receive and 2 transmit ports. Delivery took around 1 week or so and arrived with no issues. A few other bits were found on eBay for less than £20.00, and others had to go direct to manufacturers – the amp is direct from SG Laboratory Ltd in Bulgaria and has a short lead time before it was dispatched . I exchanged emails with Hristiyan (LZ5HP) and paid the money, I was hoping they would be at Friedrichshafen Ham Radio but they were not attending this year, so postage paid and the wait began.

The final thing required was some kind of waterproof housing that could contain everything and allow the completed station to be at the antenna, coax cable losses at 13cm is a lot worse than at VHF/UHF, so the cable run needs to be kept as short as possible. With my build I wanted it to less than 500cm from the amplifier to the antenna on the arm of the dish. It would then only need 1 run of CAT 6 cable, and a length of power lead to feed into the box for the power supply. At this point I had a chat with others who had done this type of build on the Facebook Group and changed my mind on the power feed. As the dish and antennas were going to be close to a disused out building I decided I would run a 240V extension lead into the out building, and have a small 5 amp power supply in there. I would ensure it was waterproof and in the winter make sure it could be kept dry.

More to come as the bits arrive, and I start the building of the “transceiver”.