conor. @conor@mastodon.ie

I found the solution! N1MM Logger needs a .sec file from which the application imports various settings for the contest. This thread outlines the issue and solution, in case any one else is having the problem.

https://groups.io/g/N1MMLoggerPlus/topic/euhfc_contest_logging_error/75906721?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,0,75906721

Anyone here use N1MM Logger for contests? I'm setting it up in preparation for today's EUHFC contest. I've selected that contest from the log dialog, but when I log a test entry and give it a two-digit year in the 'Year' field, I get a message saying "not a 2 digit year". Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

#hamradio #radio

Doing Summits on the Air today. I'll be on Two Rock EI/IE-018 in a couple of hours, transmitting 2m FM. Once I'm QRV I'll get a spot out on sotawatch with a time and frequency.

#radio #cq #sota

Anyone want to try some JS8Call?

I don't really remember ordering this, but I'm sure it was for a very interesting project idea 🤣

And we're back in action. 40m half wave dipole, measuring an SWR of 1.5:1 without even tuning. It also acts as a full dipole on 20m, with a SWR of 1.3:1.

So the balun I made yesterday didn't seem to work as planned. My signals just went getting out, with reports of reception few and far between. So, I'm going to go back to the dipole antenna, and to get that working, I built this 1:1 balun.

#radio #cq #hamradio

All this radio stuff I've been doing lately... I'm thinking of kick-starting my radio blog again soon with a few posts of things I've done. It's on ei6gsb.conorfarrell.com, but it's very out of date.

Seems to be working! I'm getting some radio crashes from what I think is lightening so everything is unplugged for now. But a quick test suggests that the antenna is resonating: the SWR low points are in the wrong place so I might need to trim the antenna, but my radio's ATU gets the SWR down nice and low (close to 1.0) on 20m and 40m. Next up is to add an inductor to the end of this antenna, and extend it by another couple of meters so I can hit the 80m bands.

No idea if this will work but sure we'll give it a spin anyway. This is an initial attempt at a 49:1 balun for an end-fed halfwave antenna.

If I can find a high voltage 100pF capacitor in my parts box I think I'll build a 49:1 balun and an EFHW multiband antenna.

I think I was having audio trouble on my G90, but I played around with it a bit and managed to hit a good QSO with Slovenia with a 59 report. Happy days!

#radio #cq

Some quick #FT8 on 20m before bed...

My radio power supply has really annoying noise artefacts that appear as regular peaks along the waveform on the radio display. They slowly move along the band, and one always seems to settle on 14.074 MHz just when I want to do some FT8 😭

I'll leave the power supply on for a while and come back to it again later on. Hopefully the frequency will be usable by then!

Some nice greyline propagation there. Pulling in signals from South America easily tonight.

#ft8 #radio