m3php.com

With GB3VHF returning to the air waves with a new state of the art beacon system running CW, JT65B, BPSK thought that it was a must to try and at least decode the digital signal at my home qth.Luckily the GB3VHF website had plenty information about how to get started in decoding the signal, I just downloaded the WSJT application onto the computer took the audio in to the soundcard made the changes which the website gave and within a minute or two I was receiving the JT65B digital signal on my screen!

I’ve got to say I was rather amazed how easy it was to get going once I had the correct information to get going and was rather interesting playing with this new mode which perhaps at some point I’ll make my own qsos with on 2m using my 6 element crossed yagi and IC-706MKiiG

It’s taken since the 2005 HF Convention and a lot of chats saying we need a system like this but we are finally in a stage to proudly launch our site.

http://www.hamtests.co.uk a newly started site by 2 hams in the UK looking to eventually take their Intermediate & Advanced (Full) licence exams and wanted a way to practice online.

Although software was available offline and a few sites with a couple of papers existed, nothing seemed right for what they wanted. So on one Fateful night, a domain was brought, server space assigned and hamtests.co.uk was born.

We started with a Wiki idea, but although the idea was interesting, it was too much work, so now we are on the 2nd version of the site. We are now using WordPress, PunBB, and Bicubica testing system. At time of writing each system has own login. We are working on a way to have 1 login for all public systems.

2E0TZO - Paul & M3PHP - Peter

Another week at university has passed and its again time for another contest! :cool:, luckly the wire beam which my dad ordered arrived on the friday before we left for the WPX contest at M8C and it has been sat in my room for the past week.

Luckly i was able to get home from university early on friday so we where able to put up the beam before the contest started at 20ft, i’ve got to say the beam was bigger than i had expected! and there was only just enough room to turn it 360 degrees.

Saturday morning I woke up late like normal getting up around lunchtime (UK summer time) and after i was washed and dressed i needed a quick trip into town to get a few bits for university next week once home we put up the 80m radioworks windom just below the beam at 19ft (give or take a few inches).

All the antennas ready for use!
This look us into an hour into the contest which was fine by then the pileups should be a lot better to get though, 20m was quite slow going at first but soon started to pick up as the evening went on and finally closed around 9pm local time for me.

I soon moved to 40m and surpisingly the qso rate started to go up much further and was quite nice being called by W’s & VE’s during the night, i finally packed up for the night just before midnight UK time.

Sunday I restarted in the contest at 13:00 local time after i spent the morning doing a little bit of university work and just general playing around.

Score Summary:

Calls DXCC Prov JA W VE VK Points Mults
80m 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 1
40m 67 24 8 0 1 1 0 222 34
20m 65 25 6 1 4 1 0 82 37
Total 133 50 14 1 5 2 0 307 72

Score: 307*72 = 22104

I’ve finally changed logging applications and moved from Winlog32, its not that I dont like the application its just i’ve been using it since 2002 and to be honest i’m kinda bored of it!

So I’ve changed to Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) change over was a peice of cake, export the adif file and reimport it into HRD.

Main thing with HRD is that it does everything! rig control, satellite tracking, logging so its one less thing I need to have open on the shack computer or laptop.

Another thing I’ve come to like is the Web Page Output option so you can post what freq, mode, rig, time/date of the last time you were active on the bands!, this feature has now been implamented onto my site and can be found at the bottom right of the screen!

In other news I’m still trying to find a good way of having my log on screen, its just it would be easier if I could get say a POST request from HRD to push towards a php script then put it into a mysql database (if its there i’ve not found it yet!)