News just in: Yaesu have just relesased their advertising flyer for the FTdx-5000MP amateur radio. It’s available from the dedicated FTdx-5000MP User Group on Yahoo.
Go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ftdx5000mp/join and check the file section.
73
Callum.
Saturday night: Problems two hours from the start suggested I was going to have a hard time. I was at the Scout Hall on my own with zero resources, no tools and a dead short showing when I plugged my old FT1000MP to the Mega-Loop via a long patch lead to the roof. Why was I on the roof? Well, the shack doesn’t exist at the hall right now since we’re re-locating to a multi-multi-room and I had to get everything out of boxes.
To get me out of the isssue, Terry kindly rushed his big tuner and a length of ladder line (another favour I owe Terry!) down and I connected to our stand-by antenna; an 80m long doublet (actually a full-size 160m dipole) in the canopy of the trees at about 70 feet hidden in the woods behind the Scout Hall. It’s fed with ladder line, connected to stainless bolts that come through the wall at 12 feet, near the ceiling. I set the station up right under the bolts and ran the ladder line up the wall. Amazing that it worked bearing in mind these big trees have been swaying rather a lot last few nights with the storms.
With 30 minutes to go, I dashed home with a take-away and wolfed it down, spending “quality time” with the family, only to shoot back with 10 minutes to spare. MX0AAA called in and explained that I was on 1947.20 and that I had a station 3 khz below me on 1944 dead and a station above me on 1950. I was off frequency. What? I thought he was trying to tell me that I splattering on him but I wasn’t apparently, it’s because my freq didn’t end in 00 and he was very concerned about this. I really can’t work out what this was all about and he went off in the huff. I don’t know what I did to upset him. However, it didn’t put me off (my new pills are working well! [I joke BTW!]). Terry was listening in to the conversation and chuckled to me about this later on email.
One mistake (apart from entering) was going S02R for a few moments and sliding up on the 2nd VFO to the fellow on 1950. I carried on CQing until my off times coincided with his off times before giving him a blast. Woops! I bluffed my through the contact since he took rather a long time in repeating everything and I nearly lost my run freq, so half way through his over I started CQing again - and still managed to work out the report! I was logging both him on 1950 and my own contact on 1947.20! I must have sounded deaf to the poor fellow who I kept asking strange question to on my own frequency, to piece together the report at the same time as working the chap on 1950, “Did you say Member or Club”? and hoping for short, to the point answer. Very funny, but I stopped that pretty quickly!
Short and To-the-point in the same paragraph as Club Calls don’t mix, as you will now realise. One needs to get ones brain into an “idle” gear before entering this contest. It’s no good being too competitive, your personal fuse-board will blow. Large fuses are important, particularly when contacting those stations that no matter what I said, thought I must be Norwich ARC or Norwich ARS. Neither, I am DORRIDGE SCOUT GROUP – LIKE PORRIDGE BUT WITH A “D” FOR DELTA SPELT D-O-R-R-I-D-G-E SCOUT GROUP, OVER!
“Ah, are you a Radio Club or Radio Society”?
“NO - WE ARE NOT A RADIO GROUP – THIS IS A SCOUT GROUP – SCOUT GROUP – SCOUT GROUP”.
And then there’s the missing letter. I know I’ve written this before but when I ask for the last letter only – just the last letter, why do they start by explaining to me that I am 5 and 9 (twice) before repeating their complete report all over again. And I can hear them perfectly well, just a blast of static shot their last letter out - and I even say this to encourage them to give me only their LAST LETTER ONLY!). Is it a lack of listening or are they under so much pressure, they’re on the one track? I haven’t got that yet, but it’s clearly a problem. I do hope I don’t get like that!
One last bit of fun is their club station. It sounds like Fullofshitandsuprise Amateur Radio Society. They expect everyone to have heard of this society or club but I really haven’t heard of it. I ask for a repeat of their club name – and say “I hear Amateur Radio Society, I’m just missing the town name”. They spend about as much time spelling out AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY as their town name. One guy actually suggested, “JUST SOUTH OF LONDON MATE” - as if that was going to help me in spelling their club village name?
I think it’s about time that Contest Chairmen need to get a grip and explain to their membership how to give out a report. There’s no excuse anymore - we are just starting to sound stupid. I could hear everyone 5 and 9 (apart from a guy who was /m) and they just need to tell me everything once. It’s a bit like the chap who told everyone he was a “CLUB MEMBER”. He was both, clearly.
So. 105 in the log and I gave up at 10:30pm after going S&P at 10:20pm and being so dissapointed in the quality of the reporting. I only heard one station giving bigger reports than I, G3TKF (I think) who was giving 113 when I switched off. The rest were in the 80s and 90s.
Actually, I had a fair amount of fun and the doublet at 70 feet worked well.
It’s here, the new FTdx5000MP rig, spotted as an advertisement in QST this morning in the USA.
This author will be very interested to see the specs and look at the costings. Clearly, it’ll be fitting in betwen the FT2000 and the FT9000 series, but exactly where is anyone’s guess. 4 antenna jacks and a Class A button mean it’s probably got proper diversity reception potential as well as a 200W PA. I hope there’s a 100W version since I work amplified and don’t need the extra power of a 200W radio.
What will be funny, is to find out that the advert was accidentally launched to QST and that it should have gone out at the end of Q1 next year! However it’s unlikely.
A Yahoo group has already been formed. A copy of the advert is there.
73
Callum.
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