Equipment for a portable QRP contest entry

CQWW CW 2021 as CT9/M0BLF

Equipment and category After months during which we haven’t been able to travel because of Covid-19, and with a load of annual leave to use up at work, I thought it would be good to get away for a bit of a break at the end of November. I booked a hotel in the main…

CQ WW SSB 2020

For the last 15 years I have almost always operated CQWW SSB from M4A in the multi-single or multi-two categories. It’s one of the highlights of my year. However, with the current coronavirus situation limiting our ability to meet up, I found myself limited to a single operator entry this year. I decided to go…

RSGB Webinar on QO-100

My ‘lockdown project’ for during the recent coronavirus lockdown was to finally get myself on the QO-100 satellite. It was one of those projects I had bought various bits for but never had the time to assemble and sort them out. On Monday 27th July, I gave a talk about this as part of the…

Keeping Cambridge 105 Radio running

aka: How Cambridge 105 Radio’s technical team has responded to the challenge of our studios being closed by the coronavirus pandemic The current coronavirus crisis brings a particular challenge for broadcasters. It’s at times like these that both the information, and the company, that we can provide become all the more important. This has been…

Two quick SOTA activations in Cyprus

During the ZC4UW DXpedition, Rob M0VFC, Dan M0WUT and I spent a morning doing a couple of local SOTA summits, largely so that I could tick off my fourth continent for the SOTA Explorer awards. It’s winter and we didn’t want to go too far, so we limited ourselves to two four-point summits, about 10kms…

On the economics of DXpedition QSL Cards

Over recent years more than occasional comment has been made by some DXers about whether QSL Managers make money from sending out QSL cards. Obviously, not all DXpeditions have the same policies but a year after the VP2MUW expedition, here’s how our QSL finances stack up. Important note: I’m writing this in the interests of…

SOTA operation in Prague City: Ládví

I’ve recently returned from a few days in Prague doing tourism and sightseeing. While the primary focus of the trip wasn’t radio, I noticed that there’s a SOTA summit on the outskirts of the city, which I had to go to. OK/ST-084: Ládví Getting to Ládví requires no car hire at all. If you are…

Agile Cambridge 2019: piecing it together

Last week was Agile Cambridge, the annual, three-day, conference on Agile at Churchill College in Cambridge. Despite the fact that my new job role doesn’t directly involve Agile any longer, I was speaking and I wanted to go for all three days anyway, because a lot of the sessions looked interesting. For the last couple…

Basque Country SOTAs: Xoldoko Gaina

Xoldoko Gaina F/PO-245 (1 point) After the frustration of the Pic de Guilhers yesterday, I left my hotel in St. Jean de Luz early, with the aim of climbing Xoldoko Gaina (aka Choldocogagna) before heading to Bilbao for my return flight back to the UK. The path for this one starts in the village of…