Jimbo's Amateur Radio HF Mobile Blog

2009-05-30T13:53:00.002Z

Visited The Ridge today for a session in the hot sunshine, worked the following:

SCRS Net Regulars on 80M and then 2M

M0TTB
M0KFJ
2E0EKF
M0YOU apols to you, my battery died mid QSO!

2009-03-22T17:56:00.001Z

Has a trip to Newlands Corner last Sat, nice hot dog from their cafe but coverage was pretty rubbish on vhf/uhf. 80M was ok though. John 2E0MOC was also in attendance.

2009-01-18T19:00:00.009Z

Hi all, some photos from a session at High Clandon early in the new year. It was -4C and I spent most of the time on 80M with some weird "long range" groundwave prop.
I also had a long chat with Martin M1MRB and he was /m on Epsom Downs running his MKRS80 80M kit radio.

In QSO with a station on 80M

2008-12-28T16:53:00.001Z

Good QSO using 100W on 80M from Woldingham Ridge

2008-12-28T16:21:00.003Z

Our Dec 08 Play Day @ Woldingham Ridge

Setting up with John 2E0MOC in the red car and me parked behind

John is setting up long wire for 20M

John fighting the pile up on 20M!!

There were a few others that made it to a freezing cold Ridge, namly Adam G7CRQ and Tim 2E0TTA. Adam was using 4M and Tim was on 2M SSB. John stuck to 20M and I switched between 80M, 6M, 70cms and some 2M when Tim had gone.

John 2E0MOC setting up a long wire

2008-12-27T19:23:00.003Z

Tim 2E0TTA erecting his multiband portable antenna at Woldingham Ridge

2008-12-27T19:23:00.001Z

In QSO with Martin M1MRB

2008-12-26T14:07:00.001Z

2008-12-14T13:59:00.001Z

Hi folks, after much deliberating and with a kind invitation to trying a friends JB2 out, I have just purchased one. Its a top of the range Noise Cancelling BT headset to be used with the TalkSafe. Its currently on charge and I shall be playing with it later today!!

2008-11-30T17:02:00.002Z

Last night I visited Epsom Downs with John G4NHO for the 10M Home Counties Net, I firstly tried my Comet Monoband antenna and then my usual multiband. I found that in general, the multiband was working better! So, I am selling the large monobander and have ordered a full size 1/4 whip. I've always wanted to try one going back to my CB days, its cheap and offers the lowest loss since its unloaded. I ordered a Siro adapter so it will connect to my so239 hatch mount.

I am also thinking about performance on 80M, I've looked at the mini dipoles from Sandpiper and Moonraker.

2008-09-14T09:39:00.003Z

Last Saturday in every month

Location: The Ridge , Woldingham near Titsey. No height restriction or toilets (in fact nothing nearby!)
Time: Anytime in the morning
Talk in: For the first couple of months will be on 145.550Mhz
Bands: Use whatever you like but I tend to use 2M, please check on arrival with any others as to what band(s) they are using. If you change bands, please let others know!
Any other details: Only to say I may not attend every session, its a "just turn up" event and you may be on your own. Please mail me james at m0(zero)bov dot co dot uk if you want to confirm attendance. There are two wooden benches and a pole to suspending antennas, there is a wire fence that can also be used to strap poles to.

2008-09-13T16:13:00.002Z

I have a new Bluetooth Headset on test, its the Motorola H605 which i got from Datakits. Its a differant style to my old headset as its worn behind the ear. The audio on tx and rx is quite good, it does'nt slip around and the lag from the call button is much better.

2008-09-06T21:36:00.002Z

In Part two of my update, I mentioned I had modded the fist mic, well, with more reports of it being a little quiet we swapped the capacitor/resisitor that we fitted with another single capacitor from the kit. This gave even more gain and worked a treat, i now run the rig with 60% audio gain and Comp 1. This improves the FM response, we also found the mic element was not seated correctly.
Thanks to Derek G3WHK for his help in modding the mic.

2008-09-06T16:30:00.009Z

This post is a bit pic heavy as I have now installed the IC-7000 back into the car. The reasons for this were:

Old bit of Conti board full of holes from previous installs and equipment

Not using 2M linear anymore

New voltage booster

Needed to mount switch and swap the rig with the atu for venting the heat correctly.

So the above pic shows the previous 706 install before I started using a linear, it dates from a fewyears ago and before I shortened the DC cables.

Now to this!!

We have mounted a large marine switch on the front to isolate the rig and booster from the battery since the booster as a fan in it and draws a few milli amps. The TalkSafe Bluetooth unit is on the far right.

Build in progress on the "bench"

You can see the fuses for the feed to the radio (from booster) on the right, the bue tape around the cable is where the volt meter is soldered on. Note the EMC ferrit chokes around the volt meter feed.

Dad fitting the Shark 30Amp fuses

A view of the back of the SWR meter (2/70) which faces the back of the rear seats. The grey cable is a patch lead made from Mini 8. The earth lead on the left goes to a binding strap on a luggage net chrome tag in the boot.

Again, connecting up fuses, these go from the supply to the switch so are always live when the battery is connected in.

You can see the rear of the marine switch

Cutting and fixing the DC cables, note the 7000 is ontop of the AT-180 due to the fan.

The TGE Booster at the bottom with a custom made bracket.

You can just see the volt meter ontop of the duplexer.

The finished result! The conti board and brackets were sprayed with grey primer then Matt Black.

This is what it looks like in the boot, the board sits on feet to its easy to lift out. The remote cable and earth are connected with the lid off, when the lid is on, I then attach the antenna feeder.

The battery I use.

Voltage booster

2008-08-15T10:59:00.001Z

With my new ic-7000 now settled in and the bluetooth headset and modded fist mic working together I am now looking at sorting out the 12v side of things.

You see, the trouble with the 7000 is that it won't run full power with a battery, no matter how short the cables or how fresh the battery is. So, I have been trialing an MFJ voltage booster. This has given a noticeable boost to my rf output, however the product is not as well designed as another unit from TG Electronics, this unit which is rated to 40 amps, is a sealed unit with no nasty binding terminals. I can hook it up with my Powerpole connectors in line with a marine isolator which is siting on the shelf. I can then flick the switch for 13.8 volts!

Holiday update

2008-08-15T10:47:00.001Z

Hi all, not done much blogging for a while. I'm just coming to the end of my annual holiday. I have been using my Superantennas MP-10! Worked IZ on 6, AO on 10 as well as a french station. Also worked Italy on 20m. Made a 2m contact to the IoW and most recent was contact with 2E0UOO/m on 10m.

My next outing will be on the 23rd to Woldingham where I will be on 2 and 70cms. Others will be on HF.

I have also been active on sat nights on 28.5 9pm on the Home Counties Net. Do drop me a line if you want a sked.

James m0bov

2008-04-28T20:50:00.002Z

The next step was to mod the mic. We purchased kits from http://www.7000mic.com/ , we ordered replacement mics so as not to risk the original mics.

It went quite well with Derek GWHK's help, we found that we could run the mic gain back to 40% with compression at about 4. I had to up the gain on the BT system to balance it out.

I have now received the Mini 8 patch leads I ordered from Moonraker, this means I can now have the SWR meter in line and run my 110W 2M amp. When I want to take the amp off line, I bridge the connection using a double SO239 adapter.

Now that the antenna and audio are sorted, i then needed to turn my attention to the power source, that's coming up in part 3!!

2008-04-19T18:59:00.002Z

>>Major revamp for HF Mobile installation<<

Well, I have reinstalled and renewed pretty much everything, in fact its been the biggest change since I have been /m! In summary:

New rig!
New antenna lead
New mobile whip
New SWR meter
Modified IC-7000 mic
Outstanding items are replacing caravan battery with upgraded 85amp unit and fitting Bose Gold Plated connectors to matching Gold Plated Lugs (8AWG cable!)
MFJ Battery Booster possible
May fit 7" TFT Screen into sunvisor
Re fit onto new piece of Conti board and secure all cables

I think the best thing is to split this posting into three parts, firstly I'll deal with the initial issues. Now being a computer tech I am (I think!) quite good at logicly planning things and getting all the bits I need. So, with the arrival of the new rig, I knew I needed the seperational cable, fine got that. I knew my custom headmount would fit and I knew I needed to shorten the DC cable so got a spare.

Radio arrived, wrong DC cable, ok so got it on back order. Got rig on bench, tested Bluetooth and fist mic, all great so far.

Chucked it into car, got on air, great and then tried 70cms, ok this is where the fine starts. I was sure I had checked the meter before setting out, but it was like 2:1. Ok so tried another antenna, about the same....oh here we go.....!

So it seemed worse on higher freq, so a started shortening the antenna, but this only improved it a small amount and made 2M worse. To top it all, the readings seemed to move about when i was moving the antenna cable. Also, the output was not very high, it seemed the voltage was only about 12v or just below.

I took it to a friend to have it checked, we found putting a dummy load on the duplexer gave a high reading, so we removed the duplexer, but still had a SWR on some patch leads. So replaced this but it still was a problem when we added the duplexer. So this seemed at fault, plus I had by now butchered the mobile whip!

We then tried another SWR meter, this showed 1:1 on my newly purchased replacement antenna! The problem was not the duplexer but RF getting into the SWR meter due to the high field strength!!! I have now purchased a Revex meter and see how that goes.

One thing we noticed was the muffled and boxy audio from the fist mic, so that was the next thing to sort out..........In part 2!

2008-03-23T15:16:00.003Z

Well, finally I purchased the IC-7000, I've wanted one since they first released it so 3 years ago but got put off by the fact that it does'nt have an SWR meter on all the bands and no internal voltage meter. Well, I have got round both problems now and what with my local 70cms repeater being back on air, and my superb Bluetooth hands free system, I decided to go for it!!

I chose to have the TV mod and wide TX mod applied by the dealer. I also purchased the seperation cable and extra DC cable. I got sent the wrong cable so I am still waiting for it, but otherwise its now up and running in the car.

I did have a few early issues, the stock mic is "ok" but not great, so I am looking at getting another mic and modding this. Also i found the S Meter to be very lazy on 2 and 70cms being reluctant to go above S9. I am told this is by design, I also found the notched tuning dial fiddly to disengage. Otherwise on air reports are great, I tried it at full power in the car, no immediate problems came to light except the output power was only 50%. However I put my battery on charge and it was only at 60% charge!!

I have looked at getting a battery booster to dial up the voltage to get max power out. I may well end up doing this in the near future. But I'd like to test the rig out on a fully charged battery first. Its worth noting the 75Amp caravan battery is over 2 years old now and normally by now I am having to replace it anyway.

2008-01-26T13:04:00.000Z

Well, having now enjoyed the TalkSafe for a few weeks and happy with it, I decided to fix the unit into my system. I velcroed it onto the top of the AT-180 Tuner. I applied Farnell cable wrap to the input and speak cables running to the unit.

I also gave the whole system a wipe over with some AF foam cleaner and AF lint free cloths. I also had a bit of a brain wave, regarding the IC-7000 and my 2M amp. More on this later!!

2008-01-19T14:53:00.000Z

Well, here is a Talksafe update. It arrived from W&S without the mic cable, after complaining we were told it was out of stock. Anyway, tried to pair it with my Sony and Moto headset, nothing. So, it was returned to Talksafe, it should never have been sold since it needed an upgrade and should have been sent back to the manufacture.

So, I got my replacement and it paired ok, however the headsets don't re pair easily and the audio can be very muffeled. So I would suggest the Motorola H350 or H500 headset, these seem to work ok.

Now I have a replacement cable and working Talksafe I am very pleased and I can now quickly get onto the radio. I still use the dash speak when parked up, but I can use the headset for audio when on the move.

2007-12-28T09:47:00.000Z

Hoping to order the TalkSafe Bluetooth adapter for my 706 very soon, should solve the problem of not only handsfree, but not having to connect the external speaker each time. Whilst the speaker is located in the center of the dash and is a geniune Icom speaker, its a bit messy with the cables and is a pain to hook up each time.

2007-11-04T12:14:00.000Z

I have ordered a SuperAntennas MP-1, the MP-1 will be used with my Yeasu FT-817 when on holiday in Verwood.

Verwood seems to have a resonable amount of local VHF/UHF traffic, but I want to have another crack at HF when we holiday there. Last time I had the MW, I worked on /p station in France from indoors!

I hope to do a write up of my findings of the Superantennas MP-1 very soon, I ordered it from HFprojects in the States.

2007-11-04T12:12:00.001Z

My trusty battery charger seems to have given up on me! I have replaced it with a swanky Ring RMC16 16amp Smart charger. This might have been why the battery went flat on me at Warlingham, it was'nt charged from the previous visit.

Anyway, I will post a pic of it in due course, but so far it seems to be a very nice piece of kit.

2007-10-14T09:38:00.000Z

Yesterday me and Paul went to our usual spot at Warlingham, I was on 2M and Paul on 80M. Firstly of all Paul help me raise my 5 ele Tonna for some FM, then I went over and help him raise his Sandpiper vertical.

It was then that I spotted the barbed wire fence, I glanced at Paul and said, shall be? No, well, maybe?! Yes, you guessed, Paul was QRV on a fence! It seemed to tune well on 80M and I left him to it.

Anyway, I worked about 12 stations, slow at first but as usual I had stations calling in at the end of each QSO. I think the GB2SNC was one of the best, its a secreat nuclear bunker somewhere in Essex! Then, the one that got away, it was an OE5 on 2M SSB! Loud as anything, but by then my battery was exhuasted and we called it a day. In fact I'm still havnig trouble charging the battery as the charger keeps tripping out cos of the load.

The weather was perfect, warm and hazy, the local PCSO came and said hello, but unfortunatly Paul did'nt manage to work anyone as he tried to work someone runnng kit antennas.

Ithink another visit is due if the weather holds out, this time I will start with SSB while the battery is fully charged!

If you worked me yesterday, then thanks for calling me /returning my call. Do keep an eye on my website and also Paul's. If you wish to join us, please drop me a note.

73