To celebrate Her Majesty the Queen Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years of service to the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and the Commonwealth, U.K. Radio Amateur (HAM) operators can apply for a Notice of Variation (NOV) to use the Q Regional Secondary Locator.
The RSGB will also be operating a bunch of GB70 special event stations, full details on the GB70 website.
I have my NOV and will be on air using MQ0AWS for the whole of June 2022.
This callsign will operate for one month only and so will be a rare one for you to get in your log.
I will be operating on all HF bands 160-10m CW & FT4/8 and maybe some SSB depending on conditions.
All MQ0AWS logs will be uploaded to my website almost realtime and will be uploaded to EQSL at the end of June 2022.
I spent some time this morning in the garden with the Icom IC-705/AH-705 combo connected to my End Fed Half Wave (EFHW) vertical for the 30m band. This is a great antenna that works superbly on the 30m band. Being a resonant half wave fed via a 49:1 Unun it doesn’t require any ATU inline normally and so it’s quick and easy to use with any radio.
Today I decided to disconnect and remove the 49:1 Unun and hook up the Icom AH-705 instead. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see how well it handled the EFHW vertical on both 30m and the other bands.
Icom AH-705 connected to the 30m Band EFHW Vertical Antenna
I purchased a couple of 5m leads for the AH-705 so that I could setup the radio on the picnic table in the garden and be a comfortable distance from the antenna. They worked great and allow me to use the radio in the spring/summer sun with ease.
Icom IC-705 setup on the picnic table in the garden
The little AH-705 remote auto ATU really does work well with the IC-705. Each time you change bands all you have to do is give a quick press of the PTT on the mic and it automagically goes into tune mode and matches the antenna to the 50 Ohm radio in seconds.
I was was really pleased to see that the AH-705 ATU matched the EFHW Vertical for 30m on the 80m, 60m, 40m, 30m and 20m bands with a perfect 1:1 SWR. With the antenna consisting of 14.81m of wire this makes it somewhat short of a 1/4 wave on the 80m band and I’m not too sure how well it will work. On the 40m band it is a 3/8 wave antenna so should work well. It’s a 1/4 wave on the 60m band and of course a half wave on 30m band as per it’s original design. On the 20m band it is just under 3/4 wavelength long so hopefully should work reasonably well. Of course it won’t be as good as my 20m band EFHW Vertical that has a much lower angle of radiation but, will make an interesting comparison.
The antenna also tunes up nicely on all the other higher bands including the WARC bands. On 17m it is getting close to a full wave length and on 15m it is just over a full wavelength and so should work fairly well on these two bands albeit with a higher than optimal angle of maximum radiation.
On the 12m band it is 1.25 wavelengths long and of course on the 10m band it is almost 1.5 wavelengths long. I’m not sure how well it is going to work on these two higher bands but, for a 14.81m long piece of wire it certainly gives me a good chance on a wide spectrum of frequencies.
30m Band EFHW Vertical Antenna in the breeze
The bands weren’t in particularly good shape this morning but, I found some SSB signals on the 20m band and so decided to see if I could make some contacts.
First contact was with S51DX in Slovenia. He was using 1kw into a 5 element beam pointed pretty much directly at me. The little IC-705 S meter took a pounding with him peaking +30db over S9 most of the time. I was really pleased to get a 5/9 report from him using just 5w from the IC-705 on the standard 7v battery. Of course his station was doing all the work but, it’s good to take advantage of these big stations when running QRP power levels.
Next I had a QSO with John, EA7JUR in Almeria Spain. But this time the battery on the IC-705 was pretty much exhausted and so I hooked it up to the 12v supply to get it charging whilst I was on air. This of course gave me the ability to increase my O/P power by 100% to a massive 10w!
I wasn’t so strong at John’s end, only getting 5/5 report at best whilst he was 5/5-5/9 with me with some QSB. John was using a mini beam antenna again pointed towards me so once again all the work was being done at his end. We had a good chat for a number of minutes until it was time for lunch.
Listening on the 40m band I did hear a very interesting station, KN6IPA/Aeronautical-Mobile. Justin, KN6IPA is part of the crew on a USAF KC135 air-to-air refuelling tanker that flies out of RAF Lakenheath in the U.K. He was transmitting from the aircraft whilst in flight over Germany. His signal was between 5/9 and 5/9+20dB on my vertical antenna and had a massive pileup of people calling him from all over Europe.
I did try calling him with my punchy 10w of power but, couldn’t compete with the huge pileup of very loud, powerful stations all incessantly calling. It was really interesting to just sit back and listen to Justin’s information. He was using 300w into a wire antenna that runs from the fuselage to the vertical stabiliser. Of course being so high up he had a massive advantage and could be heard for hundreds of miles with ease, hence every one and their dog was calling him.
Photo of the KC135 tanker that KN6IPA was transmitting from courtesy of his QRZ.COM page
If you look closely at the photo above of the KC135 that Justin is a crew member on you can just make out the wire antenna on the vertical stabiliser.
I have to admit that I would love to spend a few hours on the radio aboard the KC135 whilst it was flying around, just imagine the DX you could work!
During the month of June 2022 U.K. radio HAMs will be able to use the “Q” regional secondary locator in their callsigns to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
I now have my notice of variation (NOV) for my HAM Radio licence that will allow me to use the callsign of MQ0AWS throughout the month of June 2022.
I’ll be active on all HF bands using CW and FT4/8 mostly. I may do some SSB on 40/60m depending on how it goes.
I’m hoping many stations world wide will want to contact the GQ/MQ/2Q stations throughout the celebration period and that you’ll all be able to collect the 70 necessary callsigns and contacts to win an RSGB certificate.
I will be logging all contacts on EQSL.CC at the end of June 2022.
More information is available on the RSGB website.
I look forward to using the MQ callsign and hope to have many pileups on the bands!
Following on from my 40m band NVIS antenna experiment I ran the same series of tests on the 80m band to see how well the NVIS antenna works.
Being only 30m long the antenna isn’t very well suited to the low bands but, with the tiny garden we have here in the U.K. and the anti-antenna neighbours it’s the best I can do.
I started off looking for SSB contacts only to find no one on the band. I eventually found G8MNY calling CQ from Croydon south of London. He was a huge 5/9+20db with me so I was hopeful that he’d hear me.
Tuning up the antenna on 3.710Mhz and setting the O/P to 40w I gave him a call and got an immediate response. We ended up chatting for around 30mins with ease, the band wasn’t too noisy and Jon was running 400w so he was a solid signal with me. My 40w got me a 5/8 report which I was very happy with.
Once we cleared I tuned around the band and even called CQ a few times, but there was nothing to be heard.
I went and had something to eat and then returned to the shack before the greyline, the band was a little more lively and so I switched over to FT8 mode and started working stations.
Stations initially heard on FT8 whilst still in daylight
I was really quite surprised how many stations I could hear and make contact with even though I was still in daylight. The effect of the greyline really is quite pronounced.
Stations that heard me on FT8 whilst still in daylight
I was being heard by a good number of continental stations even though I was still in daylight. Signal strengths were good and I was soon working stations one after another with ease.
As the night drew closer and the U.K. moved into darkness stations further east started appearing on the WSJT-X window and I was surprised how many I was able to work considering how low and short the antenna is for this band.
German stations were always the strongest throughout the test which is to be expected with an NVIS antenna as they are just across the north sea as the crow flies.
Map showing all stations heard on FT8 during 80m NVIS antenna experiment
By the end of the evening I’d heard a good number of stations with the most distant being north of the Kazakhstan/Mongolian border as shown on the map above.
All stations that heard M0AWS on FT8 throughout the NVIS antenna experiment
I was pleasantly surprised at how many stations were hearing me throughout the test, getting as far south as the islands off the coast of north Africa and well into Russia was amazing for a horizontal antenna that is only 4m-5m above the ground.
Map of all stations worked during the 80m NVIS antenna experiment
The number of contacts was nowhere near as prolific as during the 40m experiment mainly due to the fact that the band wasn’t as busy however, the contact pattern was very similar to that on 40m with the most distant station being R2EA/P just south east of Moscow at 1544 miles.
European coverage was very good but, sadly I didn’t hear many U.K. stations and so I’m not sure how well my Inter-G coverage will be. Perhaps another test during the day when conditions are better will shed some more light on this.
Overall I’m very happy with the antenna performance on the 80m band, it’ll certainly be ideal for European chat during the summer months and hopefully inter-G will be good too.
Next will be a test on 160m, this could be interesting!
More soon …
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