The bands seem to be particularly bad this week, normally first thing in the morning I can tune around 30 or 20 meters and find some interesting stations, but for whatever reason everything seems very quiet, except for white noise!
Even 40 meters is suffering with white noise and I have heard only a few stations, perhaps it’s sympathising with the weather which at the moment is damp and miserable.
I am still awaiting the arrival of the Rock-Mite, I can only think that Dave Benson K1SWL is awaiting parts before sending the kit out or that it could be stuck with customs here in the UK. These things happen and you just have to be patient but it’s always annoying when you’re raring to go and have everything in place to build the kit.
Whilst waiting for the arrival of the Rock-Mite I have been practising QRP work firing out CQs on 5 watts with the FT1000 MP V, which seems rather amusing as normally I'm using a minimum of 50 watts. You can almost hear the strange comments from the stations you work when you tell them you're rig is an FT 1000 MP V at 5 watts!
At the end of the month I have managed to get a week off from work so providing the weather picks up I will take down the cobweb and give it a good clean and service.
It’s been up for two years now and has suffered the rain and winter storms so I suspect the connectors within the box will need a good clean up and re grease.
The wires are beginning to droop either from stretching in the wind or the string that pulls them together has become slack through time. The 20 meter wire certainly needs adjusting as the SWR now reads 1:5 and I will have to re treat the wooden poles with some preserver.
I have some spare speaker wire and poles should the need arise to replace but I’m hoping that shouldn’t be necessary. Hopefully by then I will have got round to buying a new camera and I will take some pictures to post.
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