Hamradio

Ham radio is an old and almost forgotten hobby that I restarted in 2014. It's not clear to me what exactly I want with this hobby. I started with the ambition to: communicate on as long a distance (DX) as possible with radio telegraphy (CW) using the least power possible (QRP) with homebrew technology. In short back to the basics of how radio started using a battery as power source. In the meantime I experienced that 'homebrew technology' is too ambitious for me. I'm not good in soldering and building HF equipment requires precision, experience and reliable measuring equipment.Now that we are a few years later, I still don't know what I want with hamradio. Below you can still find the adventures of an apprentice, but I will not continue this series of articles.

My callsign is PG7H and my shack consists of:

• a Yaesu FT847 with max. 100W power, I still only use CW but 25W is more than enough for me,
• a homebrew dipole antenne of 11 meters beaming East-West at about 10 meters above the ground for HF
• 10 meters coax indoor + common shoke + 1:1 balun + 10 meters open feedline (300Ω),
• a Yaesu antenne tuner FC-902, which helps tuning on 30, 20 and 10 mtr bands (SWR 1:1,2 or even better),
• a standard 2m/70cm whip antenne on a metalplate of ,5 m² in the attic for VHF,
• a Noris SWB-2 antenne tuner for VHF,
• 3 morsekeys,including the one that my brother built in 1972,
• a Tentec 1320 QRP CW transceiver with max. 3W power,
• a homebrew speaker,
• a Linux Mint pc with:
• websdr Twente to have a bandwide view on the activity on the band I'm working on,
• CQRLOG software with a link to the Yaesu FT-847 for TRX control, QSL synchronization with LotW and eQSL, a link to QRZ.com to see the details of my counterstation.

This all works perfectly, what is missing is the patience to sit behind my set for more than one hour and work all stations available.