I was able to work several DX countries including the USA and Argentina using various PSK digital modes. Alison provided a really tasty Lancashire Hot Pot for lunch too.

Equipment used was a Yaesu FT-897 HF transceiver, HP G61 laptop, Buxcomm Rascal digital interface and Snowdonia Radio Company (SRC) vertical HF antenna mounted at about 10′ – 12′ above the ground.

The SRC antenna is almost perfect for this type of station, being quick and easy to erect and very economical with space.

As an aside, it is with sadness that we have witnessed the demise of SRC as they produced a great range of cost-effective wire and vertical_HF antennas that really do work.

Instead of the more usual CW (Morse) or Phone (talking) modes, PSK is a mode that enables Radio Amateurs to communicate using computers, keyboard to keyboard. The fantastic thing is that twenty, or more, different PSK contacts can take place in the space within the Amateur Radio band that would normally be occupied by a single phone contact – it is very, very efficient.

Furthermore, PSK contacts can be made when phone contacts can’t because of man-made (QRM) and/or natural environment (QRN) interference.

I try and chase awards whenever possible to record my performances and am pleased to have received new awards from both the European Phase Shift Keying Club and Belgian Digital Modes Club.

Attending the Warrington Communications Fair today. This is a new rally on the calendar and has been attended by several regular exhibitors, plus some local computer companies.

What makes this rally unique is that is held in public – right in the middle of the Warrington Maker (upstairs). What a great idea. Instead of running the rally behind closed doors for Amateur Radio operators only, this rally takes the hobby to the public.

If I’d have had the foresight I would have offered to run a special event station to show the public what Amateur Radio was all about and to raise some interest. Never mind, that’ll be the plan for next year.

I have to say that organising a public rally was a great idea. From a traders perspective they’ve got more people to sell to. From a club’s perspective there’s a new market to promote our hobby to. This has to be the future.

K8CW was 57 on to Mynydd Mawr at the foot of the Lleyn Peninsula and I received a 57 from Alan.

Equipment used was an Icon IC-706MKIIG transceiver, LDG Z-100 automatic antenna tuner and Snowdonia Radio Company (SRC) HF 8010 vertical antenna mounted on the car. The new 75Ah leisure battery and MFJ power distribution board also proved to be very useful.

11:39 – Application declined, I should have read the instructions properly. There are too many nodes in this area and no available frequencies for another on 2m. Found a 70cm frequency that has no local nodes, so re-applied for 434.525 MHz.

SOS Radio Week 2011

Over the weekend of the 22nd/23rd January I will be down in Wales supporting two Amateur Radio groups with their SOS Radio Week operations.

On the Saturday and Sunday I will be operating at the Porthmadog and District Amateur Radio Society (PADARS) special event station, GB0PLB, which will be based at the Criccieth Lifeboat Station. This station will go live around 11:00 on the Saturday morning, work right through the night, and cocnlude around 16:00 on the Sunday afternoon.

Around mid-morning to mid-afternoon on the Saturday I plan to be with the Merion Amateur Radio Society (MARS) operating under their club callsign, GC4LZP, at Porthmadog Tescos shaking some tins, doing a bit of videoing and operating.

Please do try and make contact with as many SOS Radio Week stations as you can to help the event raise as much money as possible for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). For further details, please visit the SOS Radio Week web site.

The 144MHz AFS Contest is for Amateur Radio Clubs affiliated to, and members of, the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). The event started at 10:00 and finished at 17:00 and five members of the Southport & District Amateur Radio Club took part as a team.

Things weren’t to bad in the morning, but as time dragged on past lunch time fewer and fewer new contacts were to be heard. This isn’t because there weren’t any around, they just couldn’t be heard because propagation conditions were a bit on the poor side and there was lots of interference on the band.

Anyway, the event’s over now and you can find out how I got on on my Amateur Radio contest page. Once my submitted log has been confirmed I will post final results there.

Lancashire Rose

Well it hardly seems like twelve months since I was talking about Lancashire Day 2009, but here we are again. November the 27th is a very special day in the heart of all Lancastrians as it’s the day that we can celebrate our unique identity and heritage. And don’t forget, that includes you who live in ‘Merseyside’, Liverpool, Sefton, Knowlsley, Manchester, ‘Greater Manchester’, Warrington, and parts of Cumbria.

Lancashire’s boundaries run from the River Mersey in the south, to the River Duddon in the north, from the Yorkshire border in the east to the Irish sea in the west. This means that there’s an awful lot of you who don’t think they live in Lancashire any more that do.

So where does all the confusion come from? Well back in the seventies, Lancashire County Council, who was responsible for administering the local affairs of Lancashire, has its area of responsibility reduced and new metropolitan councils were established to administer the affairs of the major cities (Liverpool and Manchester) together with the surrounding satellite towns. Hence the creation of Merseyside and Greater Manchester as administrative areas. What people fail to realise is the the actual boundary of Lancashire itself never changed, it was just that Lancashire County Council ceased to administer these districts. Liverpool and Manchester, together with their satellite towns and villages were still in Lancashire.

Unfortunately the Government changed the law of major road signage and this saw the new councils erecting signs stating that you were entering Merseyside and Greater Manchester and the signs welcoming you to Lancashire were removed. This, together with the press stating the new administrative counties instead of the real county names, made everyone think that they’d moved from Lancashire to a new county.

Not only was the south of the county affected, but the north was messed around with too. Cumberland and Westmorland county councils were abolished and replaced by a single county council, Cumbria, to administer the two counties. Not only that, but Lancashire o’er the Sands was to be administered by the new council, not Lancashire. The signs were changed, just as they were in the south, and folk in Barrow-in-Furness, the Furness fells and Ulverston districts, right the way up to Coniston and Hawkshead were left to believe that they’d moved from Lancashire, to Cumbria. They hadn’t – it was just that a differently named council was now collecting the rates, emptying the bins and sweeping the streets.

The real county boundary of Lancashire (thin red line)

Since then, the metropolitan county councils have disappeared and been broken up into lots of unitary authorities, as the map on the left shows. However, that thin red line, the boundary of the county of Lancashire, still exists and everyone within is a true Lancastrian.

So Lancashire still exists, exactly as it has done for the last few hundred years. The boundaries haven’t changed and the Post Office are quite happy for you guys in the occupied territories of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cumbria, are all still true Lancastrians and you can be proud of that since Lancashire is a Duchy, one of only two in the United Kingdom (the other being Cornwall). It is the personal property of Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Lancaster. As a Duchy Lancashire has the right to collect its own taxes, appoint its own governors and make up its own laws.

On November the 27th, every year, Lancastrians around the world celebrate Lancashire Day with all types of events. At 21:00 a toast is raised to HM the Queen, the Duke of Lancaster. So join with us a celebrate your heritage, but also your future as a true Lancastrian.

This year the Southport & District Amateur Radio Club will be celebrating Lancashire Day on the 27th November with an Amateur Radio special event station located in Aughton, Lancashire. The radio station will be making contact with other Radio Amateurs throughout the United Kingdom and around the world, promoting the real county of Lancashire far and wide. The callsign used will be GB5LD and will be on the air on 2m and whatever HF bands are open from around 11:00 to 22:00. At 21:00 we will be reading out the Lancashire Day declaration and those present will be raising a toast to HM the Queen.

I’ve been licensed since 1991 and this is my first contact across the pond. Until a couple of ears ago I mainly operated on 2m, but I decided that it was time to extend my horizons and get on to HF. Unfortunately I have a hearing problem and telephony on HF is very difficult. Fortunately, I obtained a Buxcomm data interface and haven’t looked back since, I’m a definite PSK-31 convert.

I have a modest station here with a garden too small to contain a wire or beam, so I have to make do with some sort of relatively small trapped vertical (not sure what it is it was given to me). That, combined with very little spare operating time means that I’ve only had about 150 HF contacts so far, but today I reached a major goal and worked across the pond into America.

Karen, W4KRN, was the lucky station on 15m and she is based in Arizona, some 3,500 mile distant. Thanks Karen, much appreciated.

I attended the Norbreck Amateur Radio Exhibition in Blackpool earlier today as an exhibitor and I am constantly amazed at how many G callsign holders seem to think they are immune from having to move to a working frequency whilst they have a chat. I lost count the number of times calls were issued, and then conversations held, on the 2m calling frequency. Just because you’re at a rally doesn’t mean you don’t have to adhere to the very rules that you would crucify a newly licensed foundation Amateur Radio operator for not upholding every other day of the year.

I know several of my recently successful foundation candidates were at the exhibition purchasing their first pieces of equipment. What must they think after I drilled home that you must follow the rules – what an example to be set by those more experienced Radio Amateurs that should know better.

Maybe some of our more experienced Amateur Radio operators should go back to school and resit a Foundation course – I wonder how many of them would pass?