Biography

Bio:

Electronics, IT, DIY and music for all my life. Love cars, motorcycles, motorboats. And on the top of it Ham Radio of course.

Most of the time I'm active on 20m band using digital modes due to my working conditions. I'm living in a flat on a second floor so I can't go crazy with my antennas. Unfortunately even a 26 page request addressed to a building administration containing a marvelous plan about how to get the antennas at the roof of a 10 stories building with the smallest foot print attainable, ended up in a administrator's trash bin. So I needed to work my way around that. 

I was using an inverted V made with 0,14mm2 Heluflon wire attached to my balcony and the nearest trees. Plus of course a choke balun. It worked and allowed me to make some QSO around the world but every time there was a windy weather this super thin wire came down or got entangled with the tree branches. Needles to say swithing bands was a massive pain.

So now I came up with a different idea. As would Clarkson say... my genius is almost frightening ;D I've purchased two telescopic whips at aliexpress, 5.6m each to be exact and some PP pipes. Out of that I've made a contraption that is fixed to a balcony above mine and holds these two whips at a specific angles (you can see a photo below). A bit towards sky to compensate whip bending and between them around 90 degrees. Yes, it is a L shaped dipole but it is basically the same as the previously mounted inverted V was. And it works. It puts a good distance from a facade of the building and the trees, and provides SWR as low as 1,2. Even if it is slightly higher it is actually nothing my TRX couldn't handle with it's antenna tuner. As a cherry on top, now I can easily switch between bands from 10 to 20 and fold it back if the weather is bad or just to avoid overly curious neighbors :) It already allowed me to make an FT-8 QSOs with Panama, Chille, Japan and many more. I also had a nice SSB QSO with Portugal which reported a "booming signal". Well, not to shabby for a two Chinese telescopic antennas at a 2nd floor. If they ever break down I think that Chameleon's SS-25s would be a good and stronger replacement. 

For some outside operations I prepared a setup with a 10m telescopic pole, CG3000 and LiFePo4 battery pack. And it works really great. However I am still thinking about a lighter version. This pole with mount kit and the CG3000 weights quite substantially. It is good if my journey is only about the radio but not necesarily when I'm traveling with my family. Anyway it was inspired by SP2JW project. Thank you Jonasz!

Other than that I'm also usually listening on UHF at SR5WP repeater with my FT-897D. Also got myself a pistar hotspot and I'm running it with WPSD. It works quite remarkably with the FT-5D and allows me to use both C4FM as well as DMR talk groups. Sometimes I'm listening to TG91, TG260, America Link or Poland room.

One of the most successful acquisition to my setup was the linear PSU. It was made back in 1987 (West Germany) and I was able to purchase it second hand for a very decent price. It needed some attention but still worked. So I replaced all the semiconductors, main capacitors, gave it a good cleaning and now it is serving me well for all the radios that I have here. The only downside is that it is heavy and reaches quite high temperatures (about 74C). On the bright side though, it produces virtually no noise and has  quite impressive stabilisation. It is driven by LM723 and has two big transformers inside. Haven't seen more than 0,05mV voltage drop @ 18A current draw. It is way better than my previous server PSU HSTNS-PL18.

And the lastest addition to my setup is a Cloudlog. I would like to sincerly thank 2M0SQL for that log. I was using Log4OM which is quite impressive. It has a lot of features and integration possibilities but having over 2000 QSO in a mysql made it extremely slow. What is even worse I was basically chained up with a Windows. Not a problem with a home computer but I usually work on my macbook. Especially when I was working outside my home QTH I had to run Windows via Parallels and connect via openVPN back to my home to access database. And that was making it even slower. The time needed for a simple lookup was way to long. 
Some time ago someone has told me about Cloudlog and I decided to give it a try. Now man, oh man this is a rocket. I am self hosting it at aws Mumbai region with a t4g.micro. Have there a simple LAMP stack and access locked only to my home IP and it works beautifully. QRZ, eQSL, CAT, WSJT, Varac, FLDIGI. Everything I was using, I was able to hook up with the Cloudlog. It is faster, it is Cloudbased and can be availabe everywhere and yet things like CAT do also work.

If you are struggling with some setup like for instance Cloudlog feel free to leave me a message. I might be able to help. 

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Equipment:

Radio:
- Yaesu FT-710 (hell of a rig. Love it. With it's DSP abilities it makes miracles with a very weak signals)
- Yaesu FT-897D (briefly replaced with ftm-400 but was lucky enough to get it back. I'll never get rid of this one.)
- Yaesu FT-5D (good sound, a lot of features. Would have been perfect with TNC but overall a good hand held radio. Works with Sony WH-1000XM3)
- Baofeng UV-82HT (5W) (as simple as it gets but does the job)

Antenna:
- Diamond X50N (FT-891D)
- Diamond MR77 (gathering dust)
- Diamond SRH771 (FT-5D)
- Telescopic dipole, band 10m to 20m connected with balun 1:1 based on Wippermann project. (FT-710)
- Vertical for a field QSO's on a Spiderbeam pole 10m. Basically a veritcal random wire with CG3000 (FT-710)

Accessories:
- QRM Eliminator
- CG-3000 (mostly used for an outside operations)
- MMDVM hotspot with WPSD
- Sennheiser SC660 + DIY PTT button. Seriously, if you ever come across this headset just buy it. Thank me later.
- Standard MH-31 and SSM-75E
- PSU: 1987 Elektro-Automatik EA-3033 complete overhaul done
- Backup or travel PSU: HSTNS-PL18 @ 13.6V
- RigExpert AA-30.zero + Raspberry pi zero (My DIY project)

Software:
- Cloudlog
- CloudlogQT (compiled for both Windows and MacOS)
- wsjt2cloudlog python script
- varac2cloudlog python script
- flrig
- fldigi
- WSJT-X
- Winlink
- Varac