It would appear that there is now an active Raspberry Pi user base in the club. Rob M0RBY has it running his weather station instead of the more power hungry computer, Sam 2E0SAN has it running as a media server, and I've just been messing around with the operating system.
The point is that I have been playing (or should that really be researching) the various add-ons being sold for this little computer. So in sort of ranks of usefulness, we'll go through some of them.
Having had the antenna for about 5 years, it being hung up for most of that plus being used on various Special Events, where it usually had some damage. Over the years it's wire has been misused, work hardened, and generally tired out.
The start was with the wire and coils made up with 19/0.2 wire, so it's not that strong or efficient. My mistake was to replace the one side that had the most problem when it snapped again with some new wire. Yes, but this silicone insulated test lead wire has lots of 0.05mm strands and and more of a CSA. Yes but that's a problem.
Now that Rob now has high new 2m Yagi, it was chance to give him a chance to use it. Only my plans were a lttle less ambitious, and that was to operate in the 144MHz Backpackers Contest.
All didn't go too well, as not far into the contest the batteries that had been sitting in my "charged" collection we not much of the sort. They lasted not too long. After a distorted QSO with Rob I put the ones from the camera and their spares into the venerable FT290R and eaked out a bit more life and a few more QSO's.
My HF vertical antenna had not been very well. It was kind of at an angle, loose and playing up performance wise. The base of the antenna was held in place in the end of the insulator by the feed point bolt and captive nut and two rivets. The latter were loose and the only thing trying was the connection, which kept working loose.
We know how some of you are, hanging on to your computers until they give up their last gasp, or where you just can't get anything to run on them any more. Anyway, here's advance notice for you. If you've Service Pack 3 XP then the clock is starting for it to no longer being supported. Of course if you never connect it to the net, it just runs the programs you want and you don't mind it will make no difference. However if you do have it on line, then on the 8th April 2014 there will be no more updates. Well if your machine couldn't take SP3 it could be a problem now.
The bits have been sat around for a while, but finally we've got round to building it. A joint DCD and RBY venture. It is an 80m beverage, single wire, 5:2 transformer and terminated with 470 ohms. One wavelength and nicely aligned at 60 degrees for VK land etc.
Initial results are nice, we await the proper test tonight, but for a project with change for £20 it's working very well thank you. The plan is that if this works we do the same for Tan Hill.
You may think that the winter is a quiet period for the Riggwelters, well it couldn't be be much different. That's when we start to plot the events for the rest of the year.
Already in the offing is an event for the Jubilee, but that's one being organised over in Easingwold by Nigel G1JKE. We wanted a suitable event that wold be a nice warmup for the group and an introduction to some of the newly licenced members of the club. An ideal one would involve elements such as the great outdoors, space to experiment, and of course a pub (that does food).
