With The Purchase of a 2m and 70cm Mobile Whip Today at the South Gloucestershire Rally and after the past week or so getting antenna mounting sorted on the bike i am now bicycle mobile

Current Radio/Antenna Configuration is As Follows:

Yaesu VX-7R Tri-Band Handheld

Mobile Headset With Finger PTT Switch

Sharman Multicom NR-770H Dual Band Mobile Antenna (144mhz - 1/2 Wave & 430mhz - 2 x 5/8 Wave)

With pay day arround the corner and the 857 sat in the shack not currently being used im now looking at doing some mobile and portable activitiy

time to get out into the garage and get cleaning up the mountain bike ready for usage during the year

then time to warm the soldering iron and sort out some form of mobile microphone and PTT

so quite possibly in the next couple of weeks you may hear me calling /M (Bicycle Mobile) through GB3UK or 2m Simplex feel free to give me a shout as i will be testing various headset/microphones and ptt arrangements and also diferent antennas and see which work best in my opinion

As i was on way home from work tonight (in the rain and very strong winds) i noticed that my antennas were swaying around alot and altho they are guyed down they still seemed to be swaying more than i feel they should and so i decided to get the spanner out the toolbox and loosen the U Bolts on the T and K's and lower them

i have noticed quite a loss of signal strengths on the FT-8900R with the V-2000 Colinear but i did not want to risk damage to my antenna system or damage to anything else in the vicinity that could happen if they were to come down in the bad weather

as the weather is forecast to get worse it looks like it could be a while before they are pushed back up to normal height again

(All antennas now arround 8-10ft lower than the usual height)

Over the Past Couple of Days while the weather has been bad i have constructed myself a 40M Wire Dipole

today with a gap in the bad weather i got outside and put it up before it began to rain again (and it did too - as soon as i had finished)

Due to work commitments i have not been able to test it much but hopefully over the next few weeks i will be in the shack more and be able to get active on HF once again

i decided i wanted something dedicated for HF so after weeks of looking round various websites etc

i now have an Icom IC-738

yet another addition to the M3WDS shack

now its time to get a HF antenna antenna back up i think :D

After having problems with the Full Size G5RV and not being able to tune it even through the MFJ Tuner i decided to take it down and within the next few weeks i will probably replace it with a home brew dipole

After Visiting Donnington Rally today

I purchased a Quad Band Yaesu FT-8900R

a 4 Ele yagi for 2m

and a AV-600 SWR Meter

and various other bargains

ALL soon to become new additions in the M3WDS Shack / Antenna System

Pics To Follow Soon.....

Going to The Leicester Rally at Donnington Park on Friday

Got Some Pennies to buy my new rig and other bits and pieces

should be a good day out i think :)

Officially Gained Old Fart Status

21 Today (Weds 1st Oct) :)

pics of party to follow soon.....

Im Hoping within the next few weeks to purchase a small crossed yagi to work some of the SOTA summits etc from the comfort of my own shack and also purchase a dual band fm radio for local nattering to free up the 857D for 6m, HF and 2M SSB

More Info to Follow Soon Regarding This....

Listening Round on 2M SSB and keeping an eye on the SOTAWatch Page today got me 5 NEW Unique Summits for SOTA

WB-020 Thanks to Geoff (M3SFN)

MW-004 Thanks to Steve (2W0KPO)

MW-005 Thanks to John (M0JDK)

CE-004 Thanks to Carolyn (G6WRW)

SE-008 Thanks to Richard (G4ERP)

More Spots on the SOTAWatch Still to Come So Maybe More To Come Yet

Also worked M0RCP/P on LD-003 but not a unique but still 10 chaser points many thanks