A new year A new Blog

The Road Trip 

A  while ago I lost my bungalow along with the garden I had all my antennas in  and my interest in Ham Radio waned at least till I got myself a flat in Quebec house , 8 floors up from the ground nice view but nowhere to put  up any antennas . I had this Idea that I should get out and about,get a bit more exercise and a few more contacts so why not get myself a 2 meter multimode and get out on the hills and valleys.

The Idea behind getting a multimode was so that I could join in the 2 meter contests and generally get out and about in the car to some high places, I already have a drive on stand made by my good friend Simon 2E0HTS  all I need to get is a telescopic mast  for my drive on mast support kind of like that in fig 3.   Anyone know where I can get some leisure batteries and a cheap generator, I might even get an inverter and a cheap rotator.I decided to have a look on fleabay and up popped  a good old Yaesu ft-480r a decent 2 meter multimode ( fig 1) ,so I bid on it and won it .

I now had this radio and wanted to try it out,  I had bought a yaesu Ft-290  from  the Manchester rally earlier this year , My friend Craig 2E0CSD Craig asked me to get one at a reasonable price and that one was   so I got it  & he's paid half  of what I paid for it. Now as well as Craig there is another with an FT-290  and his name is Chris M6FZR, that's why Craig wanted one so we could all try the 2 mtr SSB calling (144.300MHz ) it 's very under used except for contests when you can't get a word in edgewise.
We put our heads together and we came up with a 3 element  yagi antenna and some poles we could stick into the ground just to test every thing out.


The problem was that on the Friday it stared to snow, but  by the Sunday most of it had melted so we decided to go up to whetstone gate  colloquially known as the  Keighley gate  (fig 4) and give a shout.With  me being an experienced driver in snow we decided to try to get as far as we could and give a few shouts out.
I wasn't expecting to get any answers on 2 mtr SSB (144.300) but I gave a call out anyway and was surprises when John  M1AEB  answered my call thanks John,We stayed up there till about 16:00 hrs ( 4pm)  and the total contacts came to about 9 some on SSB (144.300) and some on FM (145.500) It just goes to show what a bunch of loonies we radio hams are. 

(Fig 3 Not my  car or mast stand)

Fig (1) Not mine BTW

My actual one made by 2E0HTS

(Fig 4)

I  hoped you enjoyed my post , please feel free to comment 

M1PAC ( phil)