In 2022 the Netherlands part of the Thales Group is celebrating that 100 years ago its predecessor, which was last known as Hollandse Signaalapparaten, was founded. As part of many festivities a special event station was operational between 21 April 2022 and 31 December 2022. This SES was operated by a number of radio amateurs …
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Author:PA8S
My first year on HF
Exactly one year ago (15th of May 2020) I made my first QSO on HF, this was with Vladimir R2AL in FT8 on the 20 meter band. Since then I have made 5273 QSOs of which 3323 have been confirmed by QSL. In total I have worked 142 different DXCC entities of which 136 have …
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Trouble with decoding byte 0xFA
What kind of cryptic title is this? For the process of my ADIF log, which I collect daily from LoTW, I have written a small tool. This tool uses a few standard Python libraries. One of them has been giving me an error message for the last two days, causing my tool to fail. The …
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QSO with FT8 robots
They have found me. “Who?” you might ask. Well, the FT8 robots. At first I thought, ‘Nice, some of my fellow amateurs would like yet another FT8 QSO on this band when we already had a confirmed QSO.’ and jokingly called them ‘fans’ but now I know better. Not everyone likes the FT8 protocol because …
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Greek radio amateurs commemorate the Hellenic War of Independence in 1821
Starting on 16 December 2020 a group of Greek radio amateur stations will be on the air to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Hellenic War of Independence in 1821. Nine multi-operator special event stations – namely SX1A, SX2A, SX3A, SX4A, SX5A (Dodecanese), SX6A, SX7A, SX8A and SX9A (Crete) – will be active during the …
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My first APRS beacon received by ISS
Tonight (24th November 2020) I finally succeeded; the ISS has received my APRS beacon. Danny PD2WR gave me the correct settings for my TH-D74 portable radio and see there, success. Danny, thank you again. The ISS came over late in the evening, the maximum elevation was just 26 degrees above the horizon. Yet this was …
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RSGB – FT4 Contest 2020
Organized by: Radio Society of Great Britain Date: Multiple dates in 2020 Band: 80M Mode: FT4 Link: Here The RSGB organizes a FT4 contest on 80M almost every month. The contest last only 90 minutes on every contest day so there is not much time to make QSOs. I have participated in the ’10W Non …
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Digital Voice Hotspot
Since I have both DMR and D-STAR compatible portables, I have been playing a bit with these modes. I can see the advantages of these modes but the configuration possibilities and the additional problems seem almost infinite. 😉 In order to play with DMR/D-STAR in my shack I bought an MMDVM HS Hat. This is …
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Kenwood TH-D74E
My second handheld is a Kenwood TH-D74E. A more high-end radio, compared to my AnyTone, with a wider reception range (including HF in CW, SSB and AM) and D-STAR capabilities on VHF/UHF. Next to this the TH-D74E has support for (I think) the complete APRS protocol, e.g. it can also receive APRS data. With this …
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Learn Python to analyse ADIF logbooks
Nowadays almost every radio amateur uses a digital logbook. Where one keeps his or her log private, others may publish all or part of the log online. The de facto standard in the digital exchange of (parts of) the logbook is the ADIF format. I’m in the process of writing a tool which will analyse …
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