Shack in a bed

The Elekraft KX3 has become my shack in the bed. It is connected to the antenna using 10 m cable from eBay. Olga takes radio upstairs to charge batteries. I wish the charger had a tricle charge so we could leave radio connected to power continuously.

Better buy local

My WOUXAN KGUV8D handheld radio with faulty keypad  just returned from a quick trip to ML&S. Which expierience convinsed me of the wisdom of buying chinese radios from UK dealer. Whithin couple of hours of calling them ML&S had arranged UPS carrier to collect the radio to take it for exchange. No making costomer pay return postage (other dealers please note). Next day the radio was on its way back to us. Next day it has arrived. Imagine the trouble I would have returning it to seller in Hong Kong. No more buying radios on eBay for me!

Events in Ukraine

I have just got off the air after making several  contactsintoRussia and Ukraine on 10m PSK31. Ham radio transcends political boundaries and engenders friendships betweenpeople of all nations. All politicians could learn from it. My thoughts today are particularly with my radio friends living in Ukraine I hope that peace and normality are restored soon

до свидания!

SSN data file goes AWOL

I've not updated the VOAProp file ssn.txt for a while as some irritating health issues kept on getting in the way. I thought I would have a try today butit seems the NOAA data file Iused to update it from  has moved to a new address. Does anyone know where it has gone to?

Tracking wildlife

I watching a wildlife programme on TV the other day which had a feature about urban foxes. The naturalists  had fitted radio collars to some of the foxes and were able to track them over a wide area.One fox went off on a trek that lasted a couple of weeks and covered a distance of several kilometres.

In another programme radios have been attached to larger birds such as geese and ospreys to track their migration paths.
I wonder what frequency is used? One of the maturalists in the urban fox project seemed to be trying to DF a fox using what looked auspiciouslylike a 3 element 2m Yagi. I've seen similar antennas used o locate larger animals in Africa.

I would love to know what technology they use. My Kenwood TH-D7E APRS radio - despite being too big to use as a tracker for anythimg much smaller than an elephant -  can run for only a few hours with the GPS enbled and the power set to a sufficient level to enable tracking over a reasonable distance.using a less than optimal transmitting ntenna.