October news

RadioMagazinYO, the monthly YO hams magazine is available for download HERE. It's necessary to register as user in order to dl the magazine but you can wait to the end of the month do have it without registration!
The cover story, about the YR1X ARHAB will be available as article next month.
Meantime, you can watch YR1X-11 pictures HERE.

High Altitude Balloon Launch on October!!!

For updated informations about High altitude balloon launch, please check THIS PAGE.

2E0BLF and South Yorkshire Repeater Group steal money just like a thief!

Yes! Is a thief! He and South Yorkshire Repeater Group.
How can you name one who takes your money for a radio gear and sends nothing?
"Thief", "cheater", "con".
Well, this is Andrew "Andy" Spaxman, 2E0BLF, ex: M2UXC, who lives in 12 Stanhope Gardens, Barnsley S752QB, England (or UK ).

Shame on you Mr. Andy "Thief" Spaxman!

How it's "operates"?
Simple!
He is web-admin at this site: http://www.southyorkshirerepeatergroup.co.uk/shop/
He had a TH-79 for spares to sell. The price was nice, around 50 UK Pound. I wrote a e-mail asking him if he can send the radio to Romania. His answer was "OK" and he said that the shipping will be 25 UKP, so I sent the money via PayPal!
A long time I get no answer from him to my regards about the expedition of the radio...
When I threat him with a complain to local police, he reacted and told me that he will send the money back.
After that, a looong silence but no radio nor money, of course!
So, instead of making that complain, I decided to publish everywhere I can this story! It is now more than a year...

Mr. Andy "Thief" Spaxman has a gang! Yeah, he need a team to steal!
What team? This one:

South Yorkshire Repeater Group

Why I said that? Because the money was sent to that gang and nobody seems to care about! I was trying to contact someone from that "gang" to complain but all the email was censored, I believe!
Also, beware of the other side of Mr. "Thief" Spaxman!
He is the registrant and, of course, web-admin of the www.hostyorkshire.com:

Domain Name: HOSTYORKSHIRE.COM
Created Date: 06-Jun-2003
Expiry Date: 06-Jun-2012
Nameserver: ns2.speedydns.net
Nameserver: ns1.speedydns.net
Registrant Name: Andrew Spaxman
Registrant Company: Host Yorkshire
Registrant Address: 12 Stanhope Gardens
Registrant Address: Off Queens Drive
Registrant Address:
Registrant Address: Barnsley
Registrant Address: South Yorkshire
Registrant Address: S75 2QB
Registrant Address: United Kingdom
Technical Name: Andrew Spaxman
Technical Company: Host Yorkshire
Technical Address: 12 Stanhope Gardens
Technical Address: Off Queens Drive
Technical Address:
Technical Address: Barnsley
Technical Address: South Yorkshire
Technical Address: S75 2QB
Technical Address: United Kingdom
Technical Email: hostmaster@hostyorkshire.com

Maybe I will call him in the middle of the night! Who knows?!? :-)))

Path loss calculator

Everyone knows how hard it is to read books and to apply formulas. No problem! Now you can put the known data (Tx power, Rx sensitivity, antenna height and distance) into a spreadsheet and read the results!
A quick method to check a LOS (Line Of Sight) condition for a radio communication between 1 Mhz and 3 Ghz.
Also, you can find some usefull transformations between Watt and dbm or uV to dbm etc.
The link points to our club's home page.
And, of course, the spreadsheet is in english, so there will be no problem with it!

Click on the picture and enjoy!

Any suggestions are welcome!

17m band mobile QSO with local stations

Saturday, while I was waiting on the road near Sinaia, I was surprised to hear a YO station in QSO with another one.
The surprise was the fact that I was in a valley and the frequency was too high to have a "local" QSO (18.144 MHz).
Of course, the real life often "beats" the theory, so I give a try and made the call for YO2MHJ...
Surprise! He answer back and we made QSY to 18.150 MHz where we had a beautiful QSO from mobile to fixed radio!
The approximative distance between the two stations was a little over 200 km and the path was over a 2k m mountain chain!!! (Sinaia to Deva)
The signal on my mobile setup was 59+20 in the clear with a very little QSB!
My mobile setup is a ICOM IC-7000 radio, followed by a LDG Z11 PRO antenna tuner and a Sirio Titan 4000 mobile CB antenna.
The interesting fact is that this antenna is a base load one with no ground connection wich made this antenna suitable for broadband HF operation.
In fact, I was able to work from 80m to 6m while mobile!

Here is a small movie about my mobile QSO:

I believe that two factors was involved:
-A high F0F2 and
-A high angle of radiation at both stations!

To be further investigated...

73!