46 and counting…

Dean Barnes, 46

Hello and welcome! My name is Dean Barnes, I am 46 years old (hence the title of my blog), currently resident in the cathedral city of Lichfield, central England. I am a licensed amateur radio operator holding the callsign G0RIF. I also enjoy listening to music and going to gigs. My tastes are varied but I do prefer guitar based classic rock & blues. Through these pages I will share a little of what happens in my life. I will likely bore most of you with details of my amateur radio activities, I may at times amuse one or two of you. I suspect though that it will ultimately do little more than serve to remind me just how quiet and mundane my life is.

No, this isn’t a word ladder or anything like that. It’s a little random musing on the similarities between what I do with my Morse paddle and what my partner Dulcie does in her work from home transcription services business.

It struck me recently that the process by which I convert words and letters into left/right movements of my paddle, apparently without conscious effort but after a lot of practise and training, is very similar to the process by which Dulcie converts what she hears into key presses on her keyboard. I suspect it’s also very similar to the way in which musicians convert notes on the staff when sight reading into the appropriate hand/foot/lip/mouth movements to make their instrument produce the correct sound.

It’s amazing how these things come to you all of a sudden. Who’d have thought that my amateur radio hobby would be related in this way to Dulcie’s job as a self employed audio transcription typist.

Then again maybe it’s not so amazing after all and it was just me being a bit slow in seeing the similarities…?

Dean Amateur Radio, Blog, Totally random audio transcription, morse code, transcription services

Having decided to give this blog a bit of a subject matter makeover to have less of an obvious amateur radio focus, for the benefit of any readers who aren’t amateur radio operators, let me explain.

9M8Z is the callsign of an amateur radio operator in East Malaysia.

WPX SSB is an amateur radio contest run annually at this time of year.

WPX stands for ‘worked prefixes’…but enough of that!

SSB stands for ‘single sideband’ which is a form of spoken communication used on shortwave bands.

The sum of which means that I, with my amateur radio station and personal callsign G0RIF, made contact with amateur radio station 9M8Z in East Malaysia this past weekend in the WPX SSB contest.

That’s a distance of some 7000 miles using only 100 watts of power (about the same as your average pre energy saving light bulb) and a simple wire antenna. This kind of thing impresses me.

Dean Amateur Radio 9M8Z, SSB, WPX

The 19th of March 2011 marks the closest lunar approach for almost 20 years at ‘just’ 221 567 miles.

This is my attempt at photographing the supermoon (as they’re calling it) and despite the usual tabloid sensationalism, it looks much the same as usual.

This is not quite full moon but is about 99% illuminated. Full moon is an hour before perigee at 18:10 GMT this evening.

Dean Blog, Pictures moon, perigee, supermoon

‘The wet string chronicles…’ is the former title of this blog, so called because of my less than optimal amateur radio antenna. Over the years I’ve always used simple wire antennas, some of which have worked better than others. Some of the less performant antennas are what we in England would say are ‘about as much use as a bit of wet string’! In antenna terms it’s colloquial for ‘not very good’.

I’m sure I’ll still write about how my antennas are a bit of a compromise (to put it mildly) but I’ll be adopting a less amateur radio focused view of the world going forward. I want to diversify and write about other things that interest me, especially photography and music. That is why today, I’ve changed the title of my blog to something more generic - ‘45 and counting…’.

And as for my antennas, well, they’re still there and they’re still about as compromise as they ever were, but they’re the best I can do given my current location and situation. I still make plenty of contacts and while times at’s a bit of a challenge working weaker and more remote stations, I accept that it won’t always be easy and in a way that only adds to the enjoyment and the sense of satisfaction when I do manage to log a new country.

Dean Amateur Radio, Blog, Life... antenna

The title says it all really - it’s been a bit quiet this past 6 months or so at amateur radio station G0RIF. No particular reason but contributory factors do include a diminished passion for the hobby.

Don’t get me wrong, I do still retain the fascination for radio communications and I do still enjoy chasing DX and making DX contacts. Where I struggle is with day-to-day operating. I seem to have so many other things that I want to do these days.

I’ll see how it goes over the next few months before deciding what to do. For now I’ll just say ‘Happy Christmas one and all!’ and wish everyone all the very best for 2011.

Dean Amateur Radio, Life... G0RIF

I’d been looking forward to this event because I was hoping I might get on the bands for a few hours for the first time since a 20m CW QSO with K9OM on the 15th of August, over 5 weeks ago.

In three sessions I made approximately 60 contacts spread over the 40, 20 and 15m bands. Conditions seems pretty good overall (sunspot number up at 57) and I was particularly surprised to find how late into the Saturday evening 15m remained open down to Central and South America. Very different to earlier in the year when I was hearing very little on 15m much after 5pm local time (16:00 UTC)…although I’m prepared to accept that my antenna will always be a limiting factor. However, same antenna then and now so things certainly seem to have improved with Argentina, Brazil, Aruba, Galapagos Islands, Kuwait and the Dominican Republic all worked on 15m on Sunday evening.

Although no new countries were worked during the contest, in spite of my best efforts to get through a minor pile-up trying to work a Chinese station (yes, I still need China despite having already worked most of the surrounding countries), I did work two new US states towards my WAS award, New Mexico in the form of WA5ZUP and Wyoming in the form of WY7SS. That is now 45 of the 50 states worked with just Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska and Utah still needed.

It was nice to get on the bands again and nice to hear so many strong RTTY signals (on 15m in particular). I’ll be hoping it’s not another 5 weeks before the next time and not too long to the next new one!

Dean Amateur Radio contest, DX, RTTY, WAS

I enjoy digimodes, also known as digital or data modes. Although I only use RTTY and PSK, the term ‘digimodes’ also encompasses such things as Amtor, Pactor, G-TOR, PactorII, Clover, Olivia, Packet, Hellschreiber, MT63, Throb and MFSK16. There are others!

Some of these data modes have been around for a long time, RTTY being one such mode. Others, such as PSK31 are newer and have only recently gained in popularity. And therein lies the dilemma. PSK31 is now so popular that the parts of the band where this activity is found, especially on 20m around 14.070MHz, are becoming very crowded. RTTY on the other hand is, on the face of it, much less popular, attributed in part to it being seen as somehow more difficult to setup and use than PSK modes.

My problem then is this: As much as I enjoy RTTY there can at times be little or no activity heard on the bands between contests (major RTTY contests do, thank goodness, still bring out many of the RTTY enthusiasts). PSK31 on the other hand is pretty much always to be found on 20m if nowhere else. The problem is that I don’t find it anywhere near as much fun now as I did a few years ago when I first discovered PSK (in September 2005) and when I worked a lot of nice DX using the mode.

I do keep saying to myself I should invest more time in PSK31 DXing and get back to enjoying it as much as I used to. Maybe now is the right time to finally commit to that. I can then use RTTY as and when the activity pops up on the bands.

Dean Amateur Radio PSK31, RTTY

This past weekend saw the annual Worked All Europe (WAE) DX CW contest take to the bands. I was hopeful of snagging a new one or two in the course of giving away a few points over the two days on the contest.

My operating was very much on an ad hoc basis and amounted to around 4 hours spent tuning around 40, 20 and 15m in search and pounce mode.

Conditions weren’t great and no new ones were worked. The closest I came to a new one was when finding a Chinese station under a mini pile-up on 20m on Saturday morning. He was weak and I was only running 25 watts but I spent a while trying for a contact with no success. Mindful of limited time on the bands I soon tuned away to see what else was about.

Highlights of the contest for me were 5K1R (Colombia) on 15m and 20m and A65BD (United Arab Emirates) on 20m. I already have both of these countries worked but I need QSL cards for both. As both stations have European QSL managers I’m optimistic of getting cards for both this time. Interestingly A65BD is already confirmed on LoTW as I type, only 7 hours after the competition closed!

Dean Amateur Radio 5K1R, A65BD, CW, LoTW, WAE

Or so the saying goes…and if that star is a shooting star, and you have a wish to make, then now is the time to get outside and look to the heavens because the Perseid Meteor Shower is upon us.

In the northern hemisphere you’re very likely to see at least one shooting star if you have a nice clear sky. According to Nasa, the shower could produce a display of up to 80 meteors per hour!

Best advice says you should find a spot well away from local light sources as this significantly affects your ability to see the fainter shooting stars but worry not if you can’t do that. In the space of about 20 minutes last night, just stood outside the back door of the house with lots of local light pollution, I saw two lovely bright shooting stars streaking off to the south-west.

I’ll be out again tonight, weather and cloud cover permitting, in the hope of seeing some more. Try it yourself…and maybe make a wish. You never know what might happen.

Dean Totally random meteor, Perseid

One mans DX is another mans chip-shot. Your equipment, conditions, the frequency in use and any number of other factors all contribute to making certain contacts worthy of the term ‘DX’.

Case in point my attempt at a 2m SSB contact with Simon (2E0HTS) some 87 miles north of me. How hard could it be? After all, I’m a HF DX’er and I regularly work stations thousands of miles away. This should be easy, right? Wrong!

I embarked on this little exercise because I’m interested in working a bit of 2m SSB up into Burton-on-Trent where I’m getting to know a few of the locals through the Burton Amateur Radio Club. To that end Simon and I arranged a sked (a pre-arranged contact for all you non-hams out there) to see if we could establish a contact on 2m SSB.

We agreed that he would call me as he was likely to have the ‘bigger’ signal (50 watts into a homebrew IO loop beam he uses for working amateur satellites with great success). I waited and listened…and waited…and waited. At times I could tell he was there, down in the noise, but it just wasn’t readable at all. If I wasn’t hearing his 50 watts he was never going to hear my puny 8 watts into a simple 3 element beam!

We gave it our best shot but it wasn’t to be. We moved to 80m and had a quick chat (which was nice…thanks Simon!) and I’ll look forward to chatting with him again soon. For now though it seems that 87 miles on 2m, for us at least, was ‘DX too far’. I’m certainly gaining a new found respect for all the VHF/UHF (and beyond) DX’ers out there. I’ve also learned that DX need not be the other side of the world. Sometimes it isn’t even the other side of the country! It’s all relative.

Dean Amateur Radio 2E0HTS, antenna, DX, G0RIF, SSB