Indigo Foxtrot…

My FT-897 (purchased second hand) arrived about a week ago but was only used on receive for the first few days while I got the hang of the menu system and sorted out a new power supply. Out of the box I have to say that the pictures don’t do this radio justice. Granted it’s what’s on the inside that really matters but it doesn’t hurt if a radio looks good on the desk. To that end the FT-897 is a good looking radio!

…Hello Yaesu FT-897D

In use I have found the menu system simple enough but if you’re used to a more sophisticated user interface you may find some of the key presses required to effect a change in the radio’s setup to be a little bit long winded. My other radio is a Kenwood TS-480SAT and that radio has a very nice user interface - by comparison I am finding the Yaesu FT-897 to be a bit cumbersome.

Receive performance on HF is good and the radio does benefit from audio DSP noise reduction. This does significantly quieten what is otherwise a pretty noisy receiver. There is also DSP bandwidth filtering which is effective in reducing adjacent channel interference to allow the desired signal to be better heard. This was put to particular use in the CQWW WPX SSB contest this past weekend. The receiver seems to cope quite well with crowded band conditions, although it should be noted I do have the W4RT 2.3KHz Collins SSB filter installed which no doubt helps in that regard.

By way of comparison I would say that the FT-897 is not as good as the TS-480 on HF receive but that should come as no real surprise as the TS-480 is HF+6m only and is designed for optimal HF performance. The FT-897 on the other hand covers HF+6m plus 2m and 70cm. The difference is hard to quantify and I couldn’t hear anything on the Kenwood that I couldn’t on the Yaesu - it’s just that the Kenwood seems more in control of the received signal and has better recovered audio that the FT-897.

I can’t say much yet about the transmit performance - I need a few on-air reports to compare a few settings before passing judgement. I hope to be able to conduct those tests in the next few weeks - I’ll report my findings then.

Overall, given it’s design intent, the FT-897 is in my opinion a very good radio. It seems to have ticked all the right boxes and arrived at a good compromise in terms of size, frequency coverage, operator convenience and performance.

I am now looking forward to taking the radio out into the field for some portable operations and antenna experimentation. Until then I’m enjoying using the radio in the shack where it is used for HF SSB, 2m and 70cm work while the TS-480 handles all other HF modes like CW, PSK31 and RTTY (and other digimodes).

In summary then, given what it sets out to achieve, I have to rate the Yaesu FT-897 a very good radio and one I look forward to owning and using for many years.

Dean Amateur Radio contest, FT-897, PSK31, review, RTTY, TS-480, Yaesu

I need a better antenna. This weekends BARTG (British Amateur Radio Teletype Group) RTTY contest was a major disappointment. As with the RSGB Commonwealth contest last weekend, significantly fewer stations were heard than last year and countries that were easily worked last year on my old antenna are hard work or not possible this year.

Another increasingly apparent flaw in my current antenna setup is the amount of RF in the shack. ‘RF in the shack’ is when radio frequency energy (radio waves) is picked up by equipment in the shack making them ‘hot’. Touching something that is ‘hot’ with RF is something between an electric shock and a burn - not a nice sensation. Not at all what you want when you’re holding bits of the equipment like for instance a microphone.

The thinking now turns to how best to install something better given the severe restrictions on just what can be erected. Time to get my thinking head on…

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, contest, RTTY

First things first - WordPress is a wonderful blog & website authoring tool, no doubt about that in my mind. The problem is that the built in gallery object can be a real pain in the ass to use at times.

Through a long drawn out process of trial and error I now have my Aviation gallery working how I want it. Many hours were spent trying to get the images to display at the desired size.

I now understand that gallery objects retain their settings for image sizes (small/medium/large) as defined in Dashboard>>Settings>>Media at the time the gallery was created, even if you subsequently change those settings. This means that you need to be sure those settings are right for your theme before you start adding galleries!

I now have a few galleries to delete and add again to pick up the new, correct settings. Oh well, you live & learn I suppose!

Dean Blog, Life... blog, gallery

The RSGB Commonwealth Contest, for those of you who aren’t amateur radio operators, is a 24 hour morse code contest where the aim is to contact as many stations as possible in countries comprising the British Commonwealth.

I’d been looking forward to this for a while having done well last year in so far as I managed to work 4 all time new ones over the 24 hour period. This weekend however was a bit of a disappointment with most stations of interest either not heard at all or way down in the noise.

I don’t think conditions were great but I attribute the disappointment mostly to my relatively poor antenna compared to last year. My 2008 efforts from a previous residence were assisted by resonant 20m and 40m dipoles. This year at a new home I am using a simple random length wire tuned by an antenna tuning unit. This makes for a far less efficient receive and transmit antenna. I think it’s time to explore how I can fit some resonant antennas into my new setup.

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, contest, morse code

“If you can’t say somethin nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” Sound advice from wise Thumper’s dad! Why oh why do we all too often speak before putting our brains in gear?

I have this very morning upset my nearest & dearest with a glib little throwaway line - a classic case of mouth in gear, brain in neutral. I will be doing my best through the remainder of today to make amends and secure the peace.

Dean Life...

Goodbye JRC JST-245…

In with the new. This weekend I will be selling my faithful old JRC JST-245 and replacing it with a Yaesu FT-897. The FT-897 is a much smaller radio ideal for portable and holiday type operating. Its coverage of VHF and UHF bands will allow me to operate there too, something I have not done previously as I had no radio covering those bands. The JRC is a magnificent radio and it has served me well the past 3 and a half years but I can’t justify

keeping it while it isn’t being used as often as it once was. The lack of tight filtering and the fact that filters for this radio are very difficult to come by mean that it is really not suitable for the narrow bandwidth data nodes I enjoy, like RTTY and PSK31, for which I use a Kenwood TS-480SAT with a 500Hz crystal filter (and thinking of getting the 270Hz filter one day).

Dean Amateur Radio JRC, JST-245, PSK31, RTTY, TS-480

Persevere, never give up, try, try and try again! The soundcard I refer to in my previous post is now working as required with both line and speaker audio out. Music is restored to my world - all is well

Dean Life..., Music technology

One step forward and two steps backwards! Why aren’t things ever quite as simple as they should be?

I have this afternoon installed a new (well, used really, from eBay) soundcard in my PC. The card works fine and does what I bought it for (decoding amateur radio PSK31 and RTTY data transmissions), however, I now have no means of listening to music on the PC or watching films because there’s no headphone socket and the original onboard soundcard is somehow disabled. Damn!

Dean Amateur Radio, Life... computers, PSK31, RTTY, technology

As I was working on the blog last night someone close to me asked “So why are you doing this and what’s it all about?”…or words to that effect. “Now there’s a question” I thought, why was I doing it? Why do any of us do it (blog that is)?

I suppose it’s partly because it’s an outlet, a form of confessional where we can dump our random and not so random thoughts on an anonymous audience in a way we might not feel able to do with those close to us. Maybe for some people it’s because they feel that they have something worth saying that they feel others should read.

Sometimes as we meander around the vastness of the internet we happen upon sites such as this, personal blogs describing the trivial and not so trivial aspects of our lives. It’s warming when reading those words to realise that we’re all basically the same inside, sharing the same hopes, fears and insecurities, even if not explicitly stated. I would say that it is that sense of deriving something from the day to day trivial aspects of others lives that drives me to write, that others might perhaps see a little of themselves in my words.

I write with no overriding agenda, no grand idea, just a random outpouring of unconnected thoughts that may over time give some impression of what life as me, an average guy, is like. It will also remind me of things I may have long forgotten, people and places once known, good and bad memories, highs and lows, trials and tribulations of a life most ordinary.

Dean Blog, Life..., Totally random blog, trivia

So here we are, my first blog and my first blog entry.

As I write this I have no idea who might read this or indeed who might be interested in what they read here. but, in the spirit of the internet and the proliferation of blogging, here is my contribution.

This blog is written in a spirit of goodwill and co-existence. My intention is to show & tell without insult or injury. Comments in a similar vein are welcome.

Welcome to my blog!

Dean Blog, Totally random blog