That was the outcome of a remarkable two hours cricket this morning on the second day of the third Ashes test at Edgbaston (Birmingham). Following an impressive start yesterday on a rain delayed first day when Australia made 126-1 from 30 overs, they lost 7 wickets in this mornings session for 77 runs ending on 203-8. I’m not gloating you understand…just reporting the current state of play. 
They’re now taking lunch and it’s looking likely England will be batting before too much longer so here’s to a decent first innings total from our guys and another positive result, weather permitting.
Dean Totally random Australia, cricket, Edgbaston, England, the ashes
I was pleasantly surprised a few days ago to receive an email from a lady in the marketing department at Jet2.com requesting the use of one of my old pictures on their website.
Channel Express Airbus A300 G-CEXI
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It’s an old picture taken back in October 2000 at East Midlands Airport (shown here) of a Channel Express cargo aircraft, an Airbus A300B4.
Jet2.com is the new name for what was previously Channel Express (Air Services), the rename coming about in 2006 when Channex freight operations adopted the Jet2 branding formerly used for Channel Express passenger services, after which Jet2.com continued to operate all contract charter and freight flights.
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I was happy to agree to them using my image and I agreed that they could do this free of charge on this occasion because with it being an old image (scanned from an old Kodak print) I don’t have hi-res. They will use a lower resolution library picture on their website with a picture credit identifying it as my image.
Even though I’m no longer going out taking pictures I still have several hundred images out there on various photo libraries and it’s always a nice surprise when you get this kind of approach so long after taking a picture and uploading it.
Dean Pictures, Totally random photography
Advocates of CW (Morse code) will often cite its advantages over other modes like phone (by which they usually mean single sideband (SSB) these days). One of those advantages, a side effect of it’s narrow bandwidth (meaning that the transmitted energy is ‘focused’ into a narrow signal), is its ability to ‘get through’ when other modes can’t. They’ll tell you that CW will get you the QSO more times than any other mode, such as for instance when conditions just won’t allow you to conduct a phone contact.
Case in point - this years RSGB (radio society of Great Britain) IOTA (islands on the air) contest, held this past weekend from noon UTC Saturday to noon UTC Sunday. It’s usually a good measure of both your antenna and conditions because many of the participating stations on islands will be running modest power with simple antennas (unlike other major contests where the ‘big guns’ are out with their huge antenna systems and powerful amplifiers). Bottom line is, in the IOTA contest your station needs two basic attributes - good ears and a good radiated signal. This boils down to one fundamental component - your antenna (or antennas). If you can’t hear them you can’t work them and if you can’t make them hear you you also can’t work them.
What I found when trying to work a few of the stations was that more often than not it was VERY difficult getting them to hear my SSB signal (and even those who could hear me were reporting me as ‘weak’). Using CW on the other hand usually resulted in them replying to my first or second call.
Over the weekend I worked around twice as many stations on CW as I did on SSB (all of them European stations on either 20m or 40m) and all of the SSB contacts were hard work! Not to mention those SSB stations I tried to contact and just didn’t get through (after calling several times even when there were no other apparent callers). A very clear demonstration that, all else being equal, CW will get you the QSO where SSB might not.
Dean Amateur Radio antenna, CW, IOTA, morse code, RSGB, SSB
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If you’re a fan of good music and great guitar playing you’ll likely have heard of Ritchie Blackmore. Best known for his time with Deep Purple and Rainbow he’s now working with his wife Candice Night (vocals) in the Renaissance-inspired ‘Blackmore’s Night’.
I digress - the reason for this post is that I have recently ‘discovered’ a great Rainbow album - the quite amazing ‘Stranger in Us All’ featuring Doogie White on vocals. Released in 1995 this was to be Ritchie’s last album before forming ‘Blackmore’s Night’.
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the legend that is Ritchie Blackmore
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I find it hard to believe that this great album has been unknown to me until literally a few weeks ago. The last album I purchased by Rainbow was the 1982 release ‘Straight Between the Eyes’ so I’d kind of lost track of their output…and of course there had been the on-off-on-off Deep Purple thing for Ritchie. But having found it I love it. I’d recommend you check it out because it has some great playing by Ritchie and Doogie White’s vocals work really well as you might expect from such a great vocalist!
Stand out tracks for me are ‘Ariel’, ‘Stand and Fight’ (shades of ‘Can’t Happen Here’), ‘Too Late for Tears’, ‘Black Masquerade’ (shades of ‘Eyes of The World’) and a rousing kick-ass version of ‘Still I’m Sad’ - there just isn’t a weak track on the album!
Dean Music, Pictures Blackmore's Night, Doogie White, Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore, Stranger In Us All
It’s been 5 weeks now since I took receipt of my FT-950 so I think it’s about time I posted a short review based on my experiences with the radio over that period. This won’t be a highly technical review based on test figures and technical data, rather it will be a user review based on how well the radio fulfils my requirements and how it compares to other radios I have owned.
The FT-950 is a complex radio that needs a significant amount of configuration and setup to get it working just the way you want it, but, having done that, it is a radio that performs very well. Highlights for me are DSP IF filtering, triple band stacking registers (which retain all band and mode appropriate settings - this is a very powerful feature) and the CW peaking contour facility.
I’m very pleased with my Yaesu FT-950 as it is significantly better than any other radio I have owned. It is more than capable of fulfilling all of my requiements for SSB, CW and data communications (especially RTTY and PSK31).
Dean Amateur Radio FT-950, review, Yaesu
Aussie butt that is. Having secured a win over the Aussies at Lords, the first time in some 75 years, it’s now 1-0 to England in the 2009 Ashes series. Well done to the boys and it’s now on to Edgbaston in Birmingham for the third test - come on England!
Dean Totally random Australia, cricket, England, the ashes
A trip the Barr Beacon this past weekend allowed me to trial and test a simple end-fed antenna comprising a 65ft wire and a 9:1 unbalanced-to-unbalanced (unun) transmission line transformer. According to the manufacturer “the 9:1 unun is a transformer bringing high [impedance] values such as 450 Ohms to a…more manageable 36 to 90 Ohms, thus allowing a much better match to coax feeder”.
9:1 unun
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There are many who will sniff at this kind of device suggesting “it couldn’t possibly work” or suggesting “you’d be better off with a simple doublet fed with ladder line”.
Unfortunately I’m not able to deploy large centre fed antennas with unsightly feed lines. I need to keep my antenna discrete and low profile - this pretty much limits me to simple end fed wires. Furthermore, my policy is always to try this kind of thing and see if or how well it works before passing judgement, fully accepting that it is a compromise solution. |
For the Barr Beacon test the antenna was arranged in an inverted-L configuration, fed at the bottom, with no ground, radial or counterpoise wires (the SRC 9:1 unun used has no ground lug anyway). The 65ft wire was suspended on two fibreglass poles with a 30ft vertical section and a 35ft top section.
In use the antenna tuned on all bands 80m thru 10m (30m was not tested) and received signals were good. Contacts were made on 15m, 17m, 20m and 80m with most activity on 20m where I received good reports across Europe peaking at 59 +5 from Rudy (HB9CCL) in the eastern Alps with whom I had a good long chat. I also got through a minor pile-up to work Hans (JW4EU) on Svalbard.
Whatever it’s limitations the antenna does radiate and on 20m it seems to work just fine. Contest stations worked on a pretty quiet 15m band heard me first call, so it also works ok there. A few stations worked on 17m were a bit more difficult but there were other stations calling. The single 80m contact with GB1SS was difficult copy for him so for now I’ll reserve judgement on both 40m (yet to make a contact) and 80m.
Overall, given the simplicity and convenience of the unun device, and the possibilities if offers for a simple multiband antenna with either a 65ft or a 23ft wire (the latter giving only 40-10m coverage), I’m satisfied that it works well enough to warrant further experimentation. Having tried it with the 65ft wire I’m very interested to see how it performs with the shorter 23ft wire.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures 9:1, antenna, G0RIF, portable, unun
That’s what every English cricket fan is hoping for in the 2009 Ashes series between England and Australia. We live in hope!!!
After a somewhat fortunate draw in the first test in Cardiff it’s now lunch on the second day at Lords. England eventually scored 425 runs in their first innings, Australia are currently 22 for 2 in their first innings - it’s poised for an exciting afternoons cricket and potentially all important first blood to England if we can rip through the Aussies without them accumulating a big score.
Let’s hope it’s a great series and fingers crossed for an England win at Lords and subsequent seris win to regain the Ashes. Come on England!
Dean Totally random Australia, cricket, England, the ashes
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It was around 1900 UTC when I turned on the radio last night. The antenna was still setup for 30m from the night before so I tuned around the CW portion of the band. I found Bodo working stations around 10.125MHz listening up between 1 and 2KHz.
Conditions weren’t great but I set my split for 1KHz and set about waiting for his signal to peak (assuming that this would give best reciprocal propagation). Having sent my callsign a few times it was around 1913 UTC when I heard my call coming back through the noise - a quick ‘tu 599 73′ later and he was in the log!
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my QSO confirmed in online log
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Dean Amateur Radio 5N0OCH, CW, propagation
Just a quick update to the previous post. Within a few hours of making that post I had 5N0HQ in the log, 20m CW. As luck would have it I was tuning around the 20m band sometime after dinner and I noticed a not-too-strong signal up around 14.054MHz - it was 5N0HQ and he wasn’t under a huge pile-up. I sent my callsign a few times and on the thrid or fourth call he came back to me at 19:01UTC for a new one on CW!
I’ll keep on trying for a RTTY contact with Bodo in his 5N0OCH guise but it was nice to get this one on CW following the earlier realisation and fix of the computer keying issue. 
Dean Amateur Radio 5N0HQ, 5N0OCH, CW, RTTY