Hi all

[steviewkParticipant]

Hello to all,
I’m Stephen.

Passed my foundation exam today 10th October 24. Callsign to follow.

Looking forward to getting active on the air and learning where my interest lies. I think it’ll be a case of trying everything until I find somewhere my interest lies.

Based in Lesmahagow, Scotland.
Currently getting my head around a baofeng UV-5R

[M0PWXParticipant]

welcome to the hobby Stephen

the little baofengs are weapon of choice for many in the FM satellites and ISS, 5w into a small hand held beam like an Arrow antenna and you can work a few satellites and EU countries on 2m/70cm (iss uplink is 145.990 PL 67.0hz, downlink is 437.800)
there are a few phone apps to help with tracking the sats in the sky both for times and locations

the other thing is if your interesting in HF but don’t want to commit a lot of money initially get a genuine RTL-SDR.com USB dongle and you can listen and try receiving some of the digital modes before you buy a HF transceiver (https://www.amazon.co.uk/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined-Black/dp/B0BMKZCKTF) make sure to get a real one not a Chinese knock off, as they have bad stability and poor performance the little extra you pay for a genuine one is worth it, then you just need SDR# or cubic SDR software which are free to make them work

if you want to explore HF a good little starter HF rig is either a Xiegu G90 (HF 20w about £400 new), Xiegu X6100 (HF + 6m about £600 new) or a Xiegu X6200 (HF + 6m about £800 new), they are all HF with colour LCD display and built in ATU that can tune a coat hanger, easy to operate, just the basic functions you need and can all do digital modes when connected to a PC / Laptop (the G90 needs a additional interface and X6100/X6200 have built in USB sound cards so just USB cable required)

digital modes like FT8 you can pretty much work the world on 20w, SSB you will be able to work EU and US so long as the bands aren’t to busy, SSTV is fun to watch on 20m (14.230 USB) with Yoniq to decode the signal have a look at my QSL. net page https://www.qsl.net/m0pwx/modes-and-freq.htm it list common digial modes, frequencies and links to software required to decode them

any questions just ask, and someone will come along and help

73

Peter

M0PWX (not pete M0PSX who runs this site and essexham)

• This reply was modified 4 days, 19 hours ago by M0PWX.

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