RSGB VHF/UHF Contests

RSGB VHF/UHF Contests


Each month the Radio Society of Great Britain runs ‘Activity Contests’ on the VHF and UHF bands. Full details are on https://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/readcal.pl. These are a great way to cut your teeth in contesting, as they are nowhere near as cut throat as HF contests. 

For those new to the radio hobby these contests are a great opportunity to do some listening and to check out VHF and UHF receiving equipment and antennas as there is usually a lot of activity. 

The last part of the contest exchange is of most interest if you are not entering. It is the Locator Square (Maidenhead Locator) which is described in:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System . 

When you hear a Locator, enter it in the Grid Square box at

 https://dxcluster.ha8tks.hu/hamgeocoding/ 

and it will display a map showing the area where the station is located.

European contries run similar contests at the same times so you may hear stations from there as well as UK stations. 

To enter, you must have an amateur radio licence and be a member of RSGB or a member of an affiliated club. Do check the rules before entering as they are quite detailed.
  

If you are not entering the contest then the stations you hear, particularly those far away, will appreciate an email with the date and time you heard them and your location. You can find amateur station email addresses at www.qsl.net. 

Contest Timetable

Every 1st Tuesday	1900-1955 (Local)		2m FM Contest 144.5125 to 144.7875 MHz  and  145.200 to 145.400 MHz
Every 1st Tuesday	2000-2230 (Local)		2m Multimode Contest (see below). Mostly 144.150 to 144.400 MHz
Every 2nd Thursday	2000-2230 (Local)		6m Multimode Contest (see below). Mostly 50.130 to 50.300 MHz
Every 2nd Tuesday	1900-1955 (Local)		70cm FM Contest 432.525 to 432.975 MHz and 433.400 to 433.475 MHz
Every 2nd Tuesday	2000-2230 (Local)		70cm Multimode Contest (see below). Mostly 432.1 and 432.3 MHz
Every 3rd Thursday	2000-2230 (Local)		4m Multimode Contest (see below). I have never entered this contest, but band plan suggests 70.1 to 70.250 MHz
NOTES			For the FM contests, only FM mode can be used, for the other contests SSB, CW, FM, AM, JT6M, ISCAT and FSK441 can be used. Most contestants use SSB and a few call on CW (Morse) as well. Contest times are UK Local time, NOT UTC.

Good listening, and please leave a comment on here telling us how you get on. 

Software Defined Radio (SDR) - First Steps

I have often seen adverts in the amateur radio press for Software Defined Radios (SDR) and wondered why they are so expensive. During a discussion at my radio club (Cray Valley - www.cvrs.org), I learned that a TV/Radio Dongle receiver can provide the hardware for SDR. I found a suitable dongle (RTL2832 plus either R820 or E4000 chip set) on Ebay; ten UK Pounds from Hong Kong so, being the last of the big spenders, I went ahead and ordered. While I was waiting for it to arrive, I downloaded a copy of SDR Sharp  (SDR#) and the installation instructions (http://www.sdrsharp.com ).
 

There are some hardware things that I needed to do while waiting for the dongle. The dongle has a tiny MCX antenna plug. Fortunately Maplin sells an adaptor cable to standard TV socket (part N59LN) and I had already made a TV-BNC cable for another project, so this was not a problem. These dongles are very vulnerable to high levels of RF, so if you transmit while receiving on the dongle it will fry. The solution is to solder a couple of reversed diodes into the adaptor cable to limit the maximum input voltage.

The dongle arrived. The package also contained a remote control (only useful if you want to use the dongle for its intended purpose, but being radio amateurs we don’t do that do we?), a whip antenna (which works surprisingly well) and a software disk. Do not install this software as this will conflict with SDR#. The only tricky bit was changing the dongle driver from the Windows default to RTL 2832. To do this, you need a piece of software called Zadig (link on the SDR# site) and I also had to temporarily disable Heuristic protection in Norton which took violent exception to what I was trying to do.

All set, and Norton back to full protection, I plugged in the dongle and fired up the software. Operation was quite intuitive, but I started with the FM broadcast band – all was well and all the expected stations showed up on the display any gave me some strong, predictable signals to set up and learn how to use the software.

 

 

The dongle, with the E4000 tuner, covers from about 24MHz up to 1.7GHz, so it is a broadband device covering all the amateur bands from 12m up to 23cm. That’s the good news; the bad news is that there is no front-end filtering. Also these dongles mix the RF signal down to a few tens of kilohertz, to input to computer sound cards, so spurious signals are a real problem, particularly on the lower bands. For example I get a strong ‘Classic FM’ signal in the middle of the 10m band. It is possible to manage these phantom signals by carefully choosing the ‘Centre’ frequency and adjusting the RF gain, which can be accessed through the ‘Configuration’ menu, but my next move will be to build some filters to clean up the input signals.

I have also experimented with receiving  some digital modes using this SDR receiver. It is possible to patch the microphone socket to the speaker socket on most PCs so the digital modes can be decoded with standard software. There are a couple of drawbacks: you can’t hear the audio signal and the signal gets converted from digital to audio then back to digital again. There is a better solution – a piece of software called Virtual Audio Cable (  http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm ), which does what the name suggests, but without the Digital/Audio conversions. With VAC, it is possible to ‘split’ the system so the audio output can be heard, recorded or shared with other programmes. I have successfully decoded RTTY, PSK-31 etc.

My Dongle SDR has several advantages: it is very small and everything is controlled from the keyboard so easy to configure. For example, filter bandwidth can be adjusted very precisely and easily.  The waterfall display, which can be adjusted, allows large segments of a band to be viewed at once and you can see when stations come and go then click on the ones you want to listen to. Combining the SDR with the VAC software provides a very flexible setup. For example, I can operate digi-modes while listening to my favourite music on the same computer. 

This SDR radio will never be as good as a full communications receiver, but it was definitely worth a tenner and I hope its performance will be even better with some front-end filtering. It has opened lots of opportunities for experimentation that were not available to me before and after this initial experiment, I may be tempted to invest in an SDR transceiver, but that is for another day.

Wouxun KG-699E Accessories

As promised, here is a post on the accessories for the Wouxun KG-699E. If you want to read the review of the radio itself, then check earlier postings (click 'Older Posts' at the bottom of this page). Don't forget, your comments or questions will be welcomed, so please add some thoughts of your own.

Like all hand-helds, I needed to buy accessories to get the best out of the radio. These almost doubled the purchase price, but the cost still fell well short of buying the equivalent from one of the established amateur radio manufacturers.

Battery – the supplied battery is Lithium Ion type and has an excellent life, but fails quickly when exhausted. The radio does not have an external power socket so a spare battery is essential.

Antenna – The supplied rubber duck is only 1/20th wavelength long, so not very efficient as it's like trying to work 20m with 1 metre of wire!. I bought a longer antenna – the Garex Flexiwhip (http://www.garex.co.uk/), which is a centre loaded antenna about 500mm (so about 1/8 wavelength) long and fitted with the correct connector for the Wouxun radio. This is not as convenient as the supplied rubber duck for portable operation (see photos in the main review below), but in signal tests, with a local station, it gave about 6dB (one S point) improvement in signal strength.

External Mic & Speaker – As I often work portable and occasionally do Raynet activities I bought this accessory. Like the radio, it is robust and well made. Uniquely, I believe, Wouxun have made this product with a cable long enough to use the radio easily when it is clipped to my belt. The microphone unit has a clip and a socket for an external earpiece or headphones.

Software and Cable – The radio is a bit fiddly to programme, even though 4m does not have repeaters, so I invested in the programming cable and software. Having criticized the radio’s handbook, the software does not have any instructions at all, so it was a case of run the ‘set-up’ programme and hope for the best. Fortunately it installed without difficulty, but even then there are no help files so it was a case of plugging the radio into the USB port and figuring it out for myself. This was not too difficult and I soon had the channels I needed programmed.

I was pleased with all the accessories. Documentation was an issue with the software, but I worked around this. The Garex antenna is well worth the money and the handheld microphone/speaker's long lead makes it easy to use. The spare battery is essential.

Enjoy your Wouxun!

Dave

This is me reading the Wouxun handbook:

and out and about with the supplied (short) antenna

and the optional 'long' centre loaded antenna supplied by Garex (www.garex.co.uk).

Wouxun KG-699E 4m Hand-Held Radio

I recently invested in a new Wouxun KG-699E 4m hand-held. The first thing to say is that this is a really good little radio and outstanding value at around £90. The radio has many functions which we seldom need for amateur radio use, though some may be helpful for activities such as Raynet etc. As 4m does not have repeaters, even fewer of the Wouxun facilities are needed on this band.

The radio is small, light but rugged construction. It has a nicely rounded profile the makes it comfortable to hold even for long periods. It Controls are nicely positioned and easy to use. The display letters are large enough to read easily with or without the backlight on. Additionally voice prompts are available in English or Chinese (handy for those of you brushing up your Mandarin). Changing the voice prompt language does not affect the display language, which is fortunate otherwise you would have to learn Chinese script to change it back.

The marketing material is not clear on what bands this radio covers, so let me clear that up. It transmits on 66 to 88 MHz, so, as it is possible to transmit outside the amateur band care is needed. It also receives on the FM broadcast band, which I find a useful feature. As far as I can tell, it does not receive on other bands, but please correct me if I am wrong.

As with most hand-held radios, the Wouxun is a bit fiddly to programme, but optional software and a cable is available and programming it with a computer makes life much easier.

The Wouxun comes with:

A small rubber-duck antenna
One battery
Battery charger
Handbook
And of course the radio itself.


The rubber duck antenna has been criticized in the press, but to be fair, it is only 1/20 wavelength long so, with that length, it’s never going to be efficient (like trying to work on 20m with a 1m long antenna). However, I have had some good local contacts with just that and its size makes it very convenient when out portable with the radio.

The antenna connector is unusual as it is a male SMA, but I had no difficulty finding adaptors to BNC, N etc. on eBay.

The standard battery charger will either accept just a battery or the radio with the battery in place. The charger can be powered from the mains or from 12V dc, which is useful for portable or Raynet operations. The battery is Lithium-ion 1300 mAh which gives a good operating time and recharges in about 4 hours. The radio does not have an external power socket and as this type of battery ‘falls off the cliff’ when it is exhausted, a spare battery is essential. Batteries are easy to change, but held securely in place with two catches, one on either side of the radio.

The handbook really does need improvement. I suspect it was badly written in Chinese and then translated into English by a non-specialist. Fortunately, however the radio is quite intuitive so the handbook shortcomings are not a serious matter.

On the air, I have had excellent reports. I usually use it with a vertical dipole that I built in my loft from some scrap copper. Unfortunately I bought the radio after the ‘E’ season finished, so I have not worked any real DX, but stations up to 50km are easily workable. The audio reports are good, but on narrow FM I have been told my audio is a bit quiet and there is no adjustment that I can find for this. The receive audio is also excellent quality for a radio of this size.

All round, the Wouxun KG-699E is a great little radio and although it does have a few shortcomings, I really enjoy using it and I believe it will give the other amateur radio suppliers something to think about. The lack of an external power socket has not caused me any problems so far as the battery life is good and they re-charge in a few hours. Their documentation needs to be greatly improved. I have used lots of handheld radios so this was not a problem for me, but could be discouraging for someone who is new to amateur radio.

I really hope Wouxun are successful in this market and bring out a larger range of amateur radio equipment in the future.

Wouxun KG-699E 4m Hand Held

I had my first 4m QSO this evening, on the Wouxun KG-699E, with Guy G0UKN, who lives about 6km from me. With the supplied antenna I was 5-8 to him, but with the longer Garex centre-loaded whip (www.garex.co.uk ) Guy gave me 5-9+, so at least a 6dB improvement.

Guy said the audio was a bit thin, but this improved when I switched to 'wide' mode. Unfortunately there is no mic gain menu on the 699E (or if there is, I haven't found it).
I will write a longer review of the Wouxun, when I know it a bit better, but for now:


"六九九" 是 很 好 !

Dave

Wouxun KG-699E 4m (70 MHz) Hand-Held Radio

Not only am I back in amateur radio, but I am spending my money as well; I bought a Wouxun KG-699E today. First impressions are good.

Reviews say the antenna supplied with the KG-699E is rubbish so I bought a high-gain whip (£20) as well.

Further posts will follow, but comments on this radio ( and its 2m/70cm cousin the KG-UVPD1P) are welcome here.