New antenna company launches

New company, Antenna Engineering has recently started trading through their online shop, which is an exciting undertaking for recent graduate Henry and his father, Chris (G4AMN), who has over 40 years experience in the industry and as a amateur radio enthusiast.

Sheffield Hallam Engineering Graduate (2009), Henry Wainwright, has started his own company manufacturing amateur radio equipment with the support of the University’s Graduate Entrepreneurship Scheme (GRADE).

The company, Antenna Engineering (based in Leicestershire & South Yorkshire), has a comprehensive range of amateur radio antenna equipment ranging from mono-band single element verticals to multi-element phased arrays.

Antenna Engineering produces a high performance range of vertical antennas for the serious DX enthusiast.

More information on all of Antenna Engineering’s products can be found at www.antennaengineering.co.uk.

DX News

The first major expedition of 2011 was due to start on 5th January. This was the multinational team signing DX0DX from the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Due to various problems the start date has had to be moved several days but hopefully the expedition is now on the air. A total of over 30 amateurs will take partin the operation which is scheduled to last until early next month.

As well as being a rare one for your DXCC thisexpedition also counts as AS-051 for your IOTA Award.QSL manager will be N2OO

Andrew G7COD is back in the Maldive Islands and QRV as8Q7AK. He will be there till 16th January and QSLs govia his home call.

Seth SM0XBI will be in Dominica in the Caribbean untilmid-March. Look for him operating his J79XBI callsign.

VE6LB will be in the United Arab Emirates until 8thFebruary and will be QRV as A6/VE6LB from Dubai. He will be running 100 watts to a G5RV.

The ‘DX Magazine’ carried out a survey of the‘most wanted’ DXCC entities last autumn and the results have just been published. The top 10 most wanted DXCC are as follows:

1. North Korea
2. Navassa
3. Bouvet
4. Yemen
5. Heard Island
6. Amsterdam Island
7. Marion Island
8. South Sandwich Islands
9. Crozet
10. Scarborough Reef

IRTS Counties Contest

The 80 metres EI/GI counties contest on Monday last was well supported, with almost all counties on the air at some stage during the 3 hour event. Our correspondents report that some counties - in particular Wexford andTyrone - represented "rare DX" on the day, so stations from these and other rare counties would have been ingreat demand.
Although the majority of stations heard were from EIand GI, there was also a good level of support from mainland Britain. As daylight receded, some continental European stations began to take an interest in the contest.
As can be expected, operators had to contend with high noise levels most of the time. This encouraged some ofthe participants to switch to CW for extended periods:there seemed to be more CW activity this year than inprevious years, especially during the final hour. In particular quite a few mainland British stations were heard looking for CW contacts.
The deadline for logs is 2nd February, logs should besent to contestmanager /at/ irts.ie as soon as possible.

Ham Radio Nation

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A place where you can find other users that all share a common interest Amateur Radio. Invite your friends, find new friends or find some of your past contacts. You can upload pictures of your radios and shack if you like or just check out others shacks, share your logs and contacts with others and compair your DX contacts and allot more.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011

Hi Everyone, Apologies for not been too active on my blog throughout 2010 but one of my New Years resolutions is to become more active on Amateur Radio and also give as much information as I can here on my blog!!!

So here we are 2011, here we go for another one of these things us humans call a new year, just another chance for us to get it right :-)

So an update whats going on in my planet, I'm still living in London in the UK working within the broadcast industry and don't get much time to be on Radio at all these days, but good news I'm getting a new radio soon, something for VHF / UHF so I should be more active on 6m, 4m, 2m, 70cm and ill even give 23cm a shot.
This will be a change for me as I only used VHF and UHF before for local repeaters and local simplex contacts and maybe the odd DX contest or opening on 6 meters but times have changed due to the environment I now live in. You wont get away with a 4 square for 80 meters in Central London and even if you did you probably would have to decipher a G3 station up the road out of S9 +30 db of noise.... No not nice :-) So with that VHF & UHF are my new bands.

I must say I am also really enjoying my time on EchoLink these days and the IPhone application is absolutely fantastic as I can now link to a local end in Castlebar, Co.Mayo in the West of Ireland EI7CRG-L - From there I can now talk to my Dad EI9JA and some of my friends at home in the west of Ireland, EI9JS, EI2GCB, EI6IZ, EI7IX, EI3IX, EI7FAB, EI4GHB EI5CYB, EI3GYB, EI7IQ just name a few. This is fantastic technology and I think its great for the future of Amateur Radio, the more accessible amateur radio is or even the more user friendly it is to people, will make the hobby more interesting and will generate more people who want to get involved in our fantastic hobby during this Internet / social networking era.

Anyway here's to a New Year and I hope the best of 2010 is the Worst of 2011 for one and all!!!

73's for the moment...