There are times when I lose sight of the original reason for this blog. I was inspired to create this blog as a result of a letter to Last Word in RadCom by some prat who didn’t like contests. He wanted to be able to rag-chew with his mate on ‘his frequency’ on 20m each and every day no matter what. I wanted to ask the question, ‘what have you done for amateur radio this month?’, because that guy obviously hadn’t done a great deal.
Anyway, since my last entry I’ve done IOTA and Malcolm GM0DBW has been here to do the IARU. Malcolm’s visit was only the second time I have had a guest operator here. I think and hope he enjoyed himself!
I’ve had no problems really with any of the antennas for the last couple of months and my new K3 arrived two weeks ago, which has replaced the right hand FT1000mp.
I did IOTA from home this year, having had to cancel Shetland for family reasons. It was great fun, and I managed to endure the entire 24 hours without a break. With a final score of just over 1.9 million, as an EU005 entrant I was quite pleased. I think it would have been a good year to be in Shetland as conditions were better than they have been for some years. I certainly don’t have a winning score though, as I have seen an IT9 on 3830 who has beaten me - he has less QSOs and less mults than me, but obviously worked a lot more G’s for 15 points per QSO. I wish I’d been able to work a raft of IT9’s all Sunday morning!!
The K3 finally arrived. It took UPS 9 days to get my radio to me, which I think is ridiculous as another ‘customer’ had his despatched the same day and his took 48 hours to arrive. The box was delayed for 24 hours in California and spent the weekend travelling from East Midland Airport to Germany and back. Their tracking on the web said that their first attempted delivery failed. They claim that I rescheduled delivery for the following day. My house wasn’t empty all week and they never came that day. I phoned them and paid the VAT by credit card. The next day they arrived with the package and demanded the VAT from my son. As he didn’t know why they wanted money (and I would still like to know why) they went away (with the package). I complained that they should have known I had paid – I asked for the driver to return to the house. No, he couldn’t do that. It would be delivered first thing the following day. It arrived at 1600 the following day. This is almost as bad as the time I sent my TS850 for repair to Castle Electronics. The box arrived, but inside the box there was a rusty old car radiator, not my TS850! Even stranger, when I contacted the local courier company who I had used they said, leave it with us and we’ll sort it out. They did. The radio arrived at Castle the following day. What the hell is going on in the courier business!!!? Once again, in my blog, I am only stating facts; you draw your own conclusions!
As regards the K3 itself, I am more than happy. It was easy to assembly (took three evenings), and apart from a small problem with the wrong screws for a particular part, it is a fantastic piece of gear at a reasonable price. I was a little disappointed initially at the physical construction and the way the RF board is attached to the main case, but after talking to someone who is more of a techie than me, I realise that a cast chassis would cost a lot more and would put up the price. The receiver is very quiet, and the filtering is totally configurable. Although I’m not interested in RTTY much, I got it to display RTTY on the screen itself, which is a laugh. There are a few things which need work, as it’s certainly not a direct replacement for the FT1000mp, but who knows? In time it might even replace the left hand radio as the ‘master’. I expect that I will take it on foreign travels too. Now I just need to build the 2m transverter – for me, that’s a big deal, as I don’t like soldering. Watch this space!