FT-857d and YT-100 tuner into an old CB whip antenna on the car outside the tent. Three evenings of FT8 whilst the kids went of to sleep resulted in 17 contacts.

Got set up in time to take part in FMAC this month and it was quite a busy session!

First time back out portable since the lockdown. Excellent evening activity-wise (weather not so much...).

Just a quick update on my lockdown activity...

FT8 is fully up and running now and as it's easier to use than FLDigi over a remote link I've pretty much completely switched over to that. The main change here is that I've rebuilt the shack PC. It's now running Xubuntu 18.04 LTS like the laptop I use for UKAC portable operation - however I have decided to keep the base OS as stock as possible. This means that all the radio apps are running in docker containers. So far I have the...

Like most of the country, and indeed the world, I'm currently stuck at home due to coronavirus. Most of my radio kit lives in the car most of the time for UKAC contests, and general commuter-mobile use. As that won't be happening for the foreseeable future I've moved the FT-857d into the garage, hooked it up to a G5RV Jr antenna which is strung up in the roof of the garage (via my YT-100 tuner) and also to an X200 dual-band colinear. The G5RV is all of 3m agl (possibly 4m if I'm being...