First time on Mallorca and it’s a tad scorchio, so we’re going to kick off with an easy 2 point summit near our hotel in Port de Pollença. There’s easy parking for EA6/MA-048 just behind the little tunnel on the Formentor road but you need to bear in mind that non-authorised motor traffic is prohibited up here between the hours of 10:00 and 22:00.
Continue readingThe last time I took my Icom ID-52E with me to North America I wasn’t able to access any repeaters due to the US having different amateur frequency allocations on 2m and 70 cm, which my European spec radio couldn’t transmit on. Schoolboy error.
Continue readingWith my 7300 now over 2 years old the internal battery was well and truly knackered, failing to keep the clock powered for more than a few minutes off the power supply. Time to put on my Big Girl Pants and dig out that soldering iron.
Continue readingWe should have known that Rojar would be busy since it’s quite close to the coast (and therefore tourist population) but I didn’t anticipate that the crowds would be up so early.
Continue readingThis 10 point summit was chosen for today’s activation on the basis that parking should be easy for early arrivals, and that the whole way up is on marked paths. Add in a dead-end dogleg in order to reach the AZ and we should be in for a quiet morning.
Continue readingOur first ‘big’ one on Tenerife, Roque del Conde carries 8 points for a successful activation with another 3 points available for doing it in winter. And yes, I can’t believe I’m writing that as I sit here with the air conditioning cranked up, nursing a mild touch of sun.
Continue readingToday we activated a peak close to our hotel on Costa Adeje, TF-016 Guaza. It was another early start and we had intentions of getting up to the top well before sunrise, but our chosen parking location near a local garage turned out to be quite busy despite the time of day, so we looked around for somewhere more discreet and found a nice spot just down the road. Unfortunately this meant walking back up the unlit, busy road without a verge, so we were very glad when we found what looked like an alternative path to the summit.
Continue readingA couple of days ago I sat down and programmed all Hubnet repeaters and gateways into my Quansheng UV-K5 via Chirp, taking the details from ukrepeaters.net to make sure everything’s fresh.
In the spirit of sharing I’m making this file available for download as a Chirp IMG file as well as CSV. If you’re grabbing the former then I’d advise you to download data from your radio first before pasting in the repeater list, then re-uploading the file from your radio. Like most people I’m using custom firmware and taking this approach minimises the chances of you importing something other than the list of repeaters and gateways. The usual caveats apply…
I’ve had some difficulty in getting my Windows 10 virtual machine to run the CPS software from Motorola which I need in order to program a GM340 for an upcoming project, and thought I’d document the steps taken in case it helps somebody else. The general feeling appears to be that you need an older version of Windows like XP, and/or a physical machine, but with a few tweaks you can convince the CPS to run in a Windows 10 VM, in my case Parallel Desktop on MacOS. Here’s what I did:
Continue readingTook a little bit of back-and-forth with the ETCSS in order to get this one over the line, and I’m not exactly sure when the process completed, but I thin I started it around the 18 April 2023. The idea was to create an internet-linked gateway which could be controlled by local users, with various DTMF link codes maintained on QRZ.