First steps with amateur radio

Well, it’s been a month since I wrote about getting my licence. Time for an update on my progress.

For a good few weeks I was pretty limited because I was waiting for my handheld radio to arrive from China. I bought the Baofeng UV5RM-Plus but it got lost in transit and they had to send another one. In the interim, I bought the mini version of the same model (Baofeng 5R Mini-B) and it arrived before its big brother.

As soon as I got it, I programmed in some of my local repeaters via the Chirp app and monitored.

To begin with, I was too shy to call CQ and worried about getting something wrong but eventually I took the plunge and made my first QSO with John 2E0IAI, albeit via the repeater. This was fortuitous as he informed me that there is an informal ham group centered around the GB3CC Chichester repeater and that he would add me to their What’s App group. The group has been very welcoming and the What’s App channel keeps me updated about upcoming nets and helps me put a face to the QSO contacts I have been making via the repeater and the group’s associated frequency.

As I only have handheld radios currently, I am limited to the 2m VHF and 70cm UHF bands, which are line-of-site. Any international contacts or contacts further afield will have to wait until I have an HF transceiver (more on that below).

I’ve only been using them around the house/garden and haven’t ventured into the field so I haven’t had any luck on the standard 2m and 70cm calling frequencies. I’m not sure I will, as the UV5RM-Plus has a maximum output of 10W but I won’t really know until I go out to some higher ground.

Unlike the Mini, the UV5RM-Plus is able to pick up airbands on AM. So far, I’ve been able to pick up transmissions from Shoreham Airfield Approach, Goodwood Airfield Tower and Bognor Air-to-Ground.

I’ve joined QSZ, the registry of callsigns and already have a few lookups. I’m logging my QSOs using qlog on Linux (pictured below).

This weekend I am visiting Thorney Island with my sister. I’m hoping to pick up repeaters in the Solent area and possibly, the Isle of Wight. As it’s owned by the MoD I might even pick up some unencrypted military traffic.

I mentioned that my uncle Greg was helping me to find my first “proper” radio, capable of HF with a much higher ERP than my handhelds. Well it turns out he and my Auntie have bought me a second hand Yaesu FT-897! I am going to collect it at the end of May along with some antennas and other gear he has put aside for me. As he lives in Macclesfield, I’ll also be visiting the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank which I haven’t been to since I was a child.

Next steps for me will be trying to make more mobile QSOs, continuing to learn Morse (currently I know five characters at 15wpm), and getting a better monitoring antenna to use with my RTL-SDR and do some monitoring on high ground.