From 5 to 100 Watts: Expanding the Hermes Lite 2 Remote Station
If you want to read how I started my remote station project based on Hermes Lite 2, you can find the first post here. At that stage, I had finished setting up the Hermes, configuring Thetis and WSJT-X, and carrying out the first FT8 tests. Just one watt was enough to make a QSO with […]
A Remote HF Station from Your Phone? Hermes Lite and Thetis
For some time, I had been thinking about operating remotely on HF. I wasn’t interested, however, in the classic setup of leaving a computer running at home, connecting through Remote Desktop and clicking around in radio software with a mouse. That certainly works, but it isn’t particularly convenient, especially if you want to take your […]
How to Connect an Old Valve Amplifier to a Modern Radio
While making contacts on the amateur bands, I often found myself in situations where I could hear a distant station very well, sometimes even at 58 or 59, but simply couldn’t get through. Most of the time, the problem was a pile-up. I could hear the DX station perfectly, they were answering one caller after […]
Amateur Radio Licensing in the UK: Foundation, Intermediate and Full
You may be wondering what becoming a radio amateur in the UK involves, which exams you need to pass and what privileges you receive at each stage. Or perhaps you already live in the UK and are thinking about getting your licence. The UK amateur radio licensing system is based on three successive levels: Foundation, […]
From Intermediate to Full in 21 Days, G5LSB
As soon as I passed my Intermediate licence exam, I immediately booked the Full exam. I knew that standard preparation courses usually lasted several months, so I decided to set myself a challenge. I wanted to see whether it was possible to prepare for the exam in just three weeks. It quickly became clear that […]
New Intermediate Licence, M8PZU
After passing my first Foundation exam, I decided almost immediately that I wasn’t going to stop there. Since I had already started, I wanted to work my way through the entire UK licensing system and eventually reach Full. I booked my Intermediate exam on the very same day that I passed Foundation, setting the date […]
A Yaesu FT-710 for a Bargain Price
As I started getting more seriously into amateur radio, it didn’t take long before I began thinking that a newer and better radio might be a good idea. Until then, I had been using an older Yaesu FT-897D and a small Xiegu G90, but I wanted something more modern, more convenient and simply better for […]
My Amateur Radio Journey: The Beginning… M7PZU
My name is Dave. I’m Polish, although I now live in Birmingham in the UK, and I’d like to tell you the story of how I became an amateur radio operator. I grew up in Poland, and my adventure with radio began there when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Quite by accident, […]