G'Day. Well looks like the rain has stopped, well temporarily at least Hi!. Just pumped up my very slow leaking tyre again *sigh*. Pain in the gregory!. Got loads of tread yet so just putting up with it for now.

Is it the end of hf as we know it, I ask myself. I, apparently like an inreasing number of other hams swl'ers it seems according to the internet, am finding it more and more uncomfortable to play hf radio. I suppose interference in one form or another has slowly crept up on us radio types over the recent years without actually registering that much, and we haven't really taken too much notice.

However, with the advent of more and more cheapo electronic gadgets around the house being used, such as data transfer through the mains for instance, noise is getting to be a major problem. Plasma tv's are another pain, as are cb'ers who quite openly flout the regulations and use excessive power. Ten metres is unusable to me when such a person is airborne near me, and I've heard his harmonics way up to the marine band.

Logically things can only get worse as I say as more and more cheapo gadgets arrive from the far East and appear in the 'promotion' display of the local electronics outlet in town. I remember once apon a time just being upset that I had to give up dx tv because of the upsurge of baby monitors being used on 49 mhz. Now, it seems, things are really going pear shaped. I really am thinking seriously now, that maybe it is time to knock this hobby on the head.

I've had a good innings, being as I my interest started in 1957. Bit like giving up smoking though. Hard to break the habbit. But at the end of the day, as Dell would say, 'You know it makes sense'.

That's enough soap box for now, have to go out. 73, back later.

10:21 local. Well spotted that man!. Whilst listening to Spanish chatter on 27.555 just now, it suddenly occured to me also that I was basically a dipstick. There is no need to use the 'MFJ' box as the 897 D version, which I have, has a perfectly good DSP filtering on board of course. Doh!

G'Day. Been wrestling with XAT box again as I fancied joining another community and embed their box on my site. Unfortunately I appear to have aquired two login callsigns whilst messing about with my own box, try as i might i can't get rid of one. In fact I now have a third, dammit!. I'll have to knock XAT on the head and stick to Chatango before I pull out any more of what's left of my hair Hi!.

And now for something completely different!, and the Pythons would say. Got an ft-897 doing nothing, so thinks!, what can I do with it?. Also have a top band mobile antenna in the shed. Maybe whip that up on the metal roof on a try mag mount and try some cw in the evenings. Did have a go a while back but found the band a bit noisey. However, something to play with over the weekend and maybe the mfj dsp filter can clean things up a bit.

Then again I could just fall asleep on my lounger in what I laughingly call my summer house *chuckle*. Decisions decisions!. Life's a bitch sometimes, right?.

22:27 Oh well back to the drawing board. Thought I had a nice chat box embeded on the site, but it wouldn't synchronise somehow with the online version ie the host site. Looks like it's back to the original 'Chatango', if I can find it now I've deleted it. If not I'll start all over.

Well I did get the lead and software for the 5555 after all. What a game it was, or still is because i'm not finished yet programming it. Not used to TAR files and this is how the usb to serial driver was wrapped up on the disc. I got there in the end, more by luck than judgement and finally got the radio to talk to the computer. When I got the software to work I found I had the missing com port (3) available, whereas before com ports 1 and 2 wouldn't communicate *sigh*.

Have just entered portions of the band relevant to me, ie cw, ssb, fm simplex and the repeaters with shifts. I've tried cw at 5 khz steps and the rest at 10, leaving fine tuning to the 'clarifier' knob, which goes down to 10 hz anyway. Couldn't get all the ssb portion in the 60 channels available on one bank this way, so might spread the load over two banks. I'll leave it for now, i'm cream crackered. Play with it tomorrow.

Well I'm not sure now whether it's now worth bothering with the programming software and lead that I had planned to get tomorrow *sigh*. I've just tried tuning around on the 10 fm, ssb and cw segments, but all I get is the 27 mhz guy down the road splattering all over me. Any signals that I might normally pick up would be completely zapped whilst he was on air I'm afraid. Means 10 metres for me looks to be a waste of time, at least at this location. Maybe I'll get the kit whilst it's going in case I move house some time. I'll see if I feel bored enough in the morning to make the trip.

Site is growing by the minute it seems. Found a nice moving ISS tracking map for it today. Waiting for Andrew to bring out his next update to his Virtual Radar Server, which may enable me to embed it on my site. Then I can show my SBS-1 live.

Been messing about with a Google group I thought of starting, it's was to be related to the air/sbs1 scene around the south uk coast. Got it all set up, then decided it was probably not destined to be a success anyway due to my finding a similar group started in 2008. In the three years that followed the only postings to the group were from the owner himself. And all of those were of his sbs logs.

I scrapped that idea and sought to find more content for my site instead. The Airport News page I found was a very worthy addition, so having just discovered the art of iframing I decided to inlude this site as is instead of just linking to it. Hope that doesn't infinge any copyrite. I have stated what I have done, so no-one is left in any doubt as to the site not being my own.

I see my local emporium is now has the lead and software for my 10 metre rig, so I'll pop in and collect same tomorrow. Something new to play with. The rig is not really set up as I would want, step wise. Also there is no provision for repeater shift as standard, so that can be redressed also.

Bit too cloudy today for spotting, so have to play radio or site building when I return from town I guess.

4 months and 984 visits later and not one single peeps has signed the guest book?. Interesting!.
Thinks!.........Now how many have I actually signed?. Oh dear!, better keep quiet about that one *chuckle*