Posts

Well, this is new for me. I decided to finally have a go at HF work. With the layout of my place, it made sense to have an end-fed long line antenna. My shack is at the front corner of the house and there’s a gap to the fence, and the fence is around 25 […]...

I can’t believe this is my first post of 2025! January was crazy busy. I recently change dout my shack radio, from an AnyTone D578 to a Yaesu FTM-500D. It was used, from Martin Lynch, and the price was right to grab it. I decided that the main body could go where the D578 had […]...

To celebrate my full callsign, I’ve rebranded the site to M0KCL.com I wanted KCL suffix but they were unavailable on foundation and intermediate. I looked at the latest export of callsigns from the end of October and saw that M0KCL was reserved, and no action since 2016. I tried to register it...

Wow! I just managed to get a decent pass at full level. As I said to the invigilator at the end, “I’m going to start second-guessing myself so I’m just going to hit submit”! After having bought the Exam Secrets book and completing all questions and the mock within, and the th...

You know that thing where you decide “do or not”? Well, I did. I was going round in loops on some areas and thought I’d never get my head round things. So I decided, in my infinite, er, wisdom, to give myself a deadline. So I booked the exam… It’s booked for 29th Novemb...

I sometimes passivley scan through Private Mobile Radio (PMR446) channels and am surprised at how many stations I can hear. Chances are, you’ve bought some PMR446 licence-free radios and have charged them up, picked a channel and started using them. The issue here is that ANYONE in range can l...

Well, this morning I took, and passed, my intermediate exam, less than a month after completing my foundation level. And finally my full licence manual arrived so I can catch up a little on the full course. Last night was a 2-hour session going over the licence conditions and operating techniques. N...

I took my foundation exam on September 23rd. I received my certificate on the 30th and obtained my M7KCH callsign the same day. Not content, I have decided to book my intermediate exam which is on October 17th. Hopefully I’ll pass, which means that my M7KCH callsign will be changing! AND, not ...

It started as a self-test project; create my own antenna as an experiment in learning some basic theory and dusting off some hand skills. I started off with the following main components: In addition, I had an old outdoor heavy-duty junction box which I intended to cut up to make the vertical part f...