One night last week, I set up my new FT-857D (yes, that's what I said). When I got the radio, I also bought one of those dual band whips with the mini mag-mount just to try it out, and now it's clinging to a shelf bracket. I've not rustled up anything for 6m, yet, but as this rig replaces the FT-690R, I'd better do something about it. I played around with the menus to get the correct channel spacing on VHF, and to turn the power down to 5 Watts on all bands. I'll tell you about that next time, as I'll need to set up repeater shifts, too, though I have no idea why I would want to. That evening, I heard two stations through a local repeater. Not noteworthy, you might think, but their conversation was a good example of the worst operating you are likely to hear. Not content to break licence conditions with a lack of frequent station identification, the short snippet I had the misfortune to hear encompassed a discussion on the criminal activity of someone known to them, the benefits system, politics and the troubles of a local (named) personality. One of them was then drowned out by someone shouting abuse. I blame the education system.
I didn't have a lot of time last weekend, so I missed most of the SSB Field Day contest. Whilst eating breakfast on Sunday, I had a tune round 15m. I didn't hear many Field Day stations, but I was amazed to hear a number of JAs. I don't recall ever hearing any since I moved to this QTH over twenty years ago. There was a lot of QRM and, as I've said before, this room is rather 'hot', so I couldn't work any of them with my TS-590S running 30W to an indoor dipole. I did, however, manage to make my first contact using it, a Russian station. Conditions deteriorated rapidly after that.
I got the 857 in Glenrothes during the Jaycee Open Day. It wasn't the most exciting of events, but it will surely have brought a lot of business to the shop. There were a few talks, but they appeared to be sales pitches by Waters and Stanton. I only attended one, a (fairly poor) presentation on Software Defined Radio. Oh, if only. I wasn't too impressed with the presenter (Jeff Stanton?), who either didn't know, or didn't care, that some of those attending the event, or his talk, were women with Amateur Radio licences (I've also experienced that from Mark Francis, too, in the past). He also didn't convince me that SDR is necessarily a good thing, or that spending ludicrous amounts of money on something designed and made by an unknown Indian company would be the best use of one's hard-earned cash. It's still in its infancy, so I'll think about it when I retire. I'll be attending the RSGB Convention next month, an event from which W&S are banned (no idea why). Their rivals, Martin Lynch & Sons, sponsor the convention, so it will be interesting to see what they are like. No, I didn't take any photos.
