DU ham radio operators: I had a VIP use my radio station today!

The president and chairman of the board of the Radio Society of Great Britain visited for a couple of hours (he is visiting neighbors here in the western NC mountains). What a nice guy! What an interesting two hours! He is from the country outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The high point was when I invited him to use my HF station. He beamed and jumped at the chance. I had it on and tuned to 14.28mHz, with 1000 watts on the linear and a beautiful SWR<1.1. I had posted here last night my plan to use 14.28 mHz, but a marine net had that frequency tied up. He tuned down to 14.195 mHz where there was an international net going that he knew. He checked in as K4/MI0AEX. He immediately recognized the call-sign of a station in NW England, but my little 20-meter temporary dipole just wouldn't do the trick. He did a relay through net control in Texas.

I learned that UK and European hams have 4-meter privileges. Most use converted police radios for that band. He indicated that 2-meters and 70-cm are extremely popular bands. They also have a 180-meter band. I meant to ask him about 60-meters, but forgot. I'll ask him that in two weeks, when he and his XYL - also a Class A license holder (like our Extra license) - return to the mountains. He promised to return to use my station again and I promised to have more metal in the air.

For my Icom R-71.

He raved about that antenna's virtues from his experiences with HV-9s on DX-peditions to the islands. I love the HV-9, too. I'll have to get it up before he returns. That will surely give us Europe contacts on 10-meter PSK-31 and, probably, 17 and 20-meter SSB.

160 on that spread?

Your neighbors will love you if you do.:D

Half-wave dipole. Maybe I'll just build a fence and load it up with a tuner. They can't see my house or my property (except the road frontage). When I can afford it (no time soon) I'll put up a 72-foot crank-up tower with a two or three-band Yagi array. No complaints of TVI, but I always have that well under control.

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All home-brew, get into the dash radio and tweek it up unto 160, and run about 20 Watts homebrew into a monster loaded whip...

4 Meters, huh? that's what, 75 Mcs?

They also get to play with 136 Kcs., too. (We don't) :-(

They also have a much wider band-width on 20-meters. Their data band goes well below 14.0 mHz.

I have several of the G-QRP books, pretty neat designs.

I am not involved with radio.....but I am into finding things that people hide using GPS(Global positioning system). Perhaps you can explain to me how to find the "geocache" I am looking for. The link goes to a web page that talks about three antennas and using certain info you can determine the distance between them.....you'll see what I mean when you follow the link. Thanks in advance.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=99283

People on the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, moving south. I looked at your link (interesting), and did a right-click save. I'll check it out later.

I've got a shortwave in the bedroom and need help calibrating it.