It’s been a while since I last posted. One of the reasons for this has been the Covid 19 and the difficulties at work due to this. It also seems like Belgium will be going back into some kind of lockdown soon. I also had to get my children sorted with student accommodation towards the end of August.

I have been posting quite a few videos on YouTube for my work and also recently have really got into doing Podcasts but as yet have not recorded anything for the hobby. I moved the shack from downstairs to the attic and it’s taken a bit to get stuff sorted but basically now I have my shack and office all in the same space which is kind of a bit of a problem HAHA.. Too many distractions.

I have both of my Raspbery Pi’s running quite happily now. One is done with a build from Jason KM4ACK. The other and the one I am using to type this post, is running Hampi by Dave Slotter, W3DJS. These are not new distributions but the Raspbery Pi OS with all the ham software that you could possibly want and with all the instructions.

So, what else is going on? I got my FT920 set back up again. I am so impressed with the sound quality that comes out of this rig as opposed to other more modern rigs. My main rig for digital is still my FT817 which I use most of the time along with my two MFJK Cubs putting out about 2 watts each. I always seem to be able to find somebody on 80m in the evenings when I am using QRP. I also have a couple of projects that I should really get done. One is a Pixie which is more for a bit of fun than anything else and the other is a 20m CW transmitter to go with my direct conversion receiver that I put together a few years back now. One recent addition to the tool kit is a Multi-function Tester – TC1. I bought this from Amazon so I could properly identify or at least not make any stupid mistakes putting the kits together, especially the Pixie that comes with very limited instructions.

One other thing.. I have recently been looking at RTTY which is a very old mode but quite interesting. I was reading someones post recently on G-QRP about the decline in using of this mode and how some are just looking for others to get involved and it being quite a conversational mode. I have not made any contacts as yet but I have finally got it up and running. I’ll let you know how it goes.

72s de Stephen ON5REV