Its been suggested by my physiotherapist that I may have been doing too much too quickly. If I'm not very careful I will set recovery back and do other damage. Its really difficult to find the balance between making progress and feeling useless.

Might not seem like much but a milestone for me 🙂

Took some steps forward 🙂 Able to walk without sticks short distances but still have a little discomfort and swelling in my foot if I do too much. My knee is aching in sympathy. Progress.

VHF bands are open. Plenty on FT8. Did something different and had a couple of ssb contacts on 4m. Called on 2m, nothing.

A quicky on 4m FT8 to the Balearics 🙂

You know what is really depressing? Not being able to walk more than 50 metres, with sticks, without a lot of discomfort 🙁

Not used my QO-100 system for a while. Good run of FT8 contacts while checking frequency accuracy and stability 🙂

Study in cat

I have had a few ssb contacts with my QMX+ but it spent quite a bit of time WSPRing or on FT8. So as I'm playing mostly digital with the Pi setup I brought out my high and low band QDXs 🙂

Overnight 20m WSPR reception. QMX+ transceiver, signals decoded with Raspberry Pi4. Antenna used for reception is a Cushcraft R6000

Basic WSPR setup; QMX+, 15" touch-screen with attached Raspberry Pi4 doing the work. Going to leave it on for a while see just where I can see and be seen 🙂

One of the first X-rays of my fractured ankle 6 weeks ago.

Ankle update. Cast is off and wasn't replaced. Good news the fractures of both the tibia and fibula have both nitted together in alignment. I was very lucky to avoid surgery. I now have a "moon boot" to walk around in. Been told I can put my full weight on my ankle very carefully. No bad news.

Cast comes off Wednesday. Hopefully all is healing properly. Had been very close to having "pins". The risk of surgery and recovery was higher than letting nature take its course.

4m is open 🙂

Pity the purple cast will have to come off to have surgery to correct some displacement. As an experience, fractured ankle, 1 star, wouldn't recommend.

Spring about to spring

Boxed up another LoRa 439MHz APRS tracker. External power, GPS antenna and menu control for multiple IDs on this one.

Note to self; don't ever use a QMX+ with a "tuner" in "auto-mode"! It will destroy at least one of the BS170s, cause a short and blow a fuse!

Found a nice combination. A BHI noise cancelling speaker for my QMX+. 3d printed a mount for them.

Left the QMX+ WSPRing on 20m. Struggling to get SSB working properly, lower power out than I'm expecting (< 0.5W). Probably the mic insert I'm using is not quite right. Not a great amount of information about microphones for it. Need to obtain the electret described in the manual Fun though 🙂

Left the QMX+ monitoring 80 and 40m WSPR over night. WSJT-X was controlling the QMX+ alternating between both bands in its band hopping mode. Going to leave monitoring 20, 17, 15 and 10m during the day. SSB tx next job.

QMX+ had to be disassembled 🙁 Low gain on 40m tracked to poor joint on L403. A display corruption issue started to happen. Resolved by reflowing all the joints that are difficult to get at. If you've build one you'll know which ones! All looks very good now 🙂

Calibration tests underway on the QMX+. All seems to match specified parameters so far.

Progress has been made. QMX+ main board with all coils fitted.

First set of coils and pa in place. Surface mount components were already on the board. The unit will be a QMX+ transceiver.

Its that time of year when you can wind 🙂 New Year kit building.

Nearly ready to play Catan. Printed from shared files on Prusa Core One and decorated by me 🙂

Getting ready for bed 🐦 💤

Upgrading a favourite game.

New, to me, FreeDv mode, RADE, works very well. Updated this morning and reception is leagues way from previous versions which were always disappointing with marginal signals. The audio is far more natural. Also like the report functions to see where stations are and their reception levels.

First big failure. Still learning about how to do things 🙂

Blue Tit has been roosting in the bird box most nights for the last week. It really doesn't like the loud fireworks. Looks very unsettled when they go off 🙁

First radio related print. I laid eggs 🙂

Off for a bit of QRP SOTA in GW land tomorrow. See you on the bands if you chase such things...

Thats it. Finished building and testing my 3D printer by printing a tool to help remove other prints 🙂 Didn't know what to expect with such a complex kit that needed to be highly accurate in it's construction. The detailed instructions made this a very enjoyable build.

All tests ticked after a tiny amount of fettling. 3D printer ready to use. Now all I have to do is learn the software 🙂

Another session and now getting very close to completion and calibration.

Very first time I've had a roasting Blue Tit in the nesting box 🙂

Progress being made. Really enjoying the build.

I am building a thing 🙂

Now this is what I call a quartz crystal

Pictures from yesterday's SOTA activation of Corndon Hill (GW/MW-013). I had been trying out a new configuration of my "holiday" antenna, a 1/4 wave "linked" vertical for 20 and 17 metres. Best dx was to Japan on 17. Planned other hills but got invited to a friend's home and got distracted 🙂 #SOTA

🎶 Hello Corndon my old friend. Nice to walk on you again. 🎶 Start of the climb up Corndon Hill (GW/MW-013). Calling SOTA soon 🙂

The world seems very dark and grey at the moment but spring is not far away. Snowdrops are showing and daffodils won't be far behind.

Today's mood.

In Bath for the weekend. Walked the longest publicly accessible tunnel in the UK, the 1672m (just over a mile) Combe Down Tunnel 🙂

Current choice of favourite games. These are all I can get on the shelf 🙂

First time in over 20 years I have no aerials up for bands below 4m. Three main feeds for the antennas at the bottom of the garden were pulled back so they wouldn't get damaged while my fallen tree was removed. Cables are still in perfect condition 🙂

Was told a piece of equipment wouldn't charge batteries anymore. Think it tried a bit too hard 🙂