If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details!

This post covers the challenges from weeks 9-12, which were:

9. Try to work an FM repeater on 10m
10. Listen to an amateur radio satellite
11. Receive a weather satellite image
12. Make a contact with an "unusual" antenna.

Week 9 (24 Feb-2 Mar): Try to work an FM repeater on 10m

This one I attempted while out on a POTA activation, so you can read all about it here. Unfortunately I didn’t complete the challenge—while I did eventually hear VE3MMX in Ontario loud and clear, I didn’t get the chance to talk in as I was already tired and grumpy by that point—not the best of operating conditions.

I might have a go at this one later in the year, perhaps in September when transatlantic 10m returns and the days are a bit longer and warmer.

Week 10 (3-9 Mar): Listen to an amateur radio satellite

A week of travel for work didn’t leave any time for radio until the weekend, and unfortunately the passes of satellites with VHF/UHF repeaters were mostly at night. But I had a few attempts at this one in a few different ways.

On Saturday 8th at 0845Z, I listened in for the pass of SO-50 over my location, but unfortunately heard nothing. I wondered if my equipment might be too limited, being a fixed base station colinear antenna on the side of the house, but though it might be less than ideal for satellites overhead, it should have no problem at least receiving something during part of the pass.

Somewhat disheartened, I decided instead to see what I could hear through a WebSDR. I ended up listening to QO-100 / Es’hail2 via the Goonhilly SDR around 1700Z. I’d heard of QO-100 before but never quite twigged that it was different to the various polar orbiting satellites with their repeaters. QO-100 is in geosynchronous orbit and its repeater has over 8MHz of bandwidth—it’s so huge it has its own band plan! It’s very cool, and working this satellite is now firmly on my to-do list of future radio adventures.

On the SSB section of the band I copied YI1YJK, F5CAC and F4GFA calling CQ. Sadly YI1YJK had no takers, I wish I could have worked him as it would have been my first QSO with Iraq. I also heard a number of long ragchews in the SSB section in a variety of languages—I copied the callsign of IW0NMJ but did not hang around listening to someone else’s chat for long enough to copy any others.

I also copied—I assume!—F5HAA via this interesting pattern on the waterfall:

Callsign as it appeared on the WebSDR screen

After rotation and flipping

What mode is that?!

Although strictly I’d dragged the challenge out for longer than a week, I did spend a few evenings during the following few days dashing to my radio when the ISS went over. I struggled to copy the QSOs above the noise, and I don’t have a radio with dual watch set up, so I decided against trying to make a call of my own.

However, around 2050Z on Monday 10th I clearly copied G0FMZ, and at 2140Z on Tuesday 11th I copied most of a QSO between F4BLE and F4CQA, and a CQ call from EA4SF.

A six-minute scramble for contacts as the satellite passes overhead suits me fine, with my preference for brief bursts of protocol rather than long ragchews, so this is definitely something I will have a proper go at with better equipment in future.

Week 11 (10-16 Mar): Receive a weather satellite image

This one unfortunately was another failure. I don’t have any way to connect my VHF radio up to my computer, and nor do I have an antenna which is going to give good results here. This one didn’t interest me that much, so I passed on spending money on kit just to achieve it.

I may be a little spoiled in this area, because I’ve actually spent several years receiving weather satellite images in the past—way back in secondary school. I was a member of the “Met Office” club which, to be honest, was less about our enthusiasm for weather and more of a social club for nerds.

This was the late 90s and on a school budget, so our receiving capability was unimpressive by today’s standards. But several times a day, our Windows 3.1 PC would receive a visible light or IR image, and we would dutifully print it out on our very noisy dot matrix printer. It’s a shame I was less interested in radio at the time; unfortunately I don’t recall anything about our receiver or antenna.

Week 12 (17-23 Mar): Make a contact with an “unusual” antenna.

I deliberated for a while on what I was going to do for this one. I do want to try using a barbed wire fence as an antenna at some point, but I’m nervous to do so with someone else’s fence! There’s not a lot of metalwork that’s actually “mine” to play with, besides my household plumbing and wiring which didn’t sound like great ideas.

The first one I settled on was this: When I was looking to buy a QRP rig, a friend described the ATU in the Xiegu X6100 as “it could tune a wet piece of string”. Obviously this was hyperbole, but… oh, sod it, why not?

I used two lengths of string, both approximately 13m long, matching the lengths of my “random wire” antenna which I knew it definitely could tune. I raised the main string on the 4m Spirit of Air pole halfway down the garden, and left the other on the ground as a counterpoise.

And the result: No, the X6100 definitively cannot tune a wet piece of string.

In all the bands I tried to tune up on, the SWR meter never left maximum during the tuning process. As I suspected all along, a wet piece of string is just not conductive enough for these shenanigans.

What else, then?

I’ve long admired people’s huge HF cobweb and hex-beam antennas, and while I don’t have the space or the spousal approval for one, I do have this suburban British staple: the rotary washing line.

I was hoping the wire itself would have a metal core, but sadly it’s nylon or something similar, so I was denied using all that length as a conductor. However, the main pole and the spokes didn’t seem to be electrically joined, so it could be possible to use those as two halves of an antenna.

And… it was! The X6100 ATU managed to tune it on both 40 and 20 metres.

However, the next hour turned into a frustrating endeavour. I thought I was hearing signals reasonably well, but I couldn’t break into any of the pile-ups that had formed around portable and club calls. My own CQ calls also got no responses during the whole time I tried.

Frustrated, I managed to rope in Eoin M0NVK and Vic EI5IYB from OARC who confirmed what I suspected—my signal just wasn’t getting out. Beyond a bit of noise and the occasional phonetic letter, they just couldn’t hear me. They also let me know that the 40m band was a lot more full than I thought it was, so clearly my setup was limited on the receive side too.

Five watts and a washing line was sadly not enough for a QSO.

That was the end of my “unusual antenna” attempt this week, so unfortunately we close out the month with Ham Challenge Week 12 incomplete. However, my friend Stu M7UTS has been planning a kite-hoisted antenna. We are hoping to build and take this on a POTA outing soon, so it looks like I will get the chance to revisit this one later in the year.