Back with a QSO into England

It's been a long time with work and other priorities taking up any spare time. I managed to get a QSO back into Stoke-on-Trent with Ian - G0UWK. Great to get back into Europe while still running 10 watts on 10m. Ian was pushing 400 watts into a 4 element Yagi and coming through to Brisbane very well with some QSB. Summer is coming around in Brisbane so time to get out and about. I also know that VK4 is on the map with respect to SOTA so I'm looking forward to some activations as the summer months drag on. I also need to get my butt in gear and sit the open call exam. Difficult to study at the moment but I'll get there in the end.

10 watts into Munich with DK8MZ

It took me quite a while to get round to editing and uploading this video but got there in the end.

Been a while.....but got my first DXpedition in the log

Nearly a whole month since my last update and unfortunately work has kept me off the radio for a while. I have however managed to add in some additional countries with India, Indonesia, South Korea, Finland and now the DXpedition to Norfolk Island in the log.

VK9NT are running a DXpedition to Norfolk Island at the moment and I managed to get a solid contact on 40 metres. The VK9NT expedition page is http://vk9nt.odxg.org/index.html

New Zealand account is open

Great propagation into New Zealand the last few days on 10 metres. ZL2FT - Jason was coming in strong with a 5x9 signal and despite being plagued by frequency drift on my Kenwood we still managed a pretty good QSO.

I received a 5x9+10dB report from Jason and the first "+10 over" I've had with my little 10 watts. Very pleased.

I'll have a YouTube clip to follow shortly.

Re-housing a Motorola XTS3000

My new high-viz housing for the Motorola XTS3000 arrived today and I was straight into it.

Not a complicated task by any means but maybe a few tricks.....

You don't really need the special Motorola tool to get the housing off unless you are truly hamfisted. I used 2 flat blade precision screwdrivers and a circlips pliers with an angled attachment.

Just pop the two screwdrivers in between the radios metal body and the housing and gently angle them outwards till the tabs are visbile and free.

Using the circlips pliers in the other hand I gently prised the radio from the housing. Just be gentle and your case should not crack. Disconnect the radio from the controls connector that is inside the housing - just pulls off (but not by the ribbon cable).

Get the other housing ready, make sure the rubber gasket running around the radio is properly in place, you have reconnected the ribbon cable from the new housing to the radio, the keypad is in?

I forgot this one and had to pull it apart again. You can see the ribbon cable in the old housing above. Angle the radio in at the top and ensure it is seated up as far as it goes and then gently push the rest of the radio into the base. Watch out for the little switch board on the side of the radio foulding the radio chassis and also make sure the gasket doesn't sneak off as it goes in.

Check everything works.

....and this is the final product with the newer UHF/GPS antenna on board.

....and with the rest of the family to give a sense of scale (Alinco DJ-G5, Moto XTS3000, Moto Saber II)

There's a bit more detail on the disassembly from "Snarlingrabiddog5150" on Youtube who goes chasing an encryption board inside his XTS3000. Some of his other videos are also very informative if you check out his youtube channel.

Quick field fix

Just noticed the Kenwood was jumping around on frequency by about 5Kc - mainly when I keyed up. A little research and the solution appeared to be re-tightening the VFO shield.

Job done, problem solved....so far. It's like a vintage car, always something to fix.

*** Update - problem is back again and present on transmit and receive ***

*** Latest update - bit of research on Google and found the lights in the meter and the VFO display generate a bit of heat that it doesn't like. Ripped out lights and seems steady so far....fingers crossed! ***
*** Latest update - was very good for a while but now it's back again. ***

Motorola 2M rig for the car.

....so after all that "fun" I had playing with the Motorola Saber IIs I seemed to be on the path to more Motorola ownership. The Kenwood TM241A I have been running in the car became problematic about 3 weeks ago with a dodgy screen (apparently a common fault).













This seemed like a good opportunity to pick up another mobile rig. A bit of perusing on EvilBay and I picked up a Motorola GM339, remote head for a good price. The radio arrived and as expected it had been used commercially in the mines (still programmed with their frequencies) but was in excellent condition.

Same story as before, you need to make sure you get the correct cables and software to program the radio correctly. This time the CPS (programming software) was not restricted to DOS or slow PCs. GUI was back baby. I first tried a serial ribless cable and to do this I used a USB to serial adaptor. This did not work and was a waste of time. Next I moved onto a USB Ribless cable (no need for a serial adaptor), this one would talk to the radio but I got errors about wrong versions. This is where I had to start looking for another version of the software - a little harder bit not impossible to find on the internet. Right cable, right software and we were in business.

Again, I read from the radio and saved the codeplug (radio config) before starting to change the settings. There are a lot more settings to change in this one compared to the Sabers.My main aim was to get it working so after clearing all of the previous channels I loaded in all of my local repeaters. I setup scan as well, the type of squelch, and any tones that were needed. I also customised the power settings so Low was 5 watts and High was 10 watts. A lot of the paging and id management I did not know what to do with so disabled as much as I could. When saving the new codeplug before writing it to the radio the CPS will advise of errors you have and not write till you fix them - this helped to ensure I had most of it right.


The install is pretty simple with the radio body in the glove box and the remote head mounted on top of another mount that is used for my VX-7R.

I even got my callsign to display on startup.

Scan doesn't work properly and I seem to have programmed the backlight timeout incorrectly.....will get to it eventually......have to be eventually as I also bought a Motorola XTS3000. It's a beater but has UHFCB already programmed in and I'll be rehousing it in the hi-viz housing the emergency services use. Will post when complete.