The weekend arrived after a rather long week in the office. Saturday afternoon was spent catching up on various chores, that were oustanding. Saturday evening I managed to get time on the Shortwave bands. I’m ‘aerially’ challenged in my location in several ways (my garden is quite small, I’m inducing current into the house alarm somewhere, and most importantly herself doesn’t like the look of the wire aerials or the noise of the alarm going off), so I’m kind of snookered.

However, I have an MFJ ISOLoop antenna in the attic, and yesterday evening I started listening on 20meters. The band was still hopping as the IARU HF World Championships were on. Well it was a blast, worked 15 countries in about 3 hours, and i could run full (100 watts) power all over the 20m band without setting off the alarm!

I also used the opportunity to try out YFKlog, which does exactly what it claims to (thanks Brendan for the tip).

Today after the rain started I took a look around the shack for a likely ‘rainy day’ project and I found a Kenwood D700 kit that I’ve had sitting here for ages. I’m not exactly sure how long it took me to complete, but it was working before I went to make dinner! So all in all, a productive weekend.