If you’re not a radio amateur you will probably find this boring and mostly indecipherable. If you are a radio amateur you may also find this boring and mostly indecipherable 
I’ve made some more progress. I’m back on packet (AX25). It took some work to get going again, not least because there aren’t many packet stations left running. The local BBS was off air after a computer failure and I couldn’t hear any other stations.
The BBS Sysop got his end working but couldn’t hear me very well. That proved to be a very lossy bit of flexible coax I’d used between the radio and much thicker (RG213) coax. Having fixed that I still couldn’t hear his station at all. He had it working locally but there was no signal reaching me. After some diagnostics I discovered that if I parked outside his house I could hear the signal but it was pretty much noise half a mile away (and I’m a mile and a half from him). I visited him today to check his cables and antenna (SWR testing). SWR should be close to 1:1. Higher values, e.g. 2:1 are worse. That means a lot of signal is being reflected back down the coax and not being transmitted by the antenna.
A quick test of his coax+antenna gave a SWR reading of 4.6:1 which is basically disastrous! He’d added a short extension cable recently so I resoldered the ends of that and got an SWR of 1.1:1 (good) for the extension. We put the antenna+longer coax back onto the extension and were back to 4.6:1. We’d suspected the extension because it was the new bit.
We went to test the long coax + antenna and in connecting the tester (a nanoVNA for those who can decipher my radio ramblings) the N-Plug on the end of the coax fell off in my hand. We were pretty sure we’d found the source of the problem. We fitted a new plug and re-tested. The complete coax+antenna was 1.15:1 which is very good.
Once I got home I could now hear his signal so I just needed to tweak my transmit and receive audio levels. They’re not perfect yet but they’re good enough to sustain a connection between me and the BBS. I’ve sent my first packet message since 1997 and explored a bit of the surrounding packet infrastructure.
If there’s anyone still using packet then if you’d like to you can send me a message at:
g6fci@gb7esc.#16.gbr.euro
I’ve also started to experiment with WPSD to replace Pi-Star (which is no longer being developed). I’ve got it kind of working but there’s something wrong because incoming conversations make a nasty digital noise rather than some actual speech. I need to investigate further because it’s not usable in it’s current state.
That’s all my radio ramblings for today.
Well, I understood coax, antenna, SWR, solder and N-plug, and it wasn’t too boring
Keep at it! I finally got my radio back from the manufacturer after having the lightning damage repaired. I took a strike and damaged US$9k worth of equipment. Fortunately, i had ARRL insurance so all the repairs cost me $50. I used to do packet in the '90’s when i was a DX packetcluster node in Atlanta. Loads of fun. Across 3 nodes we’d have 100+ users all connected on 144 MHz with a 440 MHz backbone between the nodes.
Having soldered hundreds of N conectors and PL259’s i hate it when they fall off in my hand. But i love my NanoVNA. I have a friend who works for Georgia Power and he picks up the LMR400 they throw away and gives it away. Its an endless supply of free LMR400.
73 and keep up the good work.
Jim
More progress being made.
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AX25 packet is now working reliably. The network is much more fragmented since I last used it so it’s difficult to get far and I’ve not re-discovered any of my old packet friends to be able to send messages to.
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I’ve re-united my HF gear (transceiver, power supply, ATU) are all now with me at my home. I found the last two missing pieces when I collected another load of my stuff from my previous house. So next job is to find a space for it and wire it up. Still no external antenna, but I have a temporary loop antenna I can put outside when it’s not going to rain. I think we’re due another rain free day this year so I’ll just wait for that
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I got my YSF/DMR/etc hotspot running with WPSD. I’ve not transmitted through it yet, but as least I can hear the outside world now. I’ve got YSF and YSF2DMR set up, but I don’t know if those are the most useful things yet. I need YSF for my handheld to talk to the hostspot but beyond that I’m still a noob.
Have you considered a magnetic loop for HF? They are not cheap, but extremely compact and i have heard good reports about them. You might find some reviews about them on eham.net.
i.e. https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product/9012
Jim
I already have one for ‘portable’ use in the garden when it’s not raining. I got it for listening and it’s reasonably good for that - less noise picked up - but also see below about bandwidth. I don’t really want to use it for transmitting indoors, partly because there isn’t really room for it and mostly because I don’t really want to start filling the house with RF. That’s just asking for trouble with it getting into all sorts of places it shouldn’t be close to.
I could use it outdoors, but whilst it was easy to take it outside and use with a small/light receiver, I don’t really fancy humping a large/heavy transceiver and large/heavy PSU outdoors to use with it. Plus I have to find nice dry days to do it!
Outdoor mag loops are horrendously expensive by comparison (5+ times the price of an indoor one). I’m guessing part of that is because they have to be built to survive the elements and also you have to waterproof the tuning capacitor, plus provide a remote means of controlling the capacitor?
Also with an outdoor one I’d need to price in a rotator because they’re directional. With the current tripod mounted one I can easily rotate it by hand when I want to.
The final problem with magloops is that they’re very narrow band. Move frequency by just a few kHz and you have to retune. That’s the biggest issue with my current one when listening. I haven’t done this so far, but I’ve just relocated my decent quality coax switch and I’m going to try putting that in line so that I can leave my nanoVNA wired up and switch it into circuit to re-tune when I move frequency.
More progress. I’ve set up my Icom IC-7400 with my indoor magloop and I can receive FT8 on 40m.
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Not a great photo but the blue line is the SWR trace of my magloop from (approx) 7.025 to 7.125MHz. As you can see it’s got pretty steep sides.
I’ve ordered a vertical antenna to install on a post in the garden. It should be here in a few days so hopefully that will make it easier to get radio active again.
I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve installed the antenna and a run of coax to connect it to the transceiver in the house. I’ve also interfaced the radio to a PC to allow me to work digital modes. The PC is next to the radio, but I use remote access into it from my laptop wherever I am in the house or garden.
I’ve started to experiment with FT8 and have made some contacts. 8 countries on 40m the furthest being Czech Republic at 1176km. I’ve also made one contact on 17m which is my current distance record at 6458km to Georgia in the US.
I’m having fun!
I will be looking for you on 17m to be your #2 Georgia contact! Darn, according to QRZ we are only 6416 km apart!
73 de w4uck
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I’ve not been on 17m very much, but have made a few more contacts into the US and also reached Puerto Rico last night on 20m.
In my first week back on HF I’ve had contacts with 46 different (DXCC for those who know it) countries and my longest contact is currently Thailand at 9748km.
I’m doing much better than I expected!
I heard you call CQ once on 20 at 1020Z this morning, but it was real light -20 db and then no more, i called a few times, but we had no path. I’ll keep watching for you.
73
That was a weird connection. I didn’t see your signal report to me but I guess it must have been further up the log. WSJT-X was happy that it had all the info to log it so who am I to argue Thanks for the contact 
My signal report must have been there or WSJT would not have moved on. Good contact! Thanks! I am proud to have you in my log. Right after that a VK called me from Australia and he was loud long path.
73 and thanks again from W4UCK
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Actually it was my report to you that I didn’t see. I saw your -23 to me and then I sent RR73. Not sure where the -10 from me to you was. As you say the software can’t be fallible so we must have made a proper contact
20250510_103945.109(0) Transmitting 14.074 MHz + 1804Hz FT8: G6FCI W4UCK EM74
20250510_104000 -23 0.2 1804 ~ W4UCK G6FCI -05 ^
20250510_104015.089(0) Transmitting 14.074 MHz + 1804Hz FT8: G6FCI W4UCK R-23
20250510_104100 -16 0.2 1805 ~ W4UCK G6FCI RR73
20250510_104115.110(0) Transmitting 14.074 MHz + 1804Hz FT8: G6FCI W4UCK 73
We actually did one retry on the RR73
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That was me. I couldn’t see my report to you so I tried to click to re-send but missed the button and hit RR73 again!
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If there are other radio amateurs who use FT8 or FT4 that would like to try to make contact let’s talk about it 
