Month: April 2026

I love my glass desk ive had in the shack for many years, its a very expensive designer desk that was £1500 new, I paid £35 on Ebay for it, struck lucky, but ive recently reverted back to a wooden desk, why  you might ask, simply because there is quite a bit of kit on the desk these days and im paranoid if something happened and the glass broke everything would end up on the floor, I think if I didnt have the IC-7800 I would have stayed with the glass desk as its rated for quite a bit of weight but the 7800 is a beast and weighs a ton, so for now its back to an old second hand Ikea desk, im contemplating making my own desk with used scaffold boards sanded down with iron metal legs, think that would look quite nice, but for now this will do.

Yes you  read it right, I pimped my K3, or in simple terms added a set of the weighted Knobs by RGO, my first ever K3 had the  weighted VFO knobs by 73cnc, I wish I had taken them off when I sold it, always liked the feel of them so I posted in a K3 group asking if anyone had any weighted knobs for sale and was offered a set of RGO ones, Initially  i was a bit hesitant as my previous ones were all black and these ones were chrome and black but after a few days thinking I took the plunge, its a  bit blingy (as we say in the UK) but I  love em 🙂

Bands have been really poor last couple of weeks especially my favourite 10m band, we are approaching the summer doldrums unfortunatley, need to get my arse in gear and get something sorted for lower bands

Im slowly cleaning up the  Optibeam OBW 10-5 but its a slow process, not because its difficult more because i just cant get into the frame of mind to do it, I have also emailed Wimo twice now asking about spares for the Optibeam, as I need to replace one of the strut mounts but they have so far not bothered to reply, my radio Mojo is severely struggling right now, it will be  back, it always is, hopefully sooner rather than later.

I dont seem to be having much luck lately, Ive always wanted a Microham Microkeyer so when one came up a week or so ago for sale I took the plunge, all arrived and hooked up only to find out that Microkeyer isnt supported in MacOS, ive been a Mac user for donkeys years, I only really  use a windows machine at work so  im pretty much dead in the water before I start, to be honest I hadnt even considered the fact it wouldnt be supported in MacOS, the manual says there is some router software that has been written for Mac but it turns out this was many years ago and only applicable to older Intel Macs, so  im finished before I even got started, ah well, guess I will sell it on and go back to the drawing board

On another note conditions have been pretty poor recently, 10m has been pretty devoid of signals  however I did manage 3B9G  from Rodriguez Island yesterday. 

No new updates on this, just havent had the time with work but im concerned I have a fair bit of work to do on this, I had hoped it would just be a clean up and put together but not quite the case, this was to replace my Jaybeam MM3 three element tribander which is still up on the tower due to the issues with the optibeam, hoping to get some more work done on this soon as Ive pretty much sold the Jaybeam but as it stands im not sure how much work is involved, ive looked on the Wimo site and this antenna by the looks of it isnt produced anymore so  the chances of getting spares is looking slim

Watch this space. 

Optibeam OBW 10-5

So I took the plunge and picked up an Optibeam OBW 10-5 to replace my Jaybeam MM3 tribander, the Optibeam is a 5 Band Wire Beam for 10 thru 20m, when I picked it up it was just rolled up into one big bundle, that should have been a red flag right there, its taken me a whole day to unravel the wires and bits and bobs, unfortunately one of the plastic blocks that holds the fibreglass spreaders is split in half, hopefully I can work around it, the silicon rope and main  support ropes have been cut, normally that wouldnt be an issue but the support ropes in this antenna are pre cut and have fittings done at the factory, another headache which im going to have to sort out, the last issue is the fibreglass spreaders have a lot of mould/mildew growth on them so I need to find a safe way to clean that off without splintering the fibreglass so scrubbing is out of the question, the joys

The reasoning behind this antenna is simple, its less of an eyesore for a 5 band beam antenna (unlike a Hexbeam which ive previously had up a few years back)  it gives me basically a 2 element for 10/12/15/17/20m and although im sacrificing an element on 10/15/20m as im currrently running a 3 El tribander,  its a sacrifice that gets me access to the warc  bands, with some of the nice DXpeditons coming up in the next 12 months i need to look at other bands so this is the start, a bit of work to do before this will finally get on the air but I would rather take my time and get it done right.