15m was good last night...

I put some time into FT8 on 15m last night.

16 in the log over 2.5 hours (I had some interruptions). As expected, Japan was the bulk. I did have a reply to my CQ from Germany but we didn't quite get it finished. 

I did at least get one in from Poland. I'm always happy to work Europe, especially on my crappy vertical. Looking at where I was heard there was a nice clear line straight up through Asia then all across Europe. 

I'm pretty happy with that. 

Moving along..

I ordered another RF Kill Kit from QRM.guru yesterday. I've been fiddling around with the cabling (currently the living incarnation of the Guns N' Roses album "The Spaghetti Incident" both in the spaghetti issue and the clearly punk connotations from all the black back there) and discovered I never did much with the IC706's cables. 

40m has been permanently noisy for me via the dipole of late - S8-9 most of the time. Even the vertical is only between S4-5. It seems like a good time to strip it out and start again. The big difference I noted off the bat was the toroids up behind the G90. None on the IC706, and it's down with a lot of tech stuck around it. The noise floor isn't as high on any other band.

The cabling behind it is horrendous and needs a lot of love. It's draping down behind my desk which has something like 2 x 4 gang GPOs and about 4 x 4 gang power strips which are full. I quite simply have a lot of stuff running. 

Then there's that 6KVA UPS literally 4 inches the other side of the wall through nothing but Gyprock.

It would seem prudent to strip things down. So much crap has amassed that it's not even funny. 

I need to change the cable routing for the radios so it's away from all of the power points and the horrors connected to them. 

I've even been tempted to take the computers out of the room and just run a pair of USB hubs and a couple of HDMI sockets. I am working on replacing my half height rack with a full height. It might be an option then as I'll have quite a bit more space.

I probably need to do something with the Toshiba power supply that drives the laptop I've pulled off the shelf as it as the RES Standard license training materials on it. That power supply is a bit noisy. The vertical seems to notice it the most. I may have to try a few snap ons and hope for the best, though that laptop really doesn't need to be on all the time. If I hurried up with learning the course material, I'd only use the laptop then for doing digital modes when portable. 

I have been trying to purchase a new vertical. There is one supplier in Australia with it - what I don't know though is if they have it in stock. I've emailed a couple of times over the past couple of weeks to ask the question. I care if it's in stock as I've got things with this same dealer that have been on backorder for over 12 months and haven't even had any follow up from them. If there's an ETA of a month or two I don't mind. At the time I first emailed, I was happy to just buy it outright. Now however, the best I can do is just put down a deposit and pay it off. 

I haven't had a response. It'd be cool to have a business that could afford to ignore repeat customers who are looking to spend a reasonable chunk of change. I've worked for a pretty big retailer with plenty of cash..... disciplinary action was taken for that kind of crap. 

That's all a bit frustrating really. There is another antenna I've paid some attention to. I can import it for about the same price. It's not quite as well regarded, but I bet that dealer is quite happy to take my money. I don't want to - the antenna I had my mind set on still seems to be the best fit. Assuming I can actually buy it. I don't want to spend *that* much money only to wind up having to chase it every few months because the seller doesn't communicate.