Aphoristic's World of Radio
Update #1
Not much has happened in my radio-sphere since Christmas.
I have made a few new friends on the amateur radio bands and tested a few radios here and there.
Buying some new radios over the past month or so has not been as smooth a transition as I would have liked with more than one of my recent eBay purchases turning out to be bogus.
No matter, as eBay will happily refund the items but that doesn't stop me getting annoyed with the dodgy sellers who try and pull a fast one on you.
I'm already five radios down to unscrupulous far eastern sellers so I hoping to be a little more fortuitous in February.
The WLN KD-C1 leak
I don't know who let the cat out of the bag about the superb WLN slim radio? These little power houses were the best kept secret of last year. Someone ultimately stabbed us all in the back and caused the sellers to put their prices up.
It's outrageous. These little radios were available for as little as £8-10 before Christmas 2016 and now have sky rocketed to anywhere in the region of £15-£20 for a single handset and £30 for a pair. - not only that, these are from Hong Kong or mainland China and not from a domestic seller who would normally put a few quid on the price?!
Scandalous.
I was hoping to buy another WLN radio but they can forget it now!
Signals of interest
Scanning around the local frequencies can be interesting at times.
One such example was found on the UHF band - 446.500mHz to be exact.
It appeared to be coming from the nearby A.J. Bell Rugby stadium in Barton, Manchester.
After listening for a while it became obvious it was a television production crew.
Salford Red Devil's and Sale Sharks rugby teams share this stadium and it was wasn't obvious to me which team was playing or what event it was? A cup final or something? I'm not a rugby fan 😨
TV Production Crew doing the Rugby
In other news Tommy the pirate has appeared again on the GB3PZ repeater in Manchester following a long absence.
*Pirate = An unlicensed radio operator. Illegal
Ringway Manchester actually caught Tommy in the act and made a video on YouTube
I heard him myself the other day (but didn't record it). It was definitely the same 'Steve' AKA Tommy. He was only on air for a short time with words like "1-2", "1-2", "testing?" etc etc. No call sign, no nothing. Clear piracy! lol
More news in the next update