Tom’s Radio Exploits

As of February 2025, I am a licensed Foundation amateur in the UK. My callsign is M7XXI, and if you wish to QSL, see the contact me page. I am interested in the 2m and 70cm bands, and outside of amateur I do a lot of meshtastic (34cm) and PMR446 (67cm) working too.

Equipment

Amateur

I am using a Baofeng UV5RM currently, which seems to be doing a pretty good job (although I can feel the upgrade button itching to be pushed as RX is certainly not brilliant). I have also cobbled together a /P rig using a slim jim inside a casing up the top of a pole, which I find radiates particularly well!

PMR446

Since being licensed I’m less active on 446 now.

I’m using a standard PMR446 radio to remain within the power and type compliance of the 446 bands. I only have TX access to the first 8 channels, but by using the Baofeng radio in recieve only, I can RX on all 16 channels. Generally when making 446 contacts, I use the Baofeng in recieve as it has a much better reciever than my 446 radio. This, and a lot of height from whatever hill I happen to be standing on seems to make making contacts significantly easier.

Mesh and LoRa

I started experimenting with LoRa mesh networks and made some decent contacts when I was up in Edinburgh. I’m amazed with the range, I could hit Glasgow very easily using other people’s more powerful antennae thanks to the meshed nature of the network.

When I moved back to Newcastle, I tried the Mesh but couldn’t find anything, but a few months later and a much larger community seems to be forming on 868Mhz! You can find a list of my nodes in the table below. Send me a CQ if you can see my node, I might take a while to answer but I’m always listening on 868!

Tagged as: utility-pages radio