Loops

My loop antenna works better than I expected. I stayed off 10m last year mostly as I did not have a suitable external antenna. 

At the moment I am using an old Whizz Loop on 20m-10m. It is easy to tune and just sits on the shack windowsill. I have a better loop that I have used in the past on 10m (see photo).

My guess is the loop currently used is about 10dB down on a dipole. This is an estimate based on the stations I am not spotting. Nonetheless it works quite well for something so small with just a wire inductor about 50cms across. The "proper" 10m loop has a much thicker made of central heating pipe. It is far sharper, but harder to tune, but probably several dBs better.

What has surprised me is it the Whizz-Loop has even spanned the Atlantic several times with QRP FT8 on 17m.

I hope to get a 10m dipole up outside next week. I could make it cover 6m as well.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/antennas/magloop .

Pendulum swings - NOT amateur radio

 "What goes around comes around".

This is a phrase I know well. When I was at work people were always finding newer, better, ways to work. The only trouble was we tried these 30 years earlier!!

So it is with equality.   

Let me say from the outset that I am all for equal opportunity. To me, it matters not whether your skin is black, white, red or purple. It does not matter whether you live in the worst slums in the world or the poshest house.  Gender does not matter. What gender your partner is doesn't matter.  Also, I do not agree with privilege as a result of who you are or the wealth you inherited. We all should have equal rights as human beings.

At the moment, we seem to seek equality, yet many are afraid to speak out in case they are labelled as politically incorrect. 

We should work towards a fair society, but learn from the past.

Soccer: UK FA cup - NOT amateur radio

Although not a great football fan, I watched the FA cup yesterday between Chelsea and Leicester.  Leicester won the game 1:0. It was good to see them win. They surprised many a few years ago by topping the Premier League and have done pretty well this season.

HF conditions improving?

Stations spotted with the
loop on 10m FT8 yesterday

Quite late yesterday, I went on 10m FT8 RX using the tiny indoor loop antenna. 

Despite this, 185 stations were spotted including many in South America. OK, this is NS and propagation is usually better than EW, but I get the feeling things on HF are improving.  

Better equipped stations were spotting the southern USA on 10m FT8.

Sunspots - Sunday May 16th 2021

 Solar flux is 73 and the SSN 24. A=8 and K=1.

Website preview

This is a preview of my new webpages. I have not yet connected it to my main web address. I tried, but for some reason it did not work. Must be finger trouble. 😒

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home .

Any comments would be welcomed. Remember, use the sub-menus from "home" to navigate!

Some pages are incomplete or missing at the moment. I intend to correct these.

V2000 vertical omni antenna faulty

This antenna must be very old now. I have had it for a very long time and it would not surprise me if it was 20 years old. 

Either it or the coax has failed as the VSWR has gone over 3:1. 

I may try a whip  (with counterpoise) on the rig to see how much worse this is. Repairing the V2000 is a major issue these days. 

Gardening yesterday - NOT amateur radio

Although it was dull here yesterday, it was mostly dry. We used it as a chance to put some bedding plants in.  These are "Busy Lizzies" waiting to go in holes I prepared earlier. Hopefully frosts are behind us now.

We bought the plants from a garden centre in the village that we chanced upon on one of our "lockdown" walks last spring. We ordered some plants from there last year and were very impressed with the plants and service.

"That's a very good question" - NOT amateur radio

Have you noticed this reply when people don't know how to answer? It is a favourite with politicians, although they rarely answer the questions!! 

10m FT8 yesterday

All yesterday, when I was on TX, I was using 1W and sometimes 500mW to the tiny indoor loop antenna. 118 stations spotted me and I spotted 1072 stations. The map shows where I was spotted. 

This is the inferior 10m loop which is probably 6dB worse than my other loop but easier to tune. The loop I used was probably 10dB down on an external dipole. 

I could probably have had more spots, but I had to go to bed! 

Most of this was Es.