10m/6m Sporadic-E update

It usually happens about now: after the first few weeks of frantic Es activity on 10m and 6m working around Europe (after months of silence), activity starts to drop off. The band is open to somewhere but people are less interested in working you unless you are a new country.

The next excitement is looking for more distant Es openings - into the Middle East, North & South America and the Caribbean. So far this year I've yet to hear a transatlantic opening on either 10m or 6m, but it is still quite early, so I remain hopeful.

Monitoring Monthly - gone

Monitoring Monthly, the UK magazine catering for SWLs and scanner enthusiasts, ceased publication last month with May 09 being the last edition. Their website is still in place for electronic copies to be retrieved.

One wonders, in current market conditions, how well (or not) some of the other ham radio and SWL magazines and ham equipment traders are managing. Anyone know?

LA1TPA - a fellow QRPer

Just got this nice email from a fellow QRPer, Mads LA1TPA, from Norway. Mads, I hope to work you soon on HF or 6m QRP. In this part of the UK there are no mountains to climb with the highest being less than 150m! There are a lot more in the rest of the UK though and I think SOTA is a great idea.

Hello Roger
My name is Mads and I'm a Norwegian QRPer. I'm writing you to tell you that I really enjoy reading your Ham Radio Blog. I got my licence in 2005 and my main interests are Summits On The Air activations and QRP DXCC hunting. I also write a QRP Blog myself: http://la1tpa-qrp.blogspot.com/. I'm a G-QRP member and attended the Rishworth convention last year and also intend to go there this year. Hope to work you 2-way QRP one day.

72
Mads LA1TPA

6m PSK31

Just heard CT1ESJ working an ON station on 6m PSK31. Not thought of using this mode on 6m, but it could be pretty useful for working DX on the band. Certainly the PSK31 area around 50.250 was quite quiet.

Incidentally, I was using Pocket-Digi on my Dell Axim PDA to do the decoding just picking up the signal from the loudspeaker.

7X, EA8 and CT3 on 10m QRP SSB

Sporadic E was good today on 10m allowing QRP SSB QSOs with 7X4AN, EA8CEQ and CT3FQ with the halo antenna. 32 countries worked so far on 10m QRP this year, although there are quite a few "easy" countries still missing, so the total should climb somewhat further before the summer ends. By the autumn the sunspot count should be climbing, so we may get some transatlantic F2 layer propagation this year.

10m very short skip

Just worked EI7JN in Dublin on 10m SSB. He gave me a 59 report. When the skip is this short on 10m it usually suggests the Es MUF is getting very high, so expect 2m to open shortly if not already open for Es DX.

ZB2FK on 10m and 6m

In the course of a week I've managed to work ZB2FK on both 10m and 6m QRP. No great distance, but I don't recall working Gibraltar before, apart from ZB2VHF on 4m when I was at Liverpool University (G3OUL) in the late 1960s when running 4W AM!

DSB transceiver circuits - 10m and 6m

Michele IZ8JJI has just sent me a link to a neat, very simple, DSB transceiver suitable for either 10m or 6m. It is from a Japanese magazine (CQ?). See http://www.cqpub.co.jp/hanbai/books/15/15061/15061_p.180-181.pdf

I am not sure of the power (milliwatts I think) but WHAT a neat circuit!

Working REAL 10m DX at last!!

After calling for 15 mins I eventually worked LU1HF on 28.010MHz CW this evening by F2 or TEP. He had been calling CQ for over 15 minutes without getting a reply and then he heard my 10W to the wire halo and gave me 599. OK it was a contest exchange, so probably much weaker. I think my antenna must have quite a low angle take-off as working this station, against the rest of the world's competition, shows.This is my best 10m DX for some time at 11077kms. So who needs sunspots (the count was zero today).

A few minutes later I worked ZW5B in Brazil who got my callsign but he then lost me.

At 2138z I worked UU7J in the WPX contest.

6m Lunchbox - further thoughts

Further thoughts on the G3XBM answer to the Benton Harbor Lunchbox for 6m. Maybe it would be better to make the rig DSB instead of AM? The design is almost as easy and a VXO crystal at 25.08 or close would give some 50kHz VXO range (50.15-50.20) in a useful part of the band. Also, it would be more efficient than AM. In sporadic-E openings it would produce some DX contacts too if the power out was around 0.5 to 1W pep.