30m WSPR logs

Today, out of interest, I made a list of the countries and distances covered just on 10MHz (30m) WSPR in the last few weeks of intermittent operation. So far I've had hundreds of reports from 22 countries in 4 continents with the best DX being 9616kms with 5W. Even 7147kms was covered with just 100mW! Even better distances have been reached on 40m. I've had reports on bands from 160m to 6m. It is truly an amazing mode!

Clearly, with WSPR, openings are being captured which otherwise would have been missed. This is especially true on the higher HF bands, which I intend to concentrate my efforts on next - bands like 10m.

Update - two more reports tonight - VE1 and 9H1.

Antennas at G3XBM

The current antenna farm at the G3XBM QTH is shown in the picture. The 10m antenna is a wire halo. 6m, 2m and 70cms vertical is handled with a V2000 triband colinear. There is also a horizontal 2m halo just below the V2000. Finally, there is an end-fed wire about 15m long running down the garden from just beneath the V2000 antenna to a post at the far end of the back garden. All pretty modest stuff really. Certainly not a beam in sight!

Click on the image to get a better view.

T61AA on 17m

T61AA has been a consistent, if weak, signal here all morning on 17m WSPR. His trace was last spotted at 1052z but too weak even for WSPR to decode. Although I've been beaconing all morning on 17m I've not been copied yet, although T61AA says he has an S9 noise level in Afghanistan. He is located 5564kms away.

Sporadic-E ....is it getting better year on year?

Since the 1960s I've enjoyed hearing and working DX via sporadic-E openings in the summer months. For me, it all started with DXTV reception on Band 1, much to the annoyance of my parents when I retuned the TV trying to find weak Italian and Spanish TV stations.

But have sporadic-E openings changed and become far more intense in recent years? Looking at the reports of summer 6m DX now and you will see DX as far as S.America, The Congo, Japan and Texas to name but a few. Now is this because there are more stations, DX clusters and the like or is the E layer now doing things it wasn't doing (at least not as often) 40 years or more ago? Indeed, are these super so-called multi-hop Es openings really sporadic-E as we understand it? Or is the E layer now more intensely ionised more often?

Incidentally, with WSPR I seem to find 10m open to Europe almost all the time, day and night.

SSTV

Never tried SSTV before so I used Digital Master 780 (comes with Ham Radio Deluxe) to receive on 20m today. Several pictures came through including this one from JN1VNW, the first I decoded.

2013 for sunspot cycle 24 peak?

A new sunspot prediction from Australia is showing we haven't reached the minimum yet and the new peak won't now be until 2013! If correct we have to get used to conditions remaining poor on 10m F2 for some time yet. See http://www.ips.gov.au/Solar/1/6

Afghanistan on 10m

Overnight I left my 10m WSPR station running 10% TX at 5W. During the night I was spotted a few times by a couple of Europeans. My best reception was of T61AA in Afghanistan from just after 0600z. Unfortunately he was unable to copy my 5W on 10m.

This is the WSPR chat log showing that T61AA was genuine. He has been trying EME and 6m at other times today.

Getting back to homebrew QRP

For the last 10 days I have been "distracted" (by my discovery of WSPR) from my main interest - building simple homebrew QRP gear. In the next few days I hope to have rectified this lapse and got busy in the back of the garage making something new. Not sure what yet but I feel the urge to build again.....

50MHz aircraft scatter

Interesting piece on G3ZJO's blog about 50MHz aircraft scatter using WSPR signals. He has a nice waterfall display showing the strange things that happen to a WSPR signal when aircraft are moving.

WSPR versus CW - what's the improvement?

As WSPR is so effective I asked Joe, K1JT, what the difference is between WSPR and "ear-and-brain" CW. This is his very helpful reply:

"For an answer to your question about relative sensitivities of CW, WSPR, and some of the other modes implemented in WSJT, let me suggest going to the "References" link on the WSJT web site, http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/refs.html ,
and select reference #11. Table 3 on page 9 gives the information you asked about. The difference given there is about 11 dB, in favor of WSPR over ear-and-brain CW. For most operators, the difference is more like 15 dB."