Lightbeam communications

Before I became a radio ham, a friend and I had our first phone wireless QSO using a small torch bulb modulated with a couple of germanium transistors. The DX was across the road, about 20m at most. At the far end the receiver was based on an OC71 with its black coating scraped off, which made quite an effective photo transistor. These days there are much better ways. For some examples, see some of the fascinating links at  http://www.carolinaflashers.org/ . One of these days I must revisit optical communications. The picture on the right is from http://www.laud.no/ww2/lispr/index.htm and shows a WW2 lightbeam communications device used by the German Army.

More 500kHz reports

This evening, 2 new stations reported my 1mW ERP 500kHz WSPR signal: PA1GSJ at 274kms and G0API at 232kms. A few days ago I was copied by G1IRG at 74kms. This brings the total number of unique WSPR reports to 79 and 81 total unique reports including CW contacts.

Dell Heaven!

Well, I have to say I was impressed with Dell today. Having suffered a series of blue screen disasters in the last month or so and having tried various things to fix it (roll backs, defrags, de-installs of software, etc) without success, it was time to contact the technical support help desk. The last I did this some years ago it took me several days to get through. Today I was connected to the Indian help-desk in 5 minutes or so and over the phone they checked the HW was OK. The software guy came on line next to instruct me how to load a clean Windows 7 installation. BTW, they rang me back, so Dell paid for the call after the first 30 minutes. An hour later and I have what seems like a brand new, stable Windows 7 installation. They charge for software support (NOT covered by the 4yr at-home warranty) but I was glad to get my wife's machine working again so quickly.  It is nice to be able to say something very good about Dell and the service from their lads in Bangalore.

Dell Hell

I have just wasted a day of my life ....

My wife's 8 month old Dell Inspiron laptop running Win7 keeps coming up with the blue screen of death (again) and no matter what I try (system restores to various dates) nothing fixes it. I have a 4 year HW warranty  but this does not cover software issues and I suspect this is software. I'm unable to do a full restore to the factory image as no backup is included on the hard drive.  I'm no PC expert and get totally frustrated by this sort of issue and the fact that Dell help is so poor: you just go around in circles.

My little Asus EEE, that I am using now to type this, has NEVER failed, ever.

Fivehead 20m QRP SSB transceiver kit

A friend of mine, Ted G4NUA, is busy building one of the Walford kits called the Fivehead. He is doing the 20m SSB version which puts out around 1.5W pep when completed. So far he has got the RX part working (see picture of the build so far), which shares a lot of the IF with the TX part. The PCB is not silk screened making construction a bit more tricky than for an Elecraft kit. This is presumably to reduce the kit cost. When finished it should make a credible QRP rig for 20m, although 1.5W on SSB is a bit lower than I'd like. There is an option for a 10W PA add-on if Ted struggles to get contacts.

SeeSaw - a new internet TV resource in the UK

Online TV service SeeSaw launched today, offering 3,000 hours of content from Channel 4, Five and older BBC programmes. This is an interesting development in Internet TV in the UK.  I don't watch that much TV myself, but my wife will love it.

12m across the pond

Yesterday, Feb 15th, there was transatlantic DX to be heard on the 24MHz (12m) band. It was good to hear W stations again. It is only a matter of time now before the first decent F2 openings begin again on 10m. I have the feeling this will be in the next 4 weeks and we will not have to wait until the autumn. Occasionally there are E layer openings in the summer months but it is the REAL 10m and 6m F2 openings I'm looking forward to again: when 10m properly gets back into its stride there will be strong stations all the way from 28-29.7MHz and from most of the world at the right time of day. On favourable days in the autumn there will be openings to the USA and Canada from Europe on 6m too. Probably not this year, but there will be a good chance next (2011).

10m WSPR

Whilst in the shack checking emails and my blog, I've been WSPRing on 10m. The only report so far is from G4IKZ not far from me. V53ARC is active on 10m and has been received in Europe today but I have yet to spot him.

10m FM

This afternoon I called CQ on 29.6MHz FM but no-one came back to my call. Going back 20 years or so there was a lot of activity on 10m FM with many people in the UK using converted FM CB rigs. With 4W and a vertical half wave I could work out to about 30-40kms without problems. Sadly, activity is very low here now except when there is sporadic-E about. 10FM was a good way of checking DX as often quite distant repeaters would pop up out of the noise, especially ones on the east coast of the USA. 

WSPR in QSO mode

Stations on 500kHz using WSPR in QSO mode are using the latest WSJT7 software used for modes like JT6m, JT65 and JT4. An option in the software allows the use of WSPR.  Stations are using frequencies outside of the WSPR beaconing sub-band of 503.8-504kHz. For the next few days my shack is being used as a bedroom for my little grandson, so it may be the middle of next week before I can try WSPR QSO mode.