Sunspot count 61

Although conditions have been a bit disturbed lately, the sunspot count reached 61 today. This is a decent sunspot number and conditions are certainly on a generally upward trend now. This autumn should see conditions very much better on the higher bands than for many years. Whoopee!

10m WSPR - real DX

Here's a shot of the shack since it's been repainted. All is back in place and I've just been rewarded with a WSPR report from CX2ABP at 11127kms by F2 TEP mode when running 5W to my 10m wire halo Homebase-10 antenna. I wonder if this is a combination of Es and F2 TEP as I'm also getting WSPR spots from Spain.

10m WSPR - interesting short skip

This morning and lunchtime I've been running 5W WSPR on 28MHz. There was some Es propagation but the most interesting reports were from Holland with two reports at around 450kms. Now this is usually too short for Es propagation, so I wonder if this was tropo?

8.97kHz noise levels

DK7FC has delayed further DX tests on 8.97kHz because of thunderstorms in Germany. Stefan comments that the noise levels appear to be rising as thunderstorm activity increases as we move towards summer. He is wondering if further VLF DX tests should be postponed until the autumn when the noise will lower again. You can check UK thunderstorm activity on the Nowcast website.

QRP AM TX for 12m or 10m (ON6MU)

Just spotted this little circuit on ON6MU's website: it's a small 100mW QRP AM transmitter for either 12m or 10m using a single stage modulated crystal oscillator. AM can be quite a lot of fun on 10m around 29-29.1MHz.

Back on the air and 10m Es

This evening I finished repainting the bedroom shack and got all the radio gear back in place. Connecting the antennas I noticed sporadic-E on 10m this evening with a CN8 audible on SSB: the Es season's started, so I'll be looking out for some QRP DX on both 10m and 6m. As mentioned before, I'll be using WSPR on 6m when not active but in the house.

Shack repainting

Just got back from a few days in Brittany and straight into DIY! The small bedroom used as the operating shack, and a bedroom for my little grandson when he comes to stay, was in need of a repaint, so everything was removed and the whole room is being repainted. All being well, the radio gear should be operational again by Sunday.

8.97kHz RX started

Today I made the loop antenna for the front-end of my 8.97kHz receiver. This consists of 24 turns on an 80cms square frame (the most I could wind with the 0.2mm PVC covered wire I had). Next stage is to resonate the loop and add some gain and selectivity so it can be used with a PC based SDR such as SpectrumLab or with a stand-alone direct conversion receiver.

My 2 year old grandson's CW

My grandson trying his hand at CW - despite being only 2yrs 5 months old!

Further 8.97kHz earth-mode tests

All being well, I'll be carrying out some more earth-mode (through ground conduction current) WSPR and QRSS tests on around 1kHz and 8.97kHz in about 10 days time. My aim is to achieve a new personal DX record for the mode using about 4W. My previous best distance is 0.3kms, but I'm pretty certain that with QRSS or WSPR this can be bettered. Remembering an earlier post, 18dB more system gain is needed to double distance using this mode of propagation.  This can be achieved by raising TX power or effectively improving the RX sensitivity, in this case mostly by better filtering and signal processing.