Shack limited access this week

Busy birdwatching

We have different grandchildren staying this week depending on the days so I have limited access to my shack.  I should be able to do some WSPR for the first few days, but later in the week will be more difficult as there will be a cot in the shack!

Today we went birdwatching, counting the different species spotted on a 1 mile village walk. The elder grandson (aged 7) is into categorising and collecting. 12 species mostly seen (a couple heard).

Sunspots and 10m today - Sat Feb 14th 2015

Sunspot count is marginally higher at 59 today. 10m propagation is again predicted to be "fair". Although the 10m band has opened to the USA again, this morning on 10m was pretty flat with just the odd European station logging my 500mW beacon.

UPDATE 1310z:   GM4WJA (624km) has been spotting me on 10m.   This could be back-scatter or even winter Es. The distance is far too short for F2.

Stateside spots on 10m WSPR today - Sat Feb 14th 2015

During the morning the odd European was copying my 10m 500mW WSPR beacon.  No "astounding" DX from distant countries.

The first transatlantic spot today was at 1222z by K3ZV (5692km).

Last USA 10m spot of my 500mW beacon was K3EA (5657km) at 1854z.

472kHz WSPR

Earlier this morning I turned off my 472kHz WSPR station. G0LRD (25km) was being regularly spotted and PA0RDT (243km) was copying me overnight.  Best DX spotted by me was F1AFJ (607km).

10m WSPR - DX spots of my 500mW beacon

The first USA spot of my 10m 500mW beacon was by K9AN at 1304z. I see I have also been spotted by VK6XT (14719km) a couple of times today and by FR5ZX (9740km) a couple of times. Considering the forecast of "fair" 10m propagation, today has already been very good.

UPDATE 1630z:   Plenty of USA stations still spotting my 10m 500mW WSPR beacon.

UPDATE 1745z:  Still plenty of USA stations still spotting my 10m 500mW WSPR beacon.  I suspect this opening will continue until well past 1800z. It has been dark here  since about 1715z.

UPDATE 2140z:  The last USA station to spot my 500mW 10m beacon was K9AN (6505km) at 1824z. Still being spotted in Europe until 1908z.

10m beacon now ON

My 10m beacon was turned on just before 1100z. So far, it has still not stabilised so is drifting a little as the reference warms up, only G4IKZ (18km) has seen me. It will be well after 1200z I expect before any stateside stations see me today.

UPDATE 1109z:   LA9JO (2096km) is the best DX spot of my 500mW 10m WSPR so far this morning. He was spotting me at -8dB S/N, which was very strong. I assume this was single hop F2 propagation?

Digital experiments

In all my time in amateur radio I have never once experimented with microprocessor programming and I have done very little "digital" design.  This seems to be a gap in my knowledge, although I am still not really interested, preferring RF design, especially QRP.  I must say I remain very impressed with Wolf's (W5OLF) tiny WSPR-AXE-CW beacon: this goes to show just how much can be achieved with so little physically. Maybe this is a whole area I should embrace? The trouble is it is impossible to be an expert at lots of things, unless you are very bright. Certainly I do not consider myself a polymath! 

Pixie kit from China

My low cost 40m Pixie kit - although G1KQH only paid about 60% of what I paid - is on its way from China but has not yet arrived here. I assume, with free shipping, this comes by sea. I am in no great hurry. As I mentioned before, I very much hope to build this unit as I have not built much in ages because of my brain bleed.

UPDATE 1600z:   My kit arrived in the post today.  Still to open the package, but judging by the speed this must have come by air. It looks well packed.

Falling sunspots?

Sunspot number today has fallen to 50, the lowest for quite a while and 10m propagation is forecast to be "fair" again.

Yesterday, 10m did open for me to the USA and plenty of stateside stations copied my 500mW beacon in the end after a late start. I suspect today it may be harder going as we seem, on average, to now be on the downward slope towards the next minimum, although this is years away. If predictions of the next maximum are to be believed, a SN of 50 would be considered a decent figure for the next sunspot peak! Of course, the predictions could be wrong, although the predictions have improved a lot and most got cycle 24 pretty accurately.

I have not yet turned on the 10m beacon this morning as we have visitors. It will probably be turned on just before lunch. I am still on MF but there are few active stations in range.

See http://www.solen.info/solar/ .

Transatlantic spots on 10m WSPR

VE3GEN (5593km) was the first stateside station to spot my 10m 500mW beacon today at 1346z. Since then (quite late) lots of USA stations have spotted me. At 1734z, there were still plenty of USA spots coming in.

UPDATE  2140z:    The last USA station to spot my 500mW 10m beacon was NY2M (5587km) at 1844z