Early spot on 10m WSPR from Reunion Is

It is only 1048z and already my little 10m 500mW WSPR beacon has been spotted in Europe, Asia and Africa . Conditions on 10m are the best I have seen them this autumn season so far.

6m WSPR

After several days with no success at all on 6m WSPR, giving or receiving spots,  I decided to give the band a miss. My usual pattern has been 10m and 6m during the day with 630m (472kHz) overnight. Sod's Law will no doubt apply and my absence on 6m will herald some super TEP and the best conditions on 6m for many years! I can just imagine! Well, it is not the end of the world if it happens.

Sunspots and 10m - Wed Sept 30th 2015

Sunspot number has dropped back a bit to 125, which is still respectable. K=0, so conditions are undisturbed and the propagation forecast for 10m is still "fair". Some reasonable F2 conditions are possible on 10m. If we are lucky there might be a little "out of season" Es on 10m WSPR as well.

UPDATE 0924z:  So far, just local G4IKZ (18km) spotting me on 10m WSPR,  but it is early still. I decided not to bother with 6m WSPR today.

UPDATE 0940z:  Just after writing the update above 4X1RF (3519km) in Israel spotted my 500mW 10m WSPR beacon.  F2. Today should be a good day on 10m.

472kHz WSPR RX overnight

Overnight no new stations were received on MF. Just the same stations, some at good strength.

South America on 10m WSPR

KD0VWO (7412km) monitoring in Brazil has copied my 500mW 10m WSPR beacon again today. This is not the best DX today, but good to see my signal getting to South America. The question is will there be any North American 10m WSPR spots tonight?

UPDATE 2014z:  No signs of any North American spots on 10m WSPR. I shall be going QRT on 10m shortly. Below are the unique stations spotting me on 10m WSPR today. Note that the KD0 is actually monitoring in Brazil and not the USA.

Unique spots of my 10m WSPR beacon today

UPDATE 2042z:  Now QRT on 10m WSPR but will be monitoring 630m RX only overnight.

Even lower price for the Yaesu FT991

Steve G1KQH has just informed me that the Yaesu FT991 is being sold at £991 by Moonraker until stocks are exhausted or Oct 4th. I am sure we will see lower prices still in the months ahead. I can see MLS, Waters and Stanton and others doing battle.

The question is what price will the IC7300 be?  Once this becomes available there will be a price war between the UK dealers to offer the best deals. I expect even now a better deal can be had for the FT991 if paying cash and not looking for terms.

A price war is brewing....

Re-tarring the windmill - NOT amateur radio

The 200 year old restored windmill next door is getting a new coat of tar. The mill currently has a cog problem which is preventing the sails turning in the wind and grinding corn. They are hoping to fix the issue. The picture was taken from our drive. Inside, you can climb to the top (great view), although my health has prevented me doing so since the restoration.

Processing weather satellite images

This is not my thing but others may find this of interest if you enjoy weather satellite images. I am content to put seaweed out the window here or even watch the BBC weather! The latter seems only to be correct if we have a long settled period here in the UK. So, you do as well looking out of the window.

See http://www.satsignal.eu/  .

2m big-wheel and feeder on HF

As an experiment I loaded up my feeder and 2m big-wheel on HF tuned against a mains ground. It matched on 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m and 15m but it did not like 10m. I have still to try other bands. On 15m it was getting USA spots on the first transmission at 2W and on 40m it got 9 spots (all Europeans) in the first TX with no effort. It was receiving well on all the bands I tried and giving plenty of stations spots via WSPRnet. The feeder and 2m big-wheel, tuned with my LDG ATU, would allow me to WSPR on most HF bands. One night I shall try the 2m big-wheel and feeder on 472kHz, using a ferrite rod to resonate it and a 3C39 toroid to match it. It will be interesting to see how this compares with the earth-electrode "antenna".

UPDATE 1427z:  I see my 10m WSPR has been spotted by FR1GZ (9724km) using the 500mW beacon and Par triband end-fed wire. Conditions on 10m are good.

UPDATE 1556z:   LA9JO (2096km) spotted me on 7MHz, for my best WSPR DX, so far, on that band.

The SLOW decline

Well, we are on the down slope of the current solar cycle.

The down part of the cycle is usually slower than the climb from the minimum to the next peak, so we may have a few more years of reasonable conditions.

At the present time, conditions, even on 10m, are quite good. This time next year I think we may be losing 10m (largely) as a DX band although N-S paths may still have some decent openings. I have mentioned before that I have worked LU on 10m SSB even with QRP right at the lowest part of the cycle.

It is a pity that more don't stick with WSPR on 10m as this is a good way to "smoke out" transient openings. Activity levels on 10m WSPR are way down on last year. Next year I suspect there will be even fewer stations on 10m WSPR.