RSGB's 2m UKAC tomorrow evening

Tomorrow evening is the 2m leg of the 2m Activity Contest. As we have grandchildren staying, I will have to make my entry even briefer than usual.

Grandchildren - NOT amateur radio

Most of this week we have our "London" grandchildren, although we spent most of the afternoon with our granddaughter having an x-ray! She fell over the weekend and hurt her arm. We were afraid she'd broken it but all was well.

The photo shows her looking pretty happy!

Sunspots and 10m - Monday April 3rd 2017

Solar flux is 107 today and the sunspot number 75. These are high numbers. A=8 and K=1. All these figures are better than yesterday. I urge you to try 10m digital modes as propagation could be quite decent.

10m JT65

Quite late on yesterday, I moved to 10m JT65. Last evening several South Americans were spotted on 10m JT65, so conditions were quite decent on 10m. I am on 10m JT65 now.

UPDATE 1937z:   Lots of South Americans and Italy on 10m JT65 today.

Windmill next door - NOT amateur radio

We are very lucky to have a good view of our local restored windmill from our home. Every day usually someone comes to take a photo. It is about 200 years old and fully restored. Not many are lucky enough to look at a working 4 sailed windmill whilst eating breakfast! It is literally "over the garden fence". The hedge is in our garden.

10m JT65 after 20m JT65

After all day on 20m JT65, I have (rather late) moved to 10m JT65, changing at about 1615z. On 20m most of the spots of my 2W were from Europe with a few from North America. On RX the best was Brazil.

UPDATE 1622z:  No spots on 10m JT65.

UPDATE 2112z: EU7FBB (1931km) spotted on 10m JT65 earlier this evening. I left things running on 10m overnight.

Sunspots and 10m - Sunday April 2nd 2017

Solar flux is 99 today and the sunspot number is 79 (both are high figures). A=16 and K=3.

Devon Birds - NOT amateur radio

Certainly swallows (birds) are being seen in increasing numbers in Devon. Cattle egrets are also being increasingly seen. The cattle egret sightings remind me of the first  little egret sightings in Devon 30-40 years ago.

I suspect several species will become far more common in the years to come e.g. bearded tits, bee-eaters. At the same time, some will be lost. Before 1955 to see a collared dove in the UK would have been amazing. Nowadays they are one of the most common birds in our garden.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee-eater .

472 and 137kHz allocations in the USA nearer

The latest news from the FCC suggests the USA is nearer allocating the LF and MF bands to amateurs at last.

I used to think OFCOM was bad, but the FCC seems even worse. It is years since most countries had access to these bands. If the FCC was concerned about other users they could have set very low ERP levels and allowed amateur operation on a strictly "non-interference" basis.  Instead they waited and waited. They are still waiting!

The FCC seems, at least to me, to be a bunch of pen pushing idiots who know little about radio. Perhaps I am being unfair? In many ways I think of the USA as having fairly liberal policies on the use of the spectrum, but the FCC seems to do themselves no good at all over these bands.

See http://www.arrl.org/news/new-bands-fcc-issues-amateur-radio-service-rules-for-630-meters-and-2-200-meters

See also http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0329/FCC-17-33A1.pdf

April Fool's Day - NOT amateur radio

Certainly here in the UK, April 1st is April Fool's Day when people usually play tricks. Often there are spoof news items in the papers or on TV. Apparently one UK paper did a piece on Prince Harry saying he had got married in secret.

Sorry, but all here will be "straight" with no April fools stories.