630m WSPR overnight

In all, 12 unique stations spotted my 10mW 630m WSPR in the last day. In turn, I spotted 8 uniques.

Amateur licences - rising or falling?

This probably depends on which country you are in.  Southgate News picked up a WIA story that reported roughly static numbers in Australia. In the UK, unless a trend is reversed, we are likely to see numbers rapidly fall in the next 20 years. People are getting older and die. Sadly there are too few young people and women in the hobby here in the UK.

Call me sad but every month I look in RadCom to see how many G3s are now SK. It averages about 5 a month. At this rate we'll soon all be dead!

What is it like in your country?

10m FT8

Since breakfast, I have been on 10m FT8 RX. The last few days have been disappointing with little or no DX copied here. So far this morning just MM0HVU (479km) spotted. Aircraft reflection ?

UPDATE 1045z: Best DX on 10m FT8 RX is currently 4Z4DX (3544km) in Israel. I assume this is F2.

UPDATE 1624z: Two South Americans on 10m FT8 RX! Things are looking up. Best DX is LU4VZ (12459km).

How much better is WSPR compared with 12wpm CW?

It is very hard to calculate this as you have to compare "apples with apples". A calculation by PA3FWM suggests this could be 17dB!!

See http://www.pa3fwm.nl/technotes/tn09b.html .

Sunspots - Monday November 20th 2017

Solar flux is 74 today and the sunspot number zero again. It seems to be zero quite often now.  A=5 and K=1.

Driverless Cars - NOT amateur radio

It seems we are going to see driverless cars on our roads in the UK sooner rather than later. The UK budget is this week and rumours suggest the go-ahead will be given for more on-road tests. Already the collision avoidance software is very good, but the main issue is consumer (driver) confidence. Somehow we find it hard not to still want to drive, even though the software driven car is probably safer!

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42040856  .

Return to 630m WSPR (10mW ERP, 20%)

As 10m FT8 seemed quiet, I have QSYed to 630m WSPR for the evening and overnight. As yet, no spots but it usually takes several minutes for the transverter crystal to warm up and stop drifting. This affects TX.

UPDATE 1840z:  No less than 5 unique stations spotted my very first 630m WSPR transmit period this evening. My drift was high (up to 3Hz), but this soon drops to 0Hz.

UPDATE 1850z:  My noise floor (S7) is surely limiting what I can copy on 630m. As an example, not a single station has been decoded here so far this evening on that band. My slightly deaf FT817 does not seem to be much of a problem.

UPDATE 2104z: Quite a decent haul in the last 2 weeks. These are the unique stations who spotted me in the last 2 weeks and this with a poor antenna and just 10mW ERP. Just think what a decent antenna could do! In the same period, I spotted 27 unique stations despite my S7 noise floor. I am sure this is limiting what I can spot.

UPDATE 2202z: G0LUJ (278km) is currently the best DX spot of my 10mW this evening.

WLN Portables

Several people have bought these portables under various names at very low cost. Steve G1KQH pointed this out and a search under one of these names resulted in this Russian YouTube video which shows how disassemble the transceiver. There is a lot of radio here. Expect to see a lot more of this transceiver in future.

Solar conditions

Gradually, the sun is going to sleep. Sunspot numbers and solar flux are declining and this will be the case until around 2019. Of course, these are averages and sometimes conditions are much better. The forecasts for the next sunspot maximum are not great. The best I've seen is a peak about the size of the last maximum. It could be much worse!

See http://www.solen.info/solar/ .

Old friends - NOT amateur radio

They say, "there's no friends like old friends".

This morning, we had a visit from old friends who moved away from our village several years ago. We picked like we'd seen them only yesterday. My wife is in the middle.

The photo was taken in our front garden with "our" windmill in the background.