Apple: whiter than white? - NOT amateur radio

Apple has admitted slowing down older iPhones saying the reason is aging batteries. As an owner of older iPod Touch devices and my wife has an old wifi-only iPad, this really annoys me. Now, this may be a legitimate move, but many suspect Apple's motives, allegedly. I cannot possibly judge. Based on personal experience I do not like built-in batteries and slowing down older devices. Others may be happy.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42508300 .

Romanian Bots Again? - NOT amateur radio

Blog visits are high again and there are a lot of visits from Romania. Again, I suspect probing bots.

10m FT8

Although I stayed on 10m FT8 RX all night and am still monitoring this morning, nothing yet spotted today.

UPDATE 1136z: GI4ONL (549km) is the best DX so far this morning on 10m FT8 RX. Only UK stations so far spotted.

UPDATE 1640z: At some point my internet connection to the shack was lost. Several near Europeans were spotted, but not uploaded to PSK Reporter Maps. These were probably received by aircraft reflection.

UPDATE 2022z: Much to my surprise 10m FT8 RX was full of stations this evening from all over Europe from the Faroes, to Spain, Italy and Bulgaria. I assume this is mid-winter Es. This now makes 3 days in a row. The opening seems to have ended about an hour ago. In the last 30 minutes just a G station spotted. Some of the signals were very strong, supporting mid-winter Es.

Sunspots - Friday December 29th 2017

Solar flux is 71 and the sunspot number zero. A=5 and K=0.

Bots? - NOT amateur radio

Blog visit numbers are up today and this corresponds with high visit numbers from Romania.  Although I may be wrong, this could be probing by bots looking for vulnerabilities. This is one reason I change passwords regularly. If you are looking for holes, look elsewhere! If you are a genuine visitor from Romania, you are most welcome. Probes of this kind usually take place about once a month.

France - NOT amateur radio

Our "London" grandchildren are in France with mum visiting their French grandparents.

One of the French grandparents made this Michael Jackson outfit, which was an instant hit.

They grow up fast these days!

I think they are there for a week. In the meantime we have the "other" 2 grandchildren and their mum and dad until Saturday.

HF - the forgotten spectrum?

The USA proposals for WRC-19 and WRC-23 have been published. My reading is that many administrations are more interested in the GHz bands than HF.

Perhaps many administrations have given up on HF? Maybe there is too much noise on HF and there is little money to be made from HF. On GHz bands there are plenty of opportunities to sell spectrum.

Broadcasters are abandoning shortwave. This is good news (perhaps) for radio amateurs.

472kHz WSPR

PA0A was copied in Reunion last night. He is always a good signal with me, but Reunion Is a very long way!

Christmas Cards - NOT amateur radio

This year, with the high price now of 2nd class post in the UK, I was expecting far fewer cards in the post.  Numbers are a little down, but we still had quite a few.  Of the ones missing, I expect a few were posted to the wrong address or you can hear the partner saying, "do you know who we forgot this year?". We all forget someone!

Rare snow - NOT amateur radio

Until this winter, we have not seen snow for some years. We have had the odd flurry, but not decent snow that has stayed. Yesterday it snowed (unexpectedly) all morning and there is still snow on the ground this morning.

This is a photo of 2 of our grandchildren in the snow yesterday with their mum.