Sunspots - Tuesday August 27th 2019

Solar flux is 67 and the SSN 0. A=6 and K=3.

Bikes - NOT amateur radio

One of our sons is staying with us with his son and daughter until later in the week. Th photo shows them on their bikes last night. Luckily it is very quiet here with very few cars.

Early 6m Es

Although it is very early and I have not yet had breakfast there are several Italian stations coming in already on 6m FT8. This is a promising start.

UPDATE 0740z: Amazing! Already 76 stations from all over Europe spotted today on 6m FT8 RX.

UPDATE 0836z: Already 120 stations spotted on 6m FT8 this morning! Many (most) are Es.

UPDATE 0948z: My 6m FT8 CQ (10W) was widely copied in southern Europe. So far this morning, 170 stations have been spotted on 6m FT8 RX.

UPDATE 2120z: Quite an extraordinary day on 6m with hundreds of stations copied via Es from all over Europe and North Africa. I am beginning to wonder if there is some correlation between climate change and Es?

Sunspots - Monday August 26th 2019

Solar flux is 66 today and the SSN is still 0. A=4 and  K=2.

Cricket - NOT amateur radio

Usually cricket can be quite boring, but the last ashes test against Australia was extremely tense until the very last ball. It could have gone either way.  In the end England won with a superb last wicket stand that will go down in history as one of the very best ever. The photo shows me with my son and grandson watching the match.

6m FT8 - no Es yet today (but it came later!)

In the last hour, I switched to 6m FT8. As yet, just Gs spotted here apart from DF4UE (756km). On TX (10W to the V2000 omni vertical) just 6 G spots so far today.

UPDATE 1050z: Later there was, again, plenty of 6m Es. I have, so far, spotted 20 stations (many probably Es) and I have been spotted, and worked, in Eastern Europe. Many were in response to my 6m FT8 CQ.

UPDATE 1114z: Plenty of Eastern Europeans spotted and several worked on 6m FT8.

UPDATE 2004z:  137 stations spotted on 6m FT8 today as the map shows. It seems still that there is 6m Es there for the taking. Another good day. Best DX spotted was EA8AQV (2989km).

2m FT8 - still a lift?

There still seems to be a lift on 2m FT8 with EA1SA (1034km) being spotted. Although I called him, I was not successful. He was the best DX spotted this morning.

2m Fredbox

Many years ago, I designed this 2m QRP AM transceiver. This was in the days when 2m AM was very popular. For its day, it was very small!

I do not recommend you copy this design nowadays, but you may find some useful ideas here.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/vuhf/fredbox

Sunspots - Sunday August 25th 2019

Solar flux is 66 and the SSN 0. A=5 and K=1.

Overnight on 2m FT8

After calling CQ, I am now on 2m FT8 RX overnight. On TX just a single QSO with a fairly local station, although 9 stations spotted me with EI2FG (565km) the best DX spot. On RX the best so far is PA0O (437km).