Old cottage - NOT amateur radio

A few years ago this very old cottage in our village was tastefully extended. It is very hard to tell the extension from the original.  We are blessed with quite a few old houses in Burwell, our village.

Here I am trying to take a photo on my phone! I have no idea when this cottage dates from, but I'd guess the early 1800s. Some old houses date from the 1200s - that is old!

10m FT8

At about 0830z, I QSYed to 10m FT8 calling CQ with 2.5W briefly. Since then I have been on 10m FT8 RX. Not entirely unexpectedly, no spots this early.

UPDATE 1003z: Still no spots.

UPDATE 1315z: Just 2 spots on 10m FT8 RX so far - G0OPI (229km) and MM3NRX (516km).

UPDATE 1657z: Just 4 UK stations all day. Very disappointing on 10m FT8 RX. Soon be time to QSY to MF.

3Y0I Bouvet Island

Southgate News reports on a possible second attempt to activate this very rare DXCC country as long as funds cover it.

It appears that mounting such DXpeditions to inaccessible places is very expensive. If you are a DX chaser (I am not) you may want to considering chipping in.

See http://southgatearc.org/news/2019/november/3y0i-bouvet-island-dxpedition-news-preparations-resumed.htm

472kHz WSPR TX (10mW ERP)

Overnight and last evening my 10mW ERP from the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground was spotted by 14 stations with best DX being LA9IY (1374km) up in Norway. The table is arranged in distance order.

Sunspots - Tuesday November 5th 2019

Solar flux is 71 and the SSN 0. A=4 and K=1.

472kHz WSPR TX (10mW ERP)

As 10m is probably of little good now, I have decided to QSY to 472kHz (630m) WSPR TX with my 10mW ERP from the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground. I have just QSYed at about 1840z. In among the first 4 spots was DL/PA0EHG (493km).

With 7 unique stations spotting me within 20 minutes, this is looking promising.

Every time I TX on 472kHz WSPR about 3-5 stations seem to spot me. In the last hour 8 different stations have spotted me.

UPDATE 2150z: So far this evening, 12 stations have spotted me on 472kHz WSPR. See table arranged in distance order.

BREXIT and UK elections

Basically I have given up on our politicians Just before an election they all make rash promises that rarely get changed into actions. They are all guilty of it! As my mother-in-law said their promises are like pie crusts.

As for BREXIT, most have lost the will to live, whether we voted "remain" or "leave" the EU. It seems few in politics or the UK can agree or even agree to disagree!

Mothercare - NOT amateur radio

When our children and grandchildren were very little, Mothercare was a great High Street shop. Today we hear they have called in administrators and 2500 jobs are at risk.

It seems nowhere in retail is safe on the High Streets in the UK and probably elsewhere. There is no doubt our shopping habits are changing as more and more of us shop online for more convenience and often better prices.

Only today my wife chose to buy a new tablecloth online. Otherwise it would have been a 26 mile round trip only to find out it was probably not in stock anyway.  The whole order online took 3 minutes and the tablecloth will be here this week. We ordered some leather balm online on Saturday and it was here Sunday.

No, our retail habits are changing.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50287153

Miracle Antennas

For some years now I have hosted Yahoo Groups on Sub-9kHz amateur radio, VHF AM and Miracle Antennas. Yahoo is effectively ending its groups, so new groups have been created at .io . As an example see https://groups.io/g/miracleantennas.

To migrate a group costs $110 in the first year, whereas starting a new group is free. Of course you lose the message archive, photos and files unless these are manually transferred when a new group is created.

Windows or Chromebook?

Our lounge PC is an HP Pavilion running Windows 10. We have had it for several years now (I cannot yet find out when we got it - does anyone know how to interrogate the PC to tell me?) and it is mainly used for web surfing and local picture storage (these are backed up). I am seriously tempted by a Chromebook as I think this would serve this purpose fine. I'd need to add a big memory micro SD card for local picture storage.

I do not run any amateur radio stuff on this PC. I know the Chromebook would not run Windows programs; there may be a way, but I have not looked i.e. a bit like Wine on Linux OS. The advantages of the Chromebooks would be fast boot-up, few viruses (if any), much less bloatware and low cost.

Anyone got any views they'd care to share?

UPDATE 1220z: The BIOS of the Pavilion is late 2016.