UK Rally

Saturday 16 NOVEMBER : ROCHDALE & DISTRICT ARS WINTER RALLY

St Vincent de Paul's, Caldershaw Road, off Edenfield Road (A680), Norden, Rochdale, OL12 7QR. Doors open to the public at 10.15am with disabled visitors gaining access 15 minutes earlier. Admission is £2.50 with those under 12 years free. £5 per pitch (for traders with own tables) or £10 for a pitch with table provided. Guest speaker Keiran Wilkinson, IT Director at Hack:Oldham, will give a lecture on Make it, don't buy it, an explanation of how you can use Computer Aided Design, 3D printing and laser cutting to create project enclosures and casings. Due to limited seating, the talk will be given twice at 11am and 12 noon. Refreshments available including bacon and sausage butties. Further details: Robert, M0NVQ, by email to m0nvq@outlook.com .

A list of rallies can be found at http://rsgb.org/main/news/rallies/

Sunspots - Thursday November 14th 2019

Solar flux is 71 and the SSN 0. A=2 and K=2.

Seaside towns out of season - NOT amateur radio

Today my brother and I went to Dartmouth on the bus. It is a great run. Sadly Dartmouth looks very out of season. There were few shops busy and very few people on the streets.

Reach walk - NOT amateur radio

At the weekend we went for a nice walk at nearby Reach. My wife made this collage.

What are a little strange are the two emus in a garden. They have been here for several years. I do not know why they are there. Perhaps they like emu eggs!

HF antennas

Some years ago I bought an x80 vertical antenna. These are basically Rybakov vertical antennas. I erected mine briefly at the old QTH, but have not done so here. I would need help with erection, whereas my end-fed I managed to string to a nearby tree on my own. The end-fed is a good match on 10m (my favourite HF band) , where it seems to do quite reasonably on FT8.  So, for now, the x80 is unused.

At the time (2011) the x80 had mixed reviews. Some said the aluminium flexed too much and broke. Being a vertical, it is probably noisier than a horizontal antenna. If you have an auto ATU it is quite an easy way to get on several HF bands. These days I think there are stronger versions around.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/antennas/x80

Sunspots - Wednesday November 13th 2019

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

Salcombe out of season - NOT amateur radio

At the moment I am spending a few days with my brother in Devon. Out of season it is a different place.

Sunspots - Tuesday November 12th 2019

Solar flux is 70 today and the SSN 0.  A=7 and K=2.

70cm activity contest this evening

A reminder that the 70cm leg of the RSGB 's UKAC activity contest is this evening starting at 2000z.

VLF amateur radio experiments

8.97kHz earth-mode TX

The conventional wisdom is that VLF requires huge antennas and enormous powers. This not the case and radio amateurs have spanned thousands of kilometres with back garden antennas and modest powers. With utilities assisted earth mode (what I tried) just a few watts is enough to span very useful distances. For RX only, VLF antennas can be very small indeed.

In the past I have copied radiated signals from amateurs below 10kHz from several Western European countries.

Sadly my poor health has put a stop to my earth-mode experiments in recent years.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/vlf/8-97khz-earth-mode-transmitter