Visit

This morning I had a visit from Chris M0PZC, who came to see my antennas and tap me for some information. Me?  The advice I could give him was limited, but probably holds good for many:

• Be prepared to fiddle to see what works for you.
• Don't believe the experts all the time. If you want the very best performance towers, beams and high power could help, but for much of the time compromises will do just fine.
• If wider bandwidths like SSB don't work for you because of local manmade noise use narrower bandwidth modes like FT8.
• On HF bands and 6m (probably 2m too) loft-space antennas and a few radials can work well. Get as much vertical wire up (a quarter wave electrically) as you can and coil this up to make a helical quarter wave if need be. Cut the length to get lowest SWR. Here I am thinking of loft antennas, but the same advice applies outside too.
• On 6m and 2m FT8 aircraft scatter, polarisation does not seem to matter.
• On 10m and 6m sporadic-E (Es) a few watts of SSB to almost any antenna (even a wire dipole indoors) will allow you to have European contacts.  Es is best May, June and July in the UK.
• On HF, I have rarely found polarisation matters.
• Go portable if all else fails.

On 160m SSB my noise level is S9, but with FT8 I have no issues at all on RX or TX.

My overall message is just have fun! Find out what is best for you by playing around. Amateur radio means different things to different people - just enjoy what gives you pleasure.

Snap!

Yesterday I reported that my earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground suddenly stopped working. An inspection this morning revealed the issue: my wire had snapped.

I did an emergency repair and the SWR on 160m was back to normal. Sadly the output on 630m was still zero suggesting the output FET has been damaged. Until this can be repaired I shall have to restrict myself to RX only on this band.

20m FT8

As I have no working external antennas on HF at present (my 10m end-fed has a high SWR for some reason now), I am using the tiny magnetic loop antenna on the windowsill. Even on 20m FT8 TX the results continue to amaze me. Already this morning, lots of stations spotted me. For a loop just 40cm diameter with thin copper wire this is just flabbergasting. 

The map shows the stations spotting me (10W) this morning on 20m FT8 with the tiny loop.

Old friends - NOT amateur radio

Yesterday we had our old neighbours around. They lived next-door and were good people.

Oscar 100

As many will know, periodically, I take a peek at the webSDR at Goonhilly, Cornwall, to check activity on the narrowband transponder. This is just an impression and highly unscientific! My quick look yesterday evening in the UK suggests activity levels broadly similar to last time. There were about 9-10 active SSB stations.

See https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/

Sunspots - Monday February 10th 2020

Solar flux is 71 and the SSN 0. A=7 and K=1.

Earth-electrode "antenna" damaged?

Suddenly on 630m, the antenna current meter read 0uA. A check on 160m showed high SWR too.  It looks to me like there is damage to the earth-electrode "antenna". Maybe the feed from the far earth may be broken. I shall have to check in the morning.

Return to 472kHz WSPR TX (less than 10mW ERP)

Using the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground I have returned to 472kHz WSPR TX.

As the ground is very wet following the storms, it is very likely the ERP is below 10mW and the size of the loop in the ground is smaller than usual. The antenna current measures lower. If the soil conductivity is higher the signal cannot spread out so much as the effective loop area is smaller.

So far, just 4 spots by G0VQH (15km).

UPDATE 1815z: Still just spots from Jenny G0VQH. May later I may get more spots?

UPDATE 1935z:  QRT. Is the earth-electrode "antenna" damaged?

What is enough?

OK, so if you are chasing that last remaining DXCC entity I can imagine a big beam on a high tower and plenty of power might help. However, recently I have been wondering what constitutes "enough" for mere mortals.

As you will probably have read in earlier blog posts, I use about 10W and often far less. On HF I have no external antennas, so have had to make do with a tiny magnetic loop antenna on 20m, 17m, and 15m. I am sure it would be better on higher bands, but these have seemed dead when I tried. On 630m, 160m and 80m, I have used the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground. On 6m, 2m and 70cm I frequently use the V2000 omni vertical. On 2m and 70cm, I sometimes use the big-wheel horizontal omni. I have no beams on HF, VHF or UHF.

What the last few days have taught me is simple, compromise, antennas and low power are perfectly fine most of the time. Yes, I am sure more power and better antennas would give better results, but simple antennas and low power will give you lots of fun.

Storm Ciara - NOT amateur radio

At the moment, we have strong wind and rain as a result of Storm Ciara.  At this time of year, this is unusual. Strong winds are more common in October.

Gusts of wind up to 90mph are battering some parts of the UK. It is not as bad here, but I reckon the gusts are up to 60mph. At the moment trees and the like are OK.