Sunspots - Thursday June 18th 2020

Solar flux is 69 and the SSN 0. A=4 and K=1.

6m FT8

As the storms seem to have moved on, I have turned on 6m FT8. So far, 27 spots of my 10W to nhe V2000 omni vertical.

10m WSPR TX (500mW to the indoor loop)

At about 1335z my 10m WSPR beacon has just been turned on. I waited for the thundery weather to pass. For now, all seems quiet.

Earlier, I took a look for my friend Ted G4NUA's 20m WSPR beacon based on the Raspberry Pi.  Even though he is quite close (15km?) there was no sign of his 100mW 20m WSPR beacon, even though he has been copied far and wide. I was using my indoor loop which works pretty well on 20m.  Lots of signals copied, but not Ted.

UPDATE 1350z:  3 spots of my 10m WSPR beacon by OZ7IT (853km). My drift is still quite large as the beacon is still settling. Drift has gone down quite a lot already.

UPDATE 1525z: Thunder and lightning so all disconnected. Quite a few spots when I went QRT.

UPDATE 1735z: As the storms appear to have moved away, I have reconnected everything. No spots since reconnecting.

Gecophone 1920s crystal set

When I retired in 2008 my leaving gift was a 1920s crystal set called the Gecophone. It works well considering it is almost 100 years old. On mine, it received BBC Radio 5. It is some time since I last tried it.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/gecophone

Granddaughter - NOT amateur radio

A photo of our elder granddaughter taken last weekend.

Previous Life - NOT amateur radio

In 2008, after many years in the empire that started as Pye Telecommunications, I retired. Over the years its name changed as did the products we designed and made.

I ended up in Sepura designing world beating Tetra radios that were widely used across the planet.

At one time I worked for Philips Paging where we made vast quantities every day in places like Mexico and Singapore.  For a time I worked in California for Philips Paging. My abiding memory of California is the always blue skies! In Mexico, the factory was very modern, but just outside the gates there was poverty everywhere.

There is a good website on the history of Pye Telecom.

See http://www.pyetelecomhistory.org/index.html

Sunspots - Wednesday June 17th 2020

Solar flux is 69 and the SSN 0. A=5 and K=2.

20m WSPR RX

An old friend, Ted G4NUA, built a 20m WSPR beacon using a Raspberry Pi. It produces 100mW. He has already had spots from the USA over 5400km. He is about 13km from me. Still not spotted him yet. I am using my indoor loop antenna.

UPDATE 2127z:  Overnight, I shall stay on 20m WSPR. At the moment, just a few Germans being copied. Hoping to copy G4NUA tomorrow early.

10m WSPR (500mW to the tiny indoor loop antenna)

The 10m WSPR beacon was turned on just after 0800z. Already 4 different stations spotting me at 0828z.

UPDATE 1440z: 19 stations across Europe have spotted my 10m WSPR beacon today so far.

Passed the solar minimum?

The indications are that we have passed the minimum at last. I hope this is so.

See https://solen.info/solar/images/Cycles_24_25_minimum.png