The new normal - NOT amateur radio

We have got in the habit of shopping early on Tuesday morning. I go to the local bakers and my wife does the food shopping in "geriatric hour". She never queues and has no problem with social distancing.

The photo shows the queue outside the door of our bakers just before the doors opened.

Back garden - NOT amateur radio

Earlier I mentioned that we thought our garden would look sparse this year. In fact it has been good. The photo shows another view of the back garden.

Tenner 10m transceiver

Many years ago I designed and made a simple 500mW transceiver for 10m CW. Much DX was worked with it. These days I have not used CW for a long time. It was VXO controlled and used a direct conversion receiver.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/10m_tenner

Yesterday on 10m WSPR TX

Yesterday underlined the difficulty with 10m WSPR. Overall I am surprised that people are still using WSPR on 10m. At a guess, I would say activity levels are at most 10% of those of FT8.  Most days I get spotted on 10m WSPR, but FT8 spots and QSOs are easier.

FT8 is about 10dB worse than WSPR, but it does allow real QSOs with 15 second TX periods compared with 120 seconds for WSPR. This makes FT8 better for shorter openings.

In all, 6 unique stations spotted my 10m WSPR yesterday.

East Cambs net last night

Last night we had a record number of people on the 2m FM net on 144.575MHz. There were so many people I sometimes got the order wrong! Most people were good signals here.

This net is held every Monday night and all in the area are very welcome. We normally close the net at about 8.30pm local time, although often some stay on longer to natter.

Sunspots - Tuesday July 14th 2020

Solar flux is 68 and the SSN 0. A=6 and K=4.

Bees - NOT amateur radio

These bees were busy last week at Anglesey Abbey, which is owned by the National Trust. After many months, most National Trust gardens are again open.

We go to Anglesey Abbey quite often as it is very near. We are NT members, but you have to pre-book. Social distancing is never a problem.

Spring album - NOT amateur radio

Every three months my wife produces an album to help us remember what happened in each season. She has done this for many years. We have well over 40 albums now.

We also do the 365project in which we take a picture every day. We have done this since 2013. It is amazing to see how the grandchildren have changed. It is totally free although you can pay $19.99 a year for total privacy and more albums.

See https://365project.org/

The future of amateur radio

In recent years there has been a shift to digital communications using modes like FT8. Whereas in the past, radio amateurs focused on speaking to people across the world, there is far less of this now. People may make "rubber stamp"  brief contacts, but there is far less chatting. Most of us can enjoy video chats across the planet for free on the internet. Speaking across the world is no longer magic. What "turns on" younger people is not the same as in the 1950s or 1960s. We have to find out what this is and forget what attracted us.

Southgate News has a link to an interesting piece in IEEE Spectrum talking about the issue in the USA. I think this is mirrored across the planet.  The main issue is amateurs globally are getting older and there are fewer youngsters coming into the hobby. In 20 years' time the hobby we love could just fizzle out.

See http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2020/july/the-uncertain-future-of-ham-radio.htm#.Xwxp2ojYq00

6m FT8

At about 1340z, the 6m FT8 gear was turned on. As usual, running 10W to the V2000 vertical omni. Already quite a few transatlantic spots on RX and TX. After 18 minutes, 42 spots of me!  Already 6 stations "across the pond" have spotted me!

Judging by the reports this looks like E layer.  It could be double or triple hop Es, but I suspect some other sort of E layer propagation.

6m FT8 RX spots from the USA at 1444z

UPDATE 1504z: Spotted by 8 stations in the USA on 6m FT8 today.  Best DX spot was by KX4R (6801km) and loads of USA stations spotted on 6m FT8 RX, far more than Europeans!