Southgate News reports on some super 70cm DX in the Southern Hemisphere. They report on an FM QSO between South Africa and Saint Helena. This over 3100km!! Makes you wonder if they will work Cape Verde Is at some future date from South Africa especially with FT8.
See http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2020/november/3000km-plus-contact-made-on-433-mhz.htm#.X67fv7uTLrc
Many years ago, my brother and I traced our family tree on my dad's side continuously back to the 1500s. We have an isolated record from 1428.
Now, each of us has 2 parents, 4 grand-parents, 8 great-grand-parents and so on. Going back to the 1500s I would have had about 8000 ancestors. Going back a few more generations and I would have had more ancestors than the whole population of England at that time! So, in all probability I am related to royalty, as are most in England!
If just one of these had not had children, I would not be here today. Sobering and humbling thought.
OFCOM has announced that some short range 24GHz radar for cars is to be made licence free. See the OFCOM website for more details.
The West London Radio and Electronics show, that should have been at Kempton Park Racecourse this Sunday, November 15th, has been cancelled. Let's hope things are better next year.
It is now 1007z. For about 10 minutes I have been on 2m FT8 using 2.5W and the big-wheel omni antenna. So far, I have been spotted by 4 stations.
UPDATE 1036z: Spotted by 6 stations in 2 countries. What amazes me about FT8 is that even with QRP the signal actually gets to where it is going. Every day I get spotted by stations at great range on 2m FT8 with 2.5W and the simplest of stations.
UPDATE 1055z: On 2m FT8 RX so far today 5 stations in 3 countries spotted. the grabber at http://82.71.9.63:8080/cap/ run by G0LRD is useful.
UPDATE 1844z: 30 stations in 5 countries have spotted my 2m FT8 QRP today.
UPDATE 2240z: 32 stations have spotted me today on 2m FT8 QRP with 1 QSO. Now QRT.
Stations spotting
me today
One of the aspects of our hobby I have never tried is ATV apart from SSTV reception. My SSTV reception was with some free software using a smartphone on the desk. It worked surprisingly well.
There used to be some interest in narrow band TV (30 or 32 lines) that used ordinary speech bandwidths much like the very early days of TV.
These days there is quite a bit of interest in digital TV as the bandwidths are narrower and we have some experimental frequencies near 70 and 144MHz. One local has been building the Portsdown 4 transceiver based on the Raspberry Pi.
It has been cold and sunny for several days. We decided to go for a walk in the nearby village of Lode. It was too icy to go on our usual r...
