Soccer: UK FA cup - NOT amateur radio

Although not a great football fan, I watched the FA cup yesterday between Chelsea and Leicester.  Leicester won the game 1:0. It was good to see them win. They surprised many a few years ago by topping the Premier League and have done pretty well this season.

HF conditions improving?

Stations spotted with the
loop on 10m FT8 yesterday

Quite late yesterday, I went on 10m FT8 RX using the tiny indoor loop antenna. 

Despite this, 185 stations were spotted including many in South America. OK, this is NS and propagation is usually better than EW, but I get the feeling things on HF are improving.  

Better equipped stations were spotting the southern USA on 10m FT8.

Sunspots - Sunday May 16th 2021

 Solar flux is 73 and the SSN 24. A=8 and K=1.

Website preview

This is a preview of my new webpages. I have not yet connected it to my main web address. I tried, but for some reason it did not work. Must be finger trouble. 😒

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home .

Any comments would be welcomed. Remember, use the sub-menus from "home" to navigate!

Some pages are incomplete or missing at the moment. I intend to correct these.

V2000 vertical omni antenna faulty

This antenna must be very old now. I have had it for a very long time and it would not surprise me if it was 20 years old. 

Either it or the coax has failed as the VSWR has gone over 3:1. 

I may try a whip  (with counterpoise) on the rig to see how much worse this is. Repairing the V2000 is a major issue these days. 

Gardening yesterday - NOT amateur radio

Although it was dull here yesterday, it was mostly dry. We used it as a chance to put some bedding plants in.  These are "Busy Lizzies" waiting to go in holes I prepared earlier. Hopefully frosts are behind us now.

We bought the plants from a garden centre in the village that we chanced upon on one of our "lockdown" walks last spring. We ordered some plants from there last year and were very impressed with the plants and service.

"That's a very good question" - NOT amateur radio

Have you noticed this reply when people don't know how to answer? It is a favourite with politicians, although they rarely answer the questions!! 

10m FT8 yesterday

All yesterday, when I was on TX, I was using 1W and sometimes 500mW to the tiny indoor loop antenna. 118 stations spotted me and I spotted 1072 stations. The map shows where I was spotted. 

This is the inferior 10m loop which is probably 6dB worse than my other loop but easier to tune. The loop I used was probably 10dB down on an external dipole. 

I could probably have had more spots, but I had to go to bed! 

Most of this was Es.

10 years ago on 137kHz

Ten years ago I was copied in Holland on 137kHz despite running just 50uW ERP. At 328km, this was my best DX. I think this was with my large outside loop. The morse in QRSS says XBM XBM XBM. 

Lonely tree - NOT amateur radio

This photo appeared on 365project yesterday. 

Pity I didn't take it! It was taken by someone called Jan. I was very impressed. 

365project is where you post a picture a day. It is totally free unless you want additional albums or privacy. I have done it for about 8 years.

See https://365project.org .