Sunspots - Wednesday May 19th 2021

Solar flux is 76 and the SSN 24 again. A=10 and K=1. 

Thunder

As a precaution, I have disconnected my mains PSU and PC in my shack. My antenna that is connected to my little 10m FT8 RX is indoors (the tiny loop). There is thunder about. I think it is some way off, but better safe than sorry.

We have hail now at 1607z.

See https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;z=4;y=35.8839;x=5.7931;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;

Seen on a recent amateur radio post

 This appeared recently just below the signature. It made me laugh! 😊

"Cheer up, things could get worse..so I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse!"

OFCOM and EMF

OFCOM has announced some changes to licence conditions. I think these are about EMF. They are sending revised licences to those affected. See the OFCOM website for more details.

10FT8R - continued experiments

This morning, I am again on 10m FT8 RX with the tiny indoor loop. Late yesterday, I removed the last AF stage, but spotted no stations. There were lots of spikes and I am not sure what they were. Later, I shall stick the last audio stage back again to see if this was important.

UPDATE 1010z: Something is wrong. On the 10FT8R RX no spots, yet when I went back to the FT817ND spots right away. Some spots were strong. I must be doing something stupid. More investigation needed.

UPDATE 1206z:  9 spots so far.

UPDATE 1411z: I have put back the final audio stage on the 10FT8R RX and the spikes have gone (no idea why) and I am spotting lots of stations again with this little RX connected to my indoor loop. At the moment this is the RX being used on 10m FT8 RX. So far, since reconnecting it, 20 stations spotted.

South Devon - NOT amateur radio

This is a another photo of where I come from in South Devon. In the distance are Dartmoor and Cornwall. 

Sunspots - Tuesday May 18th 2021

 Solar flux is 75 and the SSN 11. A=6 and K=3.

10FT8R RX - even simpler?

At present, I am experimenting to see if I can omit the last audio stage. There seems to be plenty of spare audio. Being a DSB design, it is inherently 3dB down in sensitivity, but that has not been an issue hitherto.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/homebrew/10ft8r-rx.

Oscar 100

Every few weeks I try to give an update on activity levels on the narrowband transponder on Oscar 100 using the on-line SDR at Goonhilly Down. I looked twice last evening at times that would have been European Sunday evenings. 

My impression was that activity levels were quite low with plenty of space.

See  https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/ .

10m FT8 grabber

One of the things now possible on my new web pages is embedding. This has allowed me to add a grabber, so you can see what I am doing on PSKreporter maps. I think you can change the menus. Certainly I can. At the time of writing, I am looking at the last few hours on 10m FT8 RX.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/10m-ft8-grabber .