10FT8R proper schematic

With many thanks to Jay W5OLF here is a proper schematic of this little 10m FT8 RX. At one time I had a copy of SPlan so could create schematics properly although I have no idea where it is now! 

I bought the crystal at low cost from 3rd Planet Solar in the USA. They have good stocks and currently are $1.50 each.  I pulled the crystal down to 14.037MHz. If you can find a low cost source of 14.037MHz crystals, the inductor in series with the crystal probably won't be needed.  I needed enough series inductance with the crystal to pull down 3kHz. Moulded chokes are probably fine in this application. I used a toroid inductor just because it was at hand.

Jay is working on a PCB and improvements.

10m FT8 RX with the tiny indoor loop antenna and the 10FT8R RX

As of about 0817z I turned on my 10m FT8 RX. As yet, just a spot of a Polish station. It is now 0836z.

UPDATE 1116z:  96 stations spotted on RX so far today. 

UPDATE 1506z: 237 stations spotted on 10m FT8 RX today with the 10FT8R RX. Most look like Es. See map.

UPDATE 1848z: 343 stations spotted today on 10m FT8 RX with the 10FT8R RX and the tiny indoor loop.

UPDATE 2150z: 403 stations spotted on 10m FT8 RX today. Now QRT. 

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

Sunspots - Sunday May 23rd 2021

 Solar flux is 76 and the SSN 19. A=5 and K=2.

8m band

On earlier posts you may have noticed mention of this band. It is available in very few countries at the moment. Being between 10m and 6m, it could be a very useful allocation. Es and MS could be quite effective. As John has shown, it could also be useful for aircraft scatter.

There are now 2 beacons on the band in Eire. These should certainly be received in the UK and mainland Europe by Es and MS. A few other countries have special access.

See https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/ .

IC-9700

This ICOM radio covers 2m, 70cm and 23cm. It is an all-mode SDR transceiver. I do not own one, but know some who do. It has a lovely colour LCD which is touch screen as well as having good ergonomics. 

On 23cm it has a useful 10W pep. With a reasonable yagi some quite good DX should be possible as long as the coax run is short and the cable low loss. When runs are long or the coax is not too good, people put PAs and preamps up near the antennas.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vhfuhfmicrowaves/vhfuhf-commercial-rigs/ic-9700 .

Crystal set DXing

Many years ago I tried this. Most reception was of HF broadcast stations, but, surprisingly, some amateur stations too. I am sure, with some serious designs, plenty could be copied from VLF to VHF with a crystal set. 

As signals have to be very strong, low level interference is unlikely to be a limitation. It was all fun and a different sort of challenge.

Remember, all the power comes from the broadcaster, unless you find a way of harvesting power from other broadcasters. Certainly, nothing comes from the receiving end!

These days there are far fewer English language broadcast stations on HF.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/crystal-set-dxing .

Garden Centre - NOT amateur radio

Like many places, the garden centre in the next village had to adapt to be Covid-19 safe. 

We went recently for some bedding plants. 

As you can see, it was not crowded.

Google sites webspace limits?

Last week I redirected my www.g3xbm.co.uk domain to my new Google Sites web pages. Maybe I am being dense, but I could not find out what limits apply to webspace. If it is there, it was not obvious to me. If you know, please let me know.

Hypocrisy - NOT amateur radio

From the outset may I say that we all are less than perfect and we all have things about ourselves we are not proud of and that we would rather not tell people about. We are human.

What really annoys me though are people who publicly pretend to be honest and upright folk, who clearly are not.

In the UK we have had the BBC and the BBC person who lied and covered up the devious means to get an interview with Princess Diana in 1995. 

We also had the case of the sub-postmasters accused of fraud when the fault was with the software. Some even went to prison or lost homes - basically lives ruined. All the while those in charge were in denial. One is even an ordained minister!! Gross hypocrisy!

In my view those involved in both these scandals should face custodial sentences and be made to pay for their gross misdemeanours. This includes those who did the deeds and those who covered them up knowingly.

Both the BBC and the UK Post Office must uphold the law at all times and be above reproach. We deserve nothing less.

10m FT8 RX with the 10FT8R and the tiny indoor loop

At about 0900z I turned on the 10m FT8 RX. No spots yet. The 10FT8R is a 4 transistor direct conversion RX for 10m FT8.

UPDATE 1220z:  So far today, 23 stations spotted on RX, mostly in Spain with 1 in Slovakia and 1 in the UK. 

UPDATE 1435z:  36 stations spotted on 10m FT8 RX. Best DX is EA9ABC (1873km) in Ceuta, N, Africa.

UPDATE 1945z:  QRT. In total today 4 stations spotted on 10m FT8 RX with the 10FT8R and the tiny indoor loop.