BBQ time - NOT amateur radio

For a change this May, yesterday was gloriously sunny. Most of the month has been dull and wet. We had our 2 sons and all 4 grandchildren for a barbecue.

10m FT8 RX (Monday) with the 10FT8R and the indoor loop

I have been on 10m FT8 RX for about 1 hour with the homemade 10FT8R RX with 4 transistors. It is now 1000z and so far today 25 stations have been spotted.

UPDATE 1037z:  35 stations spotted today so far. Not a bad start today on 10m Es with this 50cm indoor antenna and a DSB RX.

UPDATE 1324z:   49 stations spotted.

UPDATE 1520z:  68 stations spotted today with the 10FT8R direct conversion RX and tiny indoor loop. See illustration. OK, it is a rats nest!

UPDATE 1831z: 115 stations spotted on RX as the map shows.

Sunspots - Monday May 31st 2021

 Solar flux is 74 and the SSN 27. A=6 and K=1.

Local museum - NOT amateur radio

The local museum across the road from us has old fashioned dial telephones. The photo shows 3 of our grandchildren trying to ring each other: they are not used to phones which have to be rotated to dial a number!

Crocheting - NOT amateur radio

One of our grandchildren is very talented. Here he is crocheting. Whatever he does he is good at it - painting, sports etc.. 

4m website?

Certainly until last year there was a website dedicated to the 4m (70MHz) amateur band. A casual Google search failed to find it. It may have gone? 

It is many years since I operated on the band, but I can imagine it is an interesting allocation, especially in the Es season with so many countries now active and more rigs with 4m coverage. A few watts of SSB (or even FM) to a wire dipole should be enough to work many of the European countries now active on the band in Es openings.

UPDATE 0853z:  See Colin's comment. It is still there. www.70mhz.org   .

On 10m FT8 RX (Sunday) with the FT817ND and tiny indoor loop

It is now 0807z.  For a short while, I have been on 10m FT8 RX. So far, 15 Spanish stations spotted and 1 Italian spotted.

UPDATE 0819z:  Now 25 stations spotted.

UPDATE 1031z:  101 stations spotted.

Sunspots - Sunday May 30th 2021

 Solar flux is 76 and the SSN 26. A=6 and K=2.

Haircut day - NOT amateur radio

In an earlier post, I showed one of our grandsons "helping" me many years ago. He is now 13 and today he got his very long hair cut. 

I think he looks much better and more good looking. He quite likes it too.

10GHz

 As I have mentioned in the past, some take 10GHz operation very seriously, with big dishes, high power and receivers with really low noise figures. Well equipped stations can operate moonbounce on 10GHz.

Others "play" at 10GHz, for example with low cost HB100 Doppler radar modules. With these low cost modules really no microwave engineering is needed. Some have covered 5km with WBFM with just these modules. Placed at the focus of a dish, over 100km has been covered on ATV with these modules. 

The modules contain 4 PCB antennas. 2 are for RX and 2 for RX.

They can even by bought on Amazon. They are even lower cost on eBay. Their main application is Doppler radar, but they have been repurposed. 

I think there are similar units for 24GHz. These 24GHz units are on sale on Amazon, but I have not looked for WBFM designs using these. Just imagine, a very low cost microwave station!

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vhfuhfmicrowaves/homebrew/10ghz .