We escaped the storms last night. It rained, but that was all. We missed again last night the storms are creeping up from France and thunderstorms and heavy rain are forecast for tomorrow.
See https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=0.00;ts=0;z=6;y=50.6182;x=0.3762;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;
Every month, if I am free, I go on the UKAC activity contests organised by the RSGB. Although I submit entries running 10W SSB to a 2m omni antenna I have no chance of ever winning!
I only enter the 2m and 70cm legs. Mostly I go on for fun and the activity. Without trying at all hard I see I am still about third down the table in the low power section. Activity levels on SSB are very good. I think these sessions are primarily for clubs, although I just go on as me. There is no compulsion to submit a score.
See https://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/vhfresults.pl?Contest=144MHz%20UKAC&Date=&year=2021 .
Tjeerd PA3GNZ has a webSDR online. It is interesting to listen to.
See http://77.170.220.27:8073/#freq=144174000,mod=usb,secondary_mod=ft8,sql=-150
For a change I am on 10m FT8 RX with the FT817ND and the tiny indoor loop (50cm diameter) antenna.
Plenty of Europeans being spotted by Es. After just a few minutes, 51 stations spotted with the furthermost being 5T5PA (3791km) in Mauritania, West Africa.
UPDATE 1246z: 150 stations spotted.UPDATE 1913z: 524 stations spotted so far today.
UPDATE 2146z: 682 stations spotted today. Furthermost is PP5JD (10072km). I now have to go QRT and disconnect everything.
We have a very talented young artist in the family. No, he does not take after granddad! I have just updated his page on my G3XBM website to include his YouTube tutorial.
See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/non-amateur-radio/grandsons-art for a direct link to this page.
All being well, my simple, low cost, RX for 10m FT8 should appear in RSGB RadCom in August. This is not certain.
My thanks go to Jay W5OLF for kindly doing the schematics. Jay is developing the circuit further. I hope it brings him success.
It may be old age or an artefact of my stroke in 2013.
These days I seem to be exhausted after doing very little. People who do not know me probably think I am just lazy, whereas at times I am totally exhausted. A particular time is after breakfast (like now) when I really really need a quiet time.
At one time I was a very active person whereas these days I absolutely need breaks.
These are like college policemen, keeping order in the Cambridge University colleges like this one outside Trinity College, that I think was...
