Nuclear fusion - NOT amateur radio

For almost my entire life, the gold at the end of the rainbow was nuclear fusion (not fission) with its promise of almost endless low cost energy with no pollution. At every point we seem to have hit hurdles and I cannot see it being reality in my lifetime. I hope in the end the technical issues can be overcome.

Things may have moved a step closer with a new research facility at Oxford funded by Jeoff Bazos. This is reported by the BBC to cost £400M.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57512229 .

MeSquares

For "one-off" projects, MeSquares can be a good solution. The photo shows my 10FT8R RX using MeSquares.

These are simply snapped out and glued down to plain copper clad board. The copper clad board makes an excellent RF ground plane and the MeSquares excellent islands. 

If glued down carefully (unlike mine!), a very neat layout is possible.

See www.qrpme.com .

Sunspots - Friday June 18th 2021

Solar flux is 75 and the SSN 12.  A=7 and K=2. 

Lightning

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;

Konik ponies - NOT amateur radio

 

These are used to keep the wild grass down at Wicken Fen.

2m activity contest (June) published

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 .

WebSDR in the Netherlands

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

10m FT8 RX on the tiny loop in the shack

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 1515z:   281 stations spotted on 10m FT8 RX today.

UPDATE 1815z:  465 stations spotted so far in 4 continents.

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.

12 year old grandson's art page updated - NOT amateur radio

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.

10FT8R in RadCom (August)

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.