How far down is my loop?

As you may know, I have no external antenna for 10m at present. Instead I use the 50cm loop on the shack windowsill. 

It is extremely hard to measure the difference in performance of, say, a dipole and my loop. Even over quite small distances signal levels can vary greatly. There are many factors: location, time, directivity, polarisation, radiation angle etc. 

The best I could do is compare signal levels at similar times in the best and worst directions of the loop with that received by others locally. The best I can work out is that the loop is up to 6dB down. There are quite wide errors bars on this.

Overall, the loop is performing better than I expected.

If there is F2 DX from the USA or South America later, I shall try again. With lower angle signals the differences might be greater.

G0LRD (26km from me) copies far more, although if he can copy signals that are 6dB weaker, I would expect this to make a considerable difference on FT8.

It will be interesting to see my results later with an external antenna. The impression I get is that the small loop is not too bad on Es signals from Europe, but it performs less well with low angle DX signals.

UPDATE 1915z: Well there's a surprise!  CX2CC (11128km) was coming through just now. I was getting him 5dB S/N better than G0LRD (26km). This may just be the momentary polarisation being optimum. Still it proves the loop cannot be too bad.

UPDATE 2101z:  At the moment I am confused: many times G0LRD is copying better than me and he certainly is spotting far more stations than me. Nonetheless the loop is not at all bad considering its small size and being indoors!

10m FT8 RX in the last day

In the last 24 hours, 587 stations have been spotted using just the indoor 50cm diameter loop (see map). 

These include North and South America.

10m FT8 RX with the indoor 50cm loop (Friday)

At 1325z, I turned on my 10m FT8 RX with lots of Es evident. I see Spanish stations are calling the USA. So far, at 1328z, 25 stations already spotted.

UPDATE 1430z:  So far today, 103 stations have been spotted on 10m FT8 RX.

UPDATE 1648z: 242 stations spotted today on 10m FT8 RX with the furthermost  XT2AW (4478km).

UPDATE 1815z:  294 stations spotted so far.

UPDATE 2106z:  362 stations spotted on 10m FT8 RX today.

UPDATE 2132z: 379 stations spotted today on 10m FT8 RX. Have to go QRT shortly.

Amateur? radio

MLS has been appointed as the dealer of the Hilberling transceiver which retails for just under £12k. Yes, you read correctly - twelve thousand pounds!! 

I am sure it would be very good and some will buy it. At that price it should be superb. Add a linear, tower, rotator and beam and you won't see much, if any, change from £20k. To me this is not amateur radio. 

OK, each to their own, but I prefer to spend my money more modestly.  Even for a professional radio, this is stupid money in my view, but we are all different. 

If you want to spend this on a hobby - go ahead. Just remember you can communicate just as well across the planet with amateur radio spending a tiny fraction of this and you can video chat for free across the world with a low cost tablet or PC.

Wicken - NOT amateur radio

 

A few days ago we went for a walk around the village of Wicken, where this windmill is.

Motherhood?

There have been radio amateurs for over 100 years.

Like many things today, I can understand why somethings are done - to protect people - yet often the unintended consequences make things worse, not better. 

Take for example the EU rules on data protection. Now most web pages have a pop-up about cookies. Most people either just say "yes" without reading or use a pop-up blocker so the message never appears. Most find these very annoying! The intention was good, but in reality by not reading the small print we could be accepting all sorts of rubbish!

It is a bit like the recent licence changes to protect the general public from harmful EMF. Yes, of course, this is admirable, but how have we managed for over 100 years?

I am not sure what the answer is. What is missing is common sense. 

Before agreeing to any changes, think of the unintended consequences. If overall things could be more harmful, think again. We seem to be moving ever more in a more stupid direction.

Pound versus Euro

We left the EU completely some months ago. The EU is far from perfect, but I voted in 2016 to remain "in".  Overall we voted by a small margin to leave.

Despite the difficulties of trading with the EU, the UK Pound seems to have appreciated against the Euro. 

Personally, I would have preferred a softer BREXIT especially as the vote was close. I suspect the EU misses the contributions to its budget from the UK. 

We will have to find our own way in the future. Only time will tell if we were right or wrong.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cx250jmk4e7t/pound-sterling-gbp 

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.