Museum duty - NOT amateur radio

The photo shows some of the things on sale at our local museum next door. We volunteer to help there. 

Season of mists... - NOT amateur radio

Even though I am old, I still get pleasure from seeing conkers at this time of year. The ones in the photo were seen a few days ago.

Rally cancelled

The 48th Welsh Radio Rally, due to be held Sunday October 3rd in Newport, has been cancelled, presumably over Covid-19 fears. I have no further information. 

Let's hope things are OK for next year.

10m FT8 RX (Thursday)

Since about 0825z I have been on 10m FT8 RX. So far today, 2 stations have been spotted after 5 minutes. One did not appear on PSKreporter.

UPDATE 1511z: 35 stations spotted today on 10m FT8 RX including a clutch of east coast USA stations. Is this a taste of what is to come? See map.

UPDATE 2122z:  QRT.

Improving HF conditions

We know conditions can vary day-to-day (some days can be bad), but on the whole things are getting better. We are now well on the upslopes towards the peak of sunspot cycle 25 and we can expect generally improving conditions for some years. Certainly 10m seems better. 

8m NoV (getting the latest draft)

The latest draft NoV is on my website. Some cannot see the embedded document, so I have added a link to the shared document. If your browser prevents seeing the embedded document click the link instead. 

The document should be shared for viewing. I do not think you can edit it, but if you can please do not change it. Instead save a copy for yourself and amend/improve this. Tell me how it could be improved. We all want applications to succeed.

This is the webpage:   https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vhfuhfmicrowaves/8m-band

Sunspots - Thursday September 30th 2021

 Solar flux is 102 and the SSN 74.  A=5 and K=2. 

8m TX permit - a reminder to self!

Well before the next Es season, I intend to apply for an NoV to allow me to TX experimentally on 8m.  I have no idea whether or not this will be successful. 

At the moment, I want to be able to TX FT8, WSPR or CW between the months of March 2022 and the end of October 2022.   All these are narrowband modes, which helps.  The most I can run is 10W, so I shall apply for this. With Es I am sure 2.5W would be enough to be copied all over Europe.  All this depends on my FT817ND being able to TX on 8m!  I have not tried this yet. 

DraftD (not yet submitted) is linked. I propose to send the final version to OFCOM and the RSGB. If you can think of ways to improve it, please let me know as soon as possible.

Anyone care to join me? You may want to amend it as identical submissions might look odd! Hopefully some of us will be successful.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vhfuhfmicrowaves/8m-band .

10m propagation improving

John, EI7GL's blog notes some good E-W F2 openings on 10m in recent days. 10m is getting good again.

As John says, if we get good propagation in September, it should be even better in October and November. I am predicting that we will see good 10m openings to the USA in late October.  It has already been possible, but when 10m is  really open, you will know! Expect S9 SSB signals from the eastern USA. 

With luck, we will also see AM signals just above 29MHz. In the past I have worked USA stations on AM when I was using QRP AM.

When good, 10m really is good. May the good days ahead be enjoyed. With luck, 10m could be good for many years.

See https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/ .

Chromebooks - NOT amateur radio

My Asus Chromebook has been owned for almost 2 years and I have never once regretted it. It has a 3 year "at home" warranty, although I have never had to use it. It will run Linux apps, although I've never bothered. 

If I eventually replace it, I see the new version has twice the RAM and SDD size and is about one third of the price of a Windows machine. It boots in seconds and never once do you have to wait when Windoze is doing yet another update.

Mine can be used as a tablet too and the battery still lasts all day.