70cm QRP FT8 (Tuesday)

After breakfast I hope to be on 70cm FT8 QRP with 2.5W and the V2000 vertical omni antenna. Activity and conditions may not be good until this evening. Nonetheless it will be interesting to keep eyes and ears open. It may also indicate what I can expect all the time with scatter. 

UPDATE 0924z:  No spots on RX so far. I have not tried TX. The gear was turned on at 0824z.

UPDATE 1244z:  Just a single 70cm FT8 spot so far today M7RSG (88km).

UPDATE 1416z:  A brief TX period just now resulted in nobody spotting me. No further spots on RX.

UPDATE 1840z:  At the moment, 70cm FT8 has been disappointing. 1 local G6KWA (22km) has been spotted and I have been spotted by G6OUA (63km). No DX, well yet anyway. According to the Hepburn Tropo Forecast, I was expecting better.

Sunspots - Tuesday January 18th 2022

 Solar flux is 114 and the SSN 99. A=9 and K=3. 

Time's arrow - NOT amateur radio

Often, new discoveries in science are counter-intuitive and they do not sit comfortably with our experiences. 

One of these is quantum mechanics, where everything can be described as a wave that exits in all space and all time. OK, the experience now is the most probable.

Time may be a bit like this. In our everyday experience, time flows from the past into the future. However, the future and the past may be always there. In the future we may find out that time is an illusion.

Think of Schrodinger's cat: we cannot know if it is alive or dead until we open the box. Various interpretations have been put forward.

All I am saying is time is a mystery and one day our understanding of it could be totally different.

OFCOM and aircraft licences

OFCOM is proposing some changes in the wording of aircraft licences. See the OFCOM website for more details.  I guess this does not require thinking or an understanding of RF. 

It would be good if they gave me an update on my 8m NoV application submitted in October!  I chased last week many times, but after a week I have still heard absolutely nothing apart from their computer generated reply confirming receipt! Really, it is hard to be impressed. I think they have lost it and are too embarrassed to tell me.

10m QRP WSPR TX (Monday)

 As my 10m antenna is available, I am on 10m WSPR TX using the W5OLF 500mW TX beacon. As of 1127z, I have been spotted by 3 stations with the furthermost EA8BFK (2880km) in the Canary Is..

UPDATE 1530z: Plenty of spots by G4KPX (14km), but no new stations in addition to those shown above.

See http://www.wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/spots .

70cm FT8 (Monday)

Although it probably won't be good before tonight, I shall be going on 70cm shortly. During the day I shall call CQ occasionally on FT8 with 2.5W and the V2000 vertical omni antenna. 

UPDATE 1125z:  A brief QRP TX session was spotted by nobody. On 70cm FT8 RX 2 stations (both Gs) have been spotted.

UPDATE 1342z:  Although this could be tropo, I think scatter is more likely. GI6ATZ (479km) and a GW have been copied on 70cm FT8 RX with just the vertical omni antenna. My brief TX transmission just now was spotted by nobody. In all, 4 stations spotted on 70cm FT8 RX.

Sunspots - Monday January 17th 2022

Solar flux is 116 and the SSN 103. A=19 and K=1. 

St Ives (Cambs) - NOT amateur radio

As mentioned before, a nice bus ride from Cambridge is along the guided busway to St Ives. 

Guided busways are a novel idea: in some parts of Cambridge buses run on ordinary roads. Then the bus runs on guided tracks with no other traffic using the path of a long closed railway. 

The route is past lakes and takes about 20 minutes. On the guided part, the bus can go pretty fast and the driver can take his or her hands off the steering wheel. St Ives is an historic place on the banks of the river Great Ouse. The town is associated with Oliver Cromwell.

See https://www.thebusway.info/ .

Tropo forecasts

Usually, I just randomly see if VHF/UHF conditions are "up". These days there are some forecasts which can give you a little warning of when conditions could be promising. One of these is the Hepburn Tropo Forecast. 

From this, it looks like conditions could be promising in the UK on Tuesday to the east. I shall certainly try 70cm FT8 again on RX (and maybe QRP TX) on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Clicking on the map steps the forecast forwards 3 hours for the next few days. Further out, it appears to step forward every 6 hours.

Big brother is watching - NOT amateur radio

They must all work on algorithms, but it always seems creepy when all the emails I get from Amazon recommending new things always relate to past purchases: for example I bought an Airfix kit for a grandson, so I get recommended another. We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last year, so we get further 50th wedding anniversary stuff!

I don't mind, but I have never bought from these recommendations. My usual course is to delete these.