Simple SSB

Steve G1KQH just pointed me to this inspiring video. Thinking about simple, low cost SSB rigs for 10m, there must be some great ideas here!

6m good

Better equipped 6m stations are working some remarkable distances.  There have been openings from Europe to South Africa and South America and reports of even further contacts.  Although these  could involve F2, the N-S QSOs are probably a combination of Es and TEP.

They don't call 6m (50MHz) the "magic band" without reason. With the right combination of propagation almost anything seems possible. Even with a very simple vertical antenna and 1W I have worked the USA on 6m QRP CW.

FT8 is an ideal mode as it is widely monitored on 50.313 MHz and works with fleeting signals much weaker than CW.

UPDATE 1948z:  6m opened to the USA this afternoon. 

10m WSPR (Sunday)

My 500mW 10m TX WSPR beacon was turned on at 0830z. Nobody has spotted me yet.

UPDATE 1155z:  Still no spots of me today. 13 unique spots on 10m WSPR of my QRP in the last day mostly by Es.

UPDATE 1452z:  Plenty of spots from the Canary Is now.

UPDATE 1850z: 3 unique stations spotting me. It seems the Canary Is stations nearly always spot me if they are on.

Special stations? National Mills Weekend

This weekend is National Mills Weekend in the UK. Many mills in the UK will have special event stations as part of this event. Watch out for special UK stations and QSLs from UK stations operating at mills. Our local museum an windmill have free entry. The photo shows the windmill next door.

See https://burwellmuseum.org.uk/

8m experiment (Sunday)

The last couple of days have been quite good on 8m with new stations spotted and an exchange of reports with a station in Slovenia. Later this morning I will be on FT8 TX on 40.680 MHz USB dial. 

UPDATE 0832z:  FT8 TX (40.680 first) turned on at 0829z.

UPDATE 1125z:  Just EI9KP (649km) spotted on 8m FT8 RX today. No spots of me.

South Devon - NOT amateur radio

The photo shows where I come from in South Devon. It is very beautiful. 

Sunspots - Sunday May 8th 2022

 Solar flux is 118 and the SSN 66.  A=3 and K=2. 

Shelley tea service - NOT amateur radio

 

My mother-in-law bought this bone China tea service before her wedding in 1937. There are more cups and saucers.

Free PDF book progress

Well, I think most of the text is now done. I have to reorder the pages and add photos and schematics. At the moment, it is still on target for the end of May, but I make no promises!

As I have said before, this will be a free PDF book, so anyone can have a copy. All I want to do is share my ideas and fun. If you want to print it out, that is your choice. 

It will be linked from this blog and (I hope!) most major radio magazines. At least I shall send them the link. Whether or not it is used is outside of my control!

As I find mistakes or things to add, I shall create newer versions with probably the same link. This way, the link should always point to the latest version. There are bound to be mistakes or omissions. At least, this way I can readily change or add things.

DSB v. SSB

Now, I am very happy to be told I am wrong, but I think DSB rigs can be received on other DSB receivers, but it is much more tricky than receiving DSB on an SSB receiver. I have no experience of this, but a comment on a post yesterday has me thinking. The comment was made by Ken G4APB. Thanks Ken.

Clearly a simple SSB 10m transceiver (if very low cost, simple and easily copied) would be much preferable to a DSB transceiver, but I am unsure of the relative costs.

If you have experience, please let me know. 

Clearly, if 2 DSB transceivers can not (easily) communicate, maybe a simple 10m DSB transceiver is not as ideal as a club project, even though most QSOs would be with SSB stations.

I wonder how inexpensive a 10m SSB transceiver can be made as a simple kit?