12 Jul 2022

Minimalist transceiver


This has been on before, although I make no apologies. It was inspired by a 40m design by W2UW (now a SK). My main issue was netting the receiver, although you may have a way of doing this. The rig must still be around somewhere - probably in the loft.  As I recall, it needs just 14 parts including a single FET.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/homebrew/80m-feter-transceiver .

Dad's seats - NOT amateur radio


My dad died in 1987 after working for the water board in South Devon for a very long time. Before that he was a plumber and before that a Pathfinder in Lancasters in WW2. he rarely spoke of his war. I think he hated it.

Sunspots - Tuesday July 12th 2022

 Solar flux is 161 and the SSN 134. A=12 and K=3.

11 Jul 2022

Fuel prices in the UK - NOT amateur radio

In the last few months wholesale UK fuel prices have dropped back quite a bit. OK, the US dollar exchange rate has got worse and oil is bought in dollars.

Now, I am no expert, but it seems when prices rise that oil companies are keen to put up prices, but are less keen to put prices down when they pay less wholesale. 

It is interesting that they are very keen to avoid that £2 a litre figure with the diesel price widely at £199.9 a litre.

It would be rather nice if garages dropped their prices/profits when they can.

Burwell Museum - NOT amateur radio


Our local museum next door is vast with many things besides the windmill. It goes on and on!

One of the exhibits is a Nissan hut with things from WW2. I cannot rave it more highly as it is probably one of the best local museums in the UK. Really well worth visiting. 


8m experiment (Monday)

 As I am unlikely to fix things today, I suspect there will be no action on 8m FT8 TX here today.

UPDATE 1927z: reset router and flushed DNS cache, but still no success....yet.

Fixing that FT8 PC

It looks my issue with time sync is more general with DNS addresses. All websites fail to connect with this PC although other PCs work fine. I have found a very good site to systematically work out what's wrong. After lunch, I intend to work through these and fix the problem.

UPDATE 1930z : Flushed DNS cache and reset router, but no success.... yet. 

Sunspots - Monday July 11th 2022

 Solar flux is 153 and the SSN 113. A=7 and K=1.

10 Jul 2022

Coffee - NOT amateur radio

This was on Facebook earlier. I like it!! 

10m FT8 RX


For a change, I am on 10m FT8 RX. Plenty spotted.