CQWW SSB contest

This weekend is the SSB leg of the biggest contest in the world. I may give it a try later. 

The CW leg is at the end of November. These are 48 hour contests and a good chance to work new stations and countries.

One good thing was this showed my 10m coax plug as intermittent. I have now fixed this and gone on 10m WSPR TX with 500mW from the W5OLF TX WSPR beacon. 

The photo shows activity on 10m SSB - busy!! With my poor voice, I find this much harder these days.

See https://www.cqww.com/ .

Astronomy-Now magazine - NOT amateur radio

As a young child, I had quite an interest in astronomy. In my old age (!!) I am attending a course on cosmology at the University of the Third Age in Cambridge.  

Some have even suggested that the planet Earth is a living organism.

There is a magazine for those interested in astronomy. I think this is aimed at those with an interest rather than those professionally involved.

See https://astronomynow.com/ .

23cm transverter

My transverter is in the UK according to the tracker, but I have not got it yet. When it arrives, I need to check what leads I need for local tests. For UKAC next year, I shall need a better antenna.

Me in 1967- NOT amateur radio

This photo was taken in 1967 and was the photo in my Student Union card. In those days I had hair and was a real country bumpkin in a big city.  This appeared as a Facebook memory yesterday.

10m FT8 RX (Sunday)

Stations spotted
by 1030z

At the moment, I am on 10m FT8 RX. Already, I have spotted 133 stations. If things are promising later, I shall QSY to 8m QRP FT8 TX.

UPDATE 1157z:  367 stations spotted so far today.

Religions - NOT amateur radio

As a teenager I had quite a strong Christian faith. As I get older, my faith has waned. 

If I was born in Iran I would probably have been an ardent Muslim and if I was born in Israel, I would probably have been a Jew. 

No, I am puzzled why we so strongly believe "our" religion is the right one and our holy book the only true one. 

11m amateur band

Until today, I had no knowledge that the 11m band was allocated to the amateur service in the USA prior to this being allocated to CB. I guess the nearest amateur bands today are 12m and 10m. 

This appeared on the Amateur Radio Weekly email, with the original article being on Bas's blog at https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/ .  

I was aware of the 5m band, but wonder what other allocations were made in the past? Possibly there were other odd allocations made locally such as the 73 kHz band in the UK at one time. In the UK a very few NoV permits were allocated near 9 kHz. I had one of them.

Some other countries had an 11m amateur band.

Sunspots - Sunday October 30th 2022

Solar flux is 134 and the SSN 97.  A=26 and K=3.

8m QRP FT8

As 10m F2 looked promising, I went on 8m QRP FT8 on 40.680 MHz. Sadly no 8m spots. I keep hoping the E-W F2 MUF will creep to 8m.

With the grandsons - NOT amateur radio

The photo shows my wife with our 2 grandsons earlier today. 

Both are young teenagers growing fast.