Later this morning I will be on 8m WSPR doing a test with G8JNJ. Brief tests last evening were unsuccessful, but I want to monitor the web SDR to see if I can see any sign of the signal.
UPDATE 1539z: No spots of my 8m 2.5W WSPR today on the WessexSDR. Checking on the WessexSDR there was no sign at all of my signal, I was expecting a tiny trace at least. The WessexSDR is picking up EI1KNH and G8JNJ.
See http://wessex.zapto.org:8060/#freq=40681500,mod=usb,secondary_mod=wspr,sql=-150
People come from miles around to look. They raise money for charity each year.
At this time of year, things are meant to be cheerful, but I have already had 2 pieces of sad news today. Everything always seems more poignant at this time of year. This seems to always happen. Usually I am quite pleased when Christmas and New Year are over and things get back to normality.
At the moment, I am on 10m WSPR TX (500mW) with the WSPR beacon. No spots yet.
UPDATE 1204z: Just EA8BFK (2880km) spotting me.
 |
| Stations spotting me today om 10m QRP WSPR |
Yet again, my 2.5W 8m FT8 to the dipole is on air. As usual, I am on 40.680 MHz.
UPDATE 1333z: No spots today.
UPDATE 1845z: Just G9PUV (158km) on the south coast of the UK spotted on 8m FT8 RX.
UPDATE 2053z: Just tried some 8m WSPR tests. Martin (G8JNJ) was monitoring on his web SDR, but sadly no spots.
In the last 40 years, activity on 2m has changed a great deal. When G8 stations were first permitted on 2m in the UK, the band was quite busy on FM and SSB.
Since then, people rarely come on just for a chat. These days people can chat, with video, to anyone in the world for free without a licence, on the Internet on a PC, tablet or smartphone. Instead, many people appear on the amateur bands just for contests or when conditions are good. There is a lot more use of digital modes like FT8 which needs very little spectrum. FT8 is ideal for squares hunting, but not for chatting.
If we are totally honest, we do not need the spectrum we have on 2m and 70cm most of the time. For FT8, 100 kHz would be more than enough. Even 3 kHz is enough most of the time. When there is a lift on, we may need more, but 2 MHz at 2m seems very generous. At 70cm, this is even more so, and here we have even more spectrum available to the Amateur Radio Service. Of course, this cannot be discussed with OFCOM or the FCC in case they reduce our allocations. I know the priority is to hang on to the allocations we have.
Personally, I would be in favour of more VHF/UHF bands, but slightly narrower, possibly with a lower power limit. This would encourage research and self training. Many bands could be secondary allocations. Would anyone really is miss 5 kHz off every VHF/UHF band? Be honest!
Without doubt I will be pushing up daisies long before then!
See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vhfuhfmicrowaves/2m-operation .
Today is the shortest day in the northern hemisphere. After today things slowly get lighter for longer. It gets darker in the morning for a while. It is the end of January before things really become noticable.
