Although our museum and windmill next door only open 2 days a week from Easter to late October, a team of volunteers comes up every Tuesday to carry out maintenance. Usually it is very quiet, but all changes on a Tuesday!
14 Mar 2023
Volunteer day - NOT amateur radio
Although our museum and windmill next door only open 2 days a week from Easter to late October, a team of volunteers comes up every Tuesday to carry out maintenance. Usually it is very quiet, but all changes on a Tuesday!
FT-710 and FT8
Thank you for all the suggestions.
I was going to do this yesterday (find out why the FT-710 does not work with FT8), but had no time. Today is make or break time: I shall check the firmware version, try at a lower speed that 38400 (probably 4800) and if all else fails give MLS a ring for help!
In the end, it has to be something daft and I shall say, "of course"!
UPDATE 1709z: It would appear my firmware on the FT-710 is not up to date. I am not sure if doing the reset to factory settings some weeks ago did this or whether these firmware updates post date the rig being shipped from the factory and MLS? Anyway, clearly I should make sure the firmware is fully up-to-date before I try to get FT8 working. The rig talks about CAT-3 settings and elsewhere CAT-1. This has left my small brain confused, HI.
481THz optical beacon tests
This popped up as a Facebook memory yesterday. It is some years since I last did optical tests over the horizon. In the near future, I want to re-assemble my optical gear and do some local tests before attempting some NLOS tests with Bernie G4HJW who is over the horizon about 9km away.
13 Mar 2023
OFCOM updates
A reminder that OFCOM updates the data it holds on licences etc. every week. See the OFCOM website for details.
12m FT8 yesterday
In the end, I went QRT on 12m FT8 RX only at about 2100z. In all, 921 stations were spotted. The band was still wide open when I went QRT.
Tilt switch DT project - NOT amateur radio
My grandson was very exited about this design and technology (DT) project at his school. It is a demo of a tilt switch.
These are widely used in "man down" alarms in wireless devices where you can trigger a remote alarm if a person falls to the ground. This has applications in safety critical situations such as police radios.
We might make an engineer of him yet! He is excited about such things, which is good.
Pixie transceivers
The Pixie is a classic low cost CW transceiver usually for 80m or 40m. It started life as the Micro80. Kits are available from China at ridiculously low prices, although some are better than others.
It uses the PA transistor as a mixer and often suffered from poor selectivity and AM breakthrough. It was let down by this poor RX. Over the years several versions have been created to help with these issues.
However, it does work and is capable of really get contacts.
The photos show a typical Pixie and my version of the Micro80.
See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/homebrew/8040m-pixie-and-micro80-transceivers .
Sunspots - Monday March 13th 2023
Solar flux is 143 and the SSN 135. A=4 and K=0. It looks like the page I get my information from is back to normal. Yesterday morning it looked different.
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