20 Mar 2023
Hallsands Devon - NOT amateur radio
This painting was done in 1884. It shows the coastal village of Hallsands that was washed away early in the 20th century. Dredging offshore for Plymouth Dockyard was blamed. Previously this had been a thriving village famous for crab fishing.
19 Mar 2023
Kindness
Many times in the last 10 years I have been reminded of the kindness shown to me.
Complete strangers have offered me help and several have sent me gifts, purely out of kindness, things to make life better. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. All I can say is the true spirit of amateur radio is alive and well.
It is my belief that there are many more kind people in the world than bad ones. It is just that kindness is, sadly, not sensational or newsworthy.
At some point, I hope that I am able to be as kind to somebody else.
23cm QSO this week?
My station has an ERP about 40dB less than his. I hope he can copy me! I am still using 2W pep to my 2el beam pointing out of the shack window.
Breaking down barriers
Many years ago in the so called,"cold war", we had many contacts on amateur radio with stations across the world including many stations that, at that time, were in the USSR. Some of my best QSL cards are from those years.
I would like to think that these QSOs helped to break down barriers between people. Amateur radio has no interest in politics and never should. We can be black, white, yellow or even green, male, female or in between, left wing, right wing, capitalist or communist. It matters not. We are all just humans with an interest in radio.
Sunshine twins - NOT amateur radio
As teenagers a very long time ago, my wife and I had yellow jackets. Years later we bought some more.
Back in the 1960s my uncle called us "the sunshine twins". Can't think why!!! 😄
10m FT8 (Sunday)
At 0945z, I turned on my 10m FT8 using the FT-710. So far, spotted by 9 stations and I have spotted 43 stations after just 5 minutes.
Stations spotting me on 10m FT8 TX (8W) late morning |
Oscar 100 narrowband activity
Activity levels on the narrow-band transponder of this geosynchronous satellite are still very low with plenty of space. In my view, this satellite is a failure with activity levels way below what was expected.
30 THz experiments
Isn't it great when you read about someone in our hobby doing real experiments that truly explore the boundaries? Such cases are the experiments at 30 THz and above by M0LRH and M7HBL in GQRP SPRAT 193 and 194. Their DX is crossing a field, but to me this is really pushing the boundaries. Excellent!