Mills on the air weekend

This weekend expect quite a few special stations operating from windmills and watermills. Our local club (CDARC) is operating from Fulbourn windmill near Cambridge as GB2FM. 

See https://fulbournwindmill.org.uk/

Our own windmill next door has free entry all weekend.

See https://burwellmuseum.org.uk/ .

10m QRP WSPR TX (Saturday)

My 500mW 10m WSPR beacon was turned on at about 1145z.

UPDATE 1545z:   No spots.

UPDATE 1634z:  No sure if it is just that propagation has at last been possible or they have just come on, but my 10m signal is being received in the Canary Islands.

UPDATE 1814z: 4 unique stations have spotted me including 2 by Es.

Walk - NOT amateur radio

 The plan is to walk to nearby Wicken Fen, have a snack and a drink and walk back. Will we see any Konik ponies, swallows or even a kingfisher?

Saturday plans

 8m QRP FT8 later (40.680 (TX first, DF about 1950 Hz)) and QRP 10m WSPR TX with the 500mW beacon.  All later, after a walk.

Chocolates - NOT amateur radio

We had a friend stay with us recently. He very kindly bought us some chocolates.

We had a couple last night. They were delicious. 

Sunspots - Saturday May 13th 2023

Solar flux is 149 and the SSN 134.  A=19 and K=2.

XBM80-2 80m ultra-simple rig

This has been on before, I know.

Some years ago, I wanted to see how simple one could make a rig that actually worked. There is no doubt at all that the rig can be made better with more experimentation with values and other things, but I was quite surprised that something this simple worked.

Please do not (ever) be afraid to use my designs as starting points. If you can make something better, great. If it totally fails, just start again! 

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/homebrew/80m-xbm80-2 .

Cold and wet? - NOT amateur radio

Certainly in this part of the UK it has felt colder and wetter this year. It is already May and it feels wet and cold. 

We did some gardening yesterday, but we could certainly not today. 

We popped to the garden centre to buy some new plants, but my wife came inside from our garden as she was too cold!

8m disappointment

This Es season, I was hoping we would see several new countries appearing on 8m. It would have been good if a few stations had been able to get even temporary access to the band around the solar maximum. 

Also, several countries could legally transmit beacons in the ISM band 40.66-40.70 MHz without a licence. We know from Australia that 5mW of 8m WSPR can go 5000km and many times on 10m just microwatts can cross Europe almost daily. If there were lots of QRRP WSPR beacons on 8m just imagine how useful this could be.  Apart from Greece, with ISM rules, I have yet to see any further activity from new countries.

I am quite surprised and saddened. These next few years could be really interesting on 8m.

New HF handheld?

It is over 20 years ago that Yaesu introduced the revolutionary FT817. Since then, absolutely nobody has introduced another handheld for HF/VHF. The nearest were the IC-705 from ICOM and the Elecraft KX2 and KX3. In the meantime we have seen several VHF/UHF FM and digital handhelds come and go. I guess these attract a better return on investment, although I am surprised.

We are overdue a multimode, multiband true handheld. In my view they could do a handheld covering 10m, 6m (with 4m in Europe), 70cm and maybe 23cm. With the right features, this could be a real winner. 10m will be good for several years and the VHF bands could do with a shot in the arm.

Both ICOM and Yaesu have SDR receivers. Can we expect a new multimode/multiband rig?