8m QRP FT8 (Saturday)

 My 2.5W to the dipole was turned on at about 1200z, but so far no spots.

500uW 10m WSPR (Saturday)

Although my 10m QRPP beacon has been on all morning, no spots received. 

UK sub-postmaster/mistress scandal - NOT amateur radio

Usually I try to be a peace loving and reasonable person, but this makes my blood boil and I am absolutely fuming!!

For over 20 years, UK sub-postmen and women have been trying to get justice for wrongs done when money went missing due to an IT software bug. Now, in all my professional life I have rarely, if ever,  come across software that is totally bug free. The more complex the software, the more likely that it will contain rare bugs. In this case the software was called Horizon and designed by Fujitsu.

When over 700 people had issues with tallying up the money what did the PO do? Fail to investigate and LIE that nobody else had the problem. People at the PO and Fujitsu knew but covered it up. Instead, some went to prison, some were driven to suicide, some were disgraced in the papers and lost their livelihoods. These people were deeply wronged. This is a scandal of epic scale. In my view this is the worst scandal in recent UK history.

Recently, a TV drama has brought the gross injustice these poor people have suffered for many years to the forefront.  The people who knew the truth have never, yet, been brought to justice. The woman in charge of the Post Office at the time was even made a CBE (a very high honour in the UK) in 2019. Those responsible must find it hard to sleep at night.

Thankfully, there are several petitions doing the rounds and this is now headline news.

I hope all affected are given very generous payments for all the wrong done to these people and their families and I very much hope all those who knew about this injustice are given long jail sentences. If they are declared bankrupt, so be it.

See https://www.change.org/p/biztradegovuk-post-office-scandal-full-compensation-and-accountability .

See https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/strip-paula-vennells-of-her-cbe?source=homepage&utm_medium=promotion&utm_source=homepage

If you feel able, please sign both petitions so this is headline news and justice is done.

 See also https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67899189 .

Where I come from - NOT amateur radio

The photo shows where I come from in South Devon. As mentioned before we can trace our family history here continuously back to the mid 1500s. We were probably in this area 1000s of years ago.

630m QRP WSPR overnight

 

11 stations spotted me overnight. No great DX.

Sunspots- Saturday January 6th

Solar flux is 153 and the SSN 121.  A=5 and K=1.

630m QRP WSPR (Friday)

My 630m 10mW ERP WSPR was turned on at about 1628z.

UPDATE 1904z:   5 stations have spotted me this evening.

8m quiet?

It seems to me that the 8m experiment is drawing to a close.  

With quite a high sunspot number, there have been F2 openings as high as 6m.  40 MHz is between 10m and 6m, so one would expect the F2 MUF to climb to 8m at times when it did not make it to 6m.  

There are very few people active on 8m, whereas there are many on 6m, so short-lived 6m openings are more likely to be spotted, especially on FT8. During the Es season distances up to about 1500km can often be worked. 

At the moment, I am inclined to pay for just one more year on 8m, but it needs more people in more countries. I still find it incomprehensible (and totally stupid) that radio amateurs are not allowed access to just 5 kHz, secondary only, narrow digital only, power limited, no interference, at 8m. It is as if OFCOM (and the RSGB) and the FCC are very "anti" an allocation at 8m. They are not just neutral!!

I have tried my best, but can do little more. 

It needs more people to approach their administrations about a tiny 8m allocation.

Fungi - NOT amateur radio

Yesterday, we did a nice walk at Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge where we saw this log and fungi. Some years ago this was a tall tree with a hornet's nest. I think it was felled as it was rotten.

AI key - NOT amateur radio

According to The Knowledge today, Microsoft is introducing an AI key on its keyboards . This links to their AI tool in Windows (Copilot) which is linked to ChatGPT.