Fine motor skills - basically now crap

 

This morning, I came across this memory on Facebook showing a 4m transverter I designed and made some years ago. It was published in SPRAT, the magazine of the GQRP club. 

There is absolutely no way I could do this now!  My fine motor skills are basically shot and soldering anything is unbelievably hard.

Not one to be beaten, I do experiments that I can still do that do not involve building as much as possible.

My voice - NOT amateur radio

 Although I still use my voice, it is a struggle. This is why I prefer FT8 and WSPR. They are also good weak signal modes too! I guess that is also why I like blogging. My voice is not involved and I do no have to struggle to be understood. 

Even my wife often asks me to repeat things. I try to go on the 2m and 70cm SSB activity contests each month and the local club net each Wednesday, but not for long.

630m WSPR overnight

Overnight, I was again on 630m WSPR with my 10mW ERP from the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground. 18 stations spotted me (see table). No astounding DX, but a useful haul.

6m QRP FT8 (Sunday)

Yet again, I am on 6m FT8 with my 2.5W and V2000 vertical omni antenna. So far, 5 G stations have spotted me. 

UPDATE 1142z: 10 G and GW stations have spotted me. No DX from continental Europe.

500uW (0.5mW) 10m WSPR (again)

Rather than make an attenuator, I have decided to continue with 500uW WSPR on 10m, i.e. with the beacon PA turned off. I did a re-sync at about 0900z.

UPDATE 2104z:  No spots all day. As I said before, I suspect conditions have to be very good for WSPR to work at this tiny power.

Sunspots - Sunday February 11th

Solar flux is 194 and the SSN 146.  A=5 and K=3. 

2m activity contest (UKAC) - February 6th

Better late than never!  Last time, I was rock bottom of the AL (low power) section of this contest that runs every month for a year. One thing is certain: things can only get better, HI.  In all, 5 stations were worked (see map).

630m QRP WSPR (Saturday)

Basically, I am lazy!   

Rather than try WSPR on a different band, I stuck with 630m QRP WSPR all day. My ERP is 10mW from the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground. At 1455z, just UK stations spotted.

Electric cars - NOT amateur radio

In the end, I suspect many of us will be driving electric cars. In today's Knowledge (it comes every day free by email) was a report in the UK Daily Telegraph. I agree with this.

"The reason people aren’t buying EVs en masse is because “it doesn’t yet make sense”: they’re expensive, their range is too short, and there aren’t enough charging points."

In my view, we will reach a tipping point when battery technology allows prices to drop a lot (bye bye lithium?) and ranges to double or more. This will allow many people to charge at home and infrequently. Like film cameras and cathode ray tubes, fossil fuelled cars will then seem really old. Personally I give it 3-5 years.

Solid state batteries?

Car cleaning - NOT amateur radio

As mentioned in an earlier post, we cleaned the car before lunch. We really ought to clean it a lot more often! My wife did the inside and I did the outside. It looks better for it.  It was probably last cleaned last summer. 

As you can tell, to us a car is just a mode of transport. If it is reliable, we really do not care what it is. So far, we have had Kia's for about 13 years and they have proved very reliable.