6m QRP FT8 (Monday)

Early Es spots of my 2.5W FT8 to the V2000 vertical omni antenna this morning on 6m.

10m QRP WSPR (Monday)

 Early Es spots of my 500mW WSPR this morning with spots from Eastern Europe.

Early Es

It looks like Es has started early today with spots on both 10m and 6m QRP. 

Calculators galore

If you are like me, you turn to the internet if you want to calculate anything. Most sorts of calculators are there just waiting for your input. Years ago, we had to find the answer in a textbook. Nowadays it is just there at our fingertips!

See https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics as an example. There are many around.

IC-705 start-up screen

Amateur Radio Weekly has a piece by G7UFO showing how to use your QSL card as the IC-705 start-up screen. 

Basically you have to save the file at the right size as a BMP file on an SD card.

Sunspots - Monday June 24th

 Solar flux is 196 and the SSN 176. A=10 and K=1.

Photo books - NOT amateur radio

Every season, my wife does a photo book showing what we have done. It is interesting to look back on these. She gets half the fun creating them.

We will soon need a bigger shelf!

Lunch in the garden - NOT amateur radio

This year has been miserable so far with it being both dull and wet. Today was the first day we were able to eat lunch in the garden. 

Probably we will soon be moaning it is too hot. Well, we are English! Moaning about the weather is in our blood.

Live every moment - NOT amateur radio

Yesterday we visited an old university friend who lives in Australia. He was flying to the UK to join us in a reunion of old university friends in Liverpool and to go on a cruise. In the last 30 minutes of the flight ending he had a stroke and is now in Charing Cross hospital in London where he has been for 3 weeks so far. He has a way to go yet to return to fitness. We also heard of a friend who is only 51 years old who had a sudden heart attack.

The moral is to live every moment as if it was your last as you have no idea what is around the corner.

6m QRP FT8 (Sunday)

This morning has got off to a very good start with 85 stations spotting my 2.5W FT8 to the V2000 vertical omni antenna in the last 6 hours.

UPDATE 1515z:  237 stations have spotted me in the last 12 hours on QRP 6m FT8 from all over Europe.