Activity continues to disappoint me. Whilst for some this has been an introduction to microwaves, I was expecting far more DXers to make use of this.
As I have said before, I think it is just too hard for many. The main markets of the USA and Japan do not come within the satellite footprint. This means there are no mass market "black boxes".
In my opinion we have just passed the solar peak. We can expect a few years of good conditions, but I expect the trajectory to be slowly downwards.
Some of my time after lunch was spent browsing the Internet Archive. This is an absolute treasure trove of old material. Some time back I found a snapshot of my very first website dated 1996. If you want to look at old material about anything it is worth looking here. I am pretty sure much old stuff is on this archive.
There is a radio archive at https://archive.org/details/dlarc .
It would appear most things from the past may be found if you look hard. I have only scratched the surface.
If my QMX+ initiates (it hasn't yet!) I intend to try 6m QRP FT8.
UPDATE 0945z: Well, the QMX+ eventually did initiate. Probably this occurred in the first 20 minutes. The secret seems to be just to leave it. I would have expected this to happen within seconds. This is not fatal, but definitely needs fixing or explaining. Otherwise the QMX+ works really well. So far, spotted by 7 English stations on 6m QRP FT8 this morning.
UPDATE 1238z: 19 English stations spotted.
My 500mW WSPR beacon was turned on at about 0915z. No spots.
UPDATE 0947z: Spotted by 4 stations so far. These look like by F2 propagation.
UPDATE 1243z: Spotted by 9 stations.
