London sights - NOT amateur radio

London, the capital of England, is a fine city with a mix of old and new buildings. 

Some of the old buildings are known the world over. 

We went there on Thursday with our village theatre group by coach.

6m QRP FT8 (Saturday)

Once my QMX+ initiates, I intend to try 6m QRP FT8 again. Yet again, it has not yet initiated. I hope there is a fix for this in later software or hardware as I am suffering this bug most times I switch the transceiver on. It otherwise is a very good rig that I enjoy using. On early production, I suppose this is to be expected.

UPDATE 1006z: The QMX+ has initiated, but I do not know how long it took. So far just 4 English stations have spotted me.

UPDATE 1347z:  Spotted by 21 stations including 1 in Germany.

UPDATE 1645z: Spotted by 25 stations (in Europe) and on RX VO1AW (3801km) spotted.

10m 500mW WSPR (Saturday)

 Since about 0945z I have been on 10m QRP WSPR TX with my beacon. No spots yet.

UPDATE 1009z:  Just 2 Finnish stations spotting me.

UPDATE 2039z:   23 stations have spotted me. QRT shortly.

The Shard: London - NOT amateur radio

This is (I think) the tallest building in London. It certainly can be seen for miles!  

The photo shows a view from outside Southwark Cathedral last Thursday. 

Oscar 100 narrrowband activity

Every few weeks I take a peak at the activity of the narrowband transponder of this satellite. The last time was on a Friday early evening in Europe. 

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".

See https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/ .

Sunspots - Saturday November 23rd

 Solar flux is 179 and the SSN 170. A=12 and K=1.

Over the solar peak?

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.

Web archive - NOT amateur radio

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 .

Another site worth a browse is https://www.worldradiohistory.com/ .

It would appear most things from the past may be found if you look hard. I have only scratched the surface.

Mudlarking - NOT amateur radio

Mudlarking is the term for looking for rubbish on the shores of the River Thames in London, UK. The earliest ever banana in London was found as a result of mudlarking.

6m QRP FT8 (Friday)

 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.

UPDATE 1545z:  30 stations have spotted me. Some are European. F2 backscatter?