CDARC website

A quick look at the Cambridge Radio Club website showed a photo of me giving a talk. I am doing one later this week on 8m. I prepare the slides, but as my voice is so poor someone else is doing the presentation and speaking!  The photo must be years old as an "in person"  presentation must pre-date my 2013 stroke.

See https://www.cdarc.org.uk/ .

How? ATS-20+ RX

Just now I saw a Chinese RX on Amazon. 

At £44.99 I just cannot see how they do it.  

What is the world coming to? - NOT amateur radio

When my wife was young she took a wolf whistle as a compliment. These days even just a touch is an infringement of civil liberties and is a sackable offence! Get real, please.  I really hope a judge somewhere says, "case dismissed, stop wasting my time".

Yes, everyone regardless of race, sexuality, colour and nationality has a right to be treated properly and with respect, but there is a vast difference between abusing someone and just a friendly and unharmful touch or comment.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce30l5497x2o .

8m QRP FT8 (Monday)

My FT817ND to the low dipole was turned on at about 0915z on 40.680 MHz with a DF of about 1960Hz. 

UPDATE 1017z:  Spotted by a couple of stations in the Canary Is at about 3000km.

UPDATE 1458z:   7 stations have spotted me today on 8m FT8 with the furthermost ZR1ADI (9777km).

10m 500mW WSPR TX (Monday)

My 500mW 10m WSPR beacon was turned on at 0914z.  EA8BFK (2880km) and local G4KPX (14km) spotting me.

UPDATE 1019z:  4 stations spotting me with the furthermost ZD7GB (7607km).

UPDATE 1535z:  31 stations spotting me including JW1ITS Jan Mayen  (2945km) in the frozen north. Best DX is a spot from Brazil.

Monday plans

 Shortly, I intend to try 10m QRP WSPR TX and 8m QRP FT8 TX.  The solar forecast is quite promising.

Reach walk - NOT amateur radio

Yesterday, we went for a walk at nearby Reach, which is very old. In fact it has a fair charter that goes back to the 1200s. At that time there was already a fair there. In Roman times, it was an important inland port. We stuck to the roads to avoid the mud

Sunspots - Monday February 24th

 Solar flux is 210 and the SSN 186. A=7 and K=2.

The dangers of AI - NOT amateur radio

There is no doubt that AI can be very good at analysing lots of data very fast and can be much better than a human. Large language models are trained and GPT4 is vastly bigger and better than the last version. Mistakes still occur, yet many people believe it is true!

Recently I have seen several things on Facebook that may have been done with AI. The trouble now is telling what is real and what is not. As time goes by, AI will only get better. All I can advice is you take great care and assume anything a person is supposed to have said is AI unless you know for certain it is real.

Latest FTX-1F news

This was recently on the FTX-1F IO group...

"Talked to the folks at the Yaesu Booth, at the Orlando Hamfest, today. They said the FTX-1F was ready to be released, worldwide. The current holdup is type acceptance, by the FCC, here in the United States. They want to release the radio simultaneously, around the world. They said they could not even bring a radio to look at, because it was not type accepted, yet.

Buddy WB4OMG”

What surprises me is that better specs have not been released giving more detail.