Sunspots - Thursday October 9th

 Solar flux is 120 and the SSN 109. A=11 and K=0.

6m and 10m FT8 or WSPR beaconing

To just beacon on 6m or 10m FT8 is easier than a full QSO.  Just beaconing just requires a very brief opening, whereas a full QSO takes several minutes.  In this respect FT4 might be better.

WSPR takes far longer which is one reason WSPR can be harder. Another is activity: I get the impression there are far more people on FT8 than WSPR. Also, even though WSPR can be decoded at much lower levels, local noise may bury weak signals, so unless there is a low local noise floor some openings may just be missed.

My overall conclusion is to stick with 6m FT8.

VLF up-converter

Yesterday I had an email saying the link to this page on my website was not working. It turned out this link was to my old site anyway, so I have corrected the link to point to the newer site.

See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/vlf/vlf-converter .

A reminder that this extremely unlikely to work with amateur VLF signals which need very narrow bandwidths and very accurate frequency. It is, however, suitable for general listening "down there".

Village cottage

Our village is a mixture of some old houses and new ones. This one is old, but I do not know when it was built. 

I guess it is 200m from our home?

8m operation

As I was not prepared to pay to do research I did not renew my 8m TX permit when it expired this summer. 

I was very disappointed by the very negative attitude of several PTTs even to very limited access to the band around solar maximum. I am told that it is still being used by some.  I really wish them well.

Instead, I have concentrated on 5W 6m FT8 to the V2000 vertical omni antenna.  This autumn my QRP has been spotted by 2 stations in Brazil on 6m.

10m 500mW WSPR (Wednesday)

 My beacon was turned on at about 0820z.

UPDATE 1835z:  8 stations have spotted me today with the furthest KY4UI (6834km) in Georgia USA.

UPDATE 1925z:  When I went QRT the furthest spot was again by DP0GVN (13685km) in Antarctica. In the last few weeks my 500mW has reached the German research base down there several times.

Flatlights

Before my 2013 stroke got in the way, I was hoping to get much further over the horizon with 481THz red light. 

To that end I purchased some very bright LEDs called Flatlights. These take (I am told) 8A from the power supply! The photo show the Flatlight that, sadly, did not get used.

In my earlier tests at just under 9km over the horizon there was no sign at all of a red light in the sky, yet the signal from my beacon was very clear on the PC.  

Even with that, far further would have been possible. As the sky was cloudless, I assume this was clear air scattering off dust particles. I did not try cloud-bounce where signals are reflected off the base of clouds. 

6m 5W FT8 (Wednesday)

My gear was turned on at about  0820z.

UPDATE 1939z: Spotted by 40 stations. See map.

10m QRP WSPR yesterday

As I was on 6m FT8 yesterday, my 10m antenna was free so I went on 10m 500mW WSPR.  See table of the stations that spotted me. Furthest was Brazil.

Sunspots - Wednesday October 8th

 Solar flux is 131 and the SSN 109. A=15 and K=3.