Sunshine

 

After what has seemed a long wet and dull period we had a lovely sunny day yesterday. 

This was one of the Cambridge University colleges in the sun.

10m 200mW WSPR (Sunday)

 My beacon was turned on at about 0922z.

UPDATE 0937z:  Two spots of me.

Longest line of sight paths

This came as a real surprise to me. I was expecting the longest line of sight paths on the planet to be around 120km, whereas they are over 500km, which I find almost incredible. 

This was a link on the Amateur radio Weekly email that came yesterday.

See https://alltheviews.world/

See https://daily.hamweekly.com/

Sunspots - Sunday February 15th

 Solar flux is 117 and the SSN 60. A=11 and K=3.

Codetalker from AA1TJ

Looking back at my photos from 2009 I came across this innovative circuit by Mike Rainey AA1TJ. It is a voice powered 80m CW transmitter.  Mike has designed some very clever circuits over the years.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20100917032555/http://aa1tj.com/newenglandcodetalker.html .

10m 5W FT8 (Saturday)

At about 1410z I turned on 10m FT8.

UPDATE 1502z:  57 stations have spotted me and I have spotted 195. See map for those received.

Central Cambridge in the sun

It would seem Cambridge was very popular today, probably as after weeks of rain and dull weather the sun shone! 

There are quite a few bikes in Cambridge!

10m 200mW WSPR TX (Saturday)

 My beacon has been on since about 0945z. 

UPDATE 1440z:   17 spots of me with the best a spot from a station in Brazil.

70cm in the early days

This transverter has been on before, but we forget just how much things have changed in 50 years. I built a version of it to get me active on 70cm. It produced about 100mW AM.   It was used with either a 4el or 8el beam made from PCB material.  Best DX was 160km.

Back then 70cm was almost a frontier band with little commercial gear, so if you wanted something you probably had to build it rather than buy it. Most people (like me!) were fixed on a crystal frequency and people tuned across the band to get a contact. In those days, activity was higher , so you had a much better chance of a QSO. Most contacts were AM.  

70cm SSB? Never heard of it back then!

Sunspots - Saturday February 14th

Solar  flux is 117 and the SSN 50. A=14 and K=2.