500kHz WSPR

Yesterday I fired up the 500kHz WSPR kit (2mW ERP from the loop antenna) for the first time in several months and was pleased with the reports and level of activity. Several people joined in the fun and some new stations are now monitoring and reporting on the band. I want to get my 137kHz WSPR kit sorted this week with around 25W RF and maybe 0.5mW ERP if I am lucky.

Sunspots update

As the days go by this autumn, the sunspot numbers continue to climb progressively and I am beginning to think we may be in for a decent cycle 24 peak after all. Certainly HF conditions have been excellent recently with MUFs up to 40MHz at times.  28MHz has been as good as I ever remember it in the last few weeks.

Have there been any recent revisions of the sunspot predictions for the next 12-24 months? If so, I would expect these to be upwards.

CQWW: update on 10m operation

After a few hours of intermittent QRP operation I've plenty of QSOs in the log, many when using just 500mW pep into my halo antenna. Stations have been worked with QRP in 5 continents on 28MHz SSB already. The band is almost filled with stations in a way that I've not heard since the last sunspot peak. If you want to work some QRP SSB DX on the HF bands, especially on 10m, then this weekend is your opportunity.

CQWW SSB Contest this weekend

This weekend it is the BIG contest of the year - the CQ Worldwide DX contest (SSB) which runs all of Saturday and Sunday. Unless the sun plays nasty tricks, all the HF bands will be absolutely humming with SSB activity and for 48 hours the bandplans will be thrown into chaos as SSB stations spread out to find space.  I am not a great contest fan, but I do enjoy this one and, almost without fail, manage to work loads of US states on the higher HF bands despite running 5W pep or less. This year on 28MHz there is a good chance of working some USA stations with 100mW pep or less, especially later in the contest.  Last year I was unable to take part as we were away. This year I have told my wife that I am not available for anything else.

IC703, K1 and MFJ Cub (15m) possible sale

The above QRP rigs, all of which are in good condition, are part of my station but very underused compared with the FT817 and my homemade gear. So, I am thinking about selling these and at a fair price. The 5W K1 has the 40,30,20 and 15m band module as well as the auto-ATU internally. The IC703 covers 160-6m at up to 10W. The Cub is 1W on 15m.

My question is what IS a fair market price to charge for each? Please note these are NOT yet for sale and I am only trying to judge what sort of price to charge if I do decide to do so.

XBM10-2 Micro-transceiver boxed

This afternoon I rebuilt the XBM10-2 28MHz micro-transceiver onto a small piece of copper laminate and put the whole transceiver in a small diecast box. The transceiver still chirps far too much, but it is in a state where more DX contacts will be possible and I can't see an easy way of reducing the chirp without making it more complex. Maybe I should call it the Chirpy-10?  I'm particularly pleased that the TX-RX offset is just perfect for operation on 28.060MHz CW.

I have just realised that by replacing the earpiece with my PC soundcard I can use several SDR packages to allow me to look either side of the QRP calling frequency. This rather defeats the simplicity though!

Getting the shack back

Tomorrow evening my house grows about 200% in size. Actually my 2 delightful young grandchildren and their mums and dads go home meaning I can restore the shack to its main use! At the moment it is a bedroom for the two grandchildren, so amateur operation is impossible. One thing on the agenda is the CQWW SSB contest at the weekend. This is one of the contests I enjoy as it is a good way to work lots of US states and Canadian provinces, even with 5W QRP. Another task is to further optimise the XBM10-2 tiny transceiver, put it in a tiny case and work some more countries with it.

2 countries worked with the 28MHz XBM10-2

Well, off to a good start today with a couple of QSOs with the 2 transistor XBM10-2 60mW 10m CW transceiver. Much to my surprise I got 439 from IT9QAU/QRP at 1547z today.  Distance was 1414km.

Then 599 (with chirp) from M0DRK, who is in the same village as me. So 2 DXCC countries worked already.  On receive, the oscillator will not always start in the latest circuit version in which I've reduced the component count by a further 2 parts (just 11 parts plus crystal and earpiece now).  Still, a very promising start for something so ultra-simple.

UPDATE 1850z 20.11.10: To get the oscillator to always start on RX, to get TX spot-on 28.060 with the right offset for RX I had to revert to the earlier design and put 2 parts back. The revised schematic is shown here. This IS such fun.

2 transistor transceiver for 28MHz CW

This afternoon I built what is probably just about the simplest CW transceiver possible for use on 10m. Based on my XBM80-2 design for 80m, this is essentially the same circuit redone for a 28.060MHz fundamental crystal.

Depending on how much chirp one is prepared to accept (there is quite a bit) the power output is around 50-70mW, which is enough to cross the Atlantic on a good day. With less output the chirp should be reduced. The receiver audio output into the high impedance crystal earpiece is low, but I can hear down to around 2uV (-100dBm) in a quiet room. The circuit is a colpitts oscillator used as a TX oscillator with the key down and as a direct conversion receiver with a single stage oscillator-mixer and separate audio gain stage with the key up.

The rig is full break-in going from RX to TX when the key is pressed. It works as I have already heard Ws on the band today. Broadcast breakthrough does not seem to be an issue. I hope to have a few local QSOs soon, but really believe it will get much further.  It could do with tidying up and boxing and it really needs a small low pass filter for serious use.

More WSPR database issues today

28MHz WSPR this afternoon - loads of signals

Sadly this afternoon the internet WSPR database crashed again, just at a time when 10m propagation was excellent and some decent reports were coming in from the USA and elsewhere with my 50mW to the halo. All afternoon I was getting an endless string of DX stations coming through on WSPR all running 5W or much less but I have been unable to upload these to the database or get my own reports from it. I noticed G4KPX about 15km away from me was testing on 10m WSPR with 5mW and I am sure he would have been getting plenty of DX reports in today's conditions. Let's hope the database is back soon so I can upload spots manually and see what reports I was getting in the last few hours.