Amsterdam Centraal Station

We came home by Eurostar today. 

In continental Europe they can have “double decker” trains as they do not have the height limits we have in the UK.

Begijnhof, Amsterdam

This is a quiet oasis of calm and tranquility in the heart of a busy city. We have been here often.

Sunspots - Friday September 5th

 Solar flux is 172 and the SSN 150. A=10 and K =1

Amsterdam flower market

 

They certainly like their bulbs in Amsterdam! This was the flower market earlier this afternoon.

Swimming in the Singel Canal, Amsterdam

 Imagine my surprise when I saw these people swimming past my hotel window this morning.  The Amsterdam canals must be pretty clean.  I guess they come early to avoid the boats.

Best value transceivers?

 Like most things, in the end it comes down to personal choice and budget. 

If you are after a 100W rig the Yaesu FT710 is hard to beat and includes an automatic ATU and 4m in Europe. It can also be widebanded with just button presses with no uncasing or hardware mods.

At the new lower price the ICOM IC-705 is hard to beat as a 10W radio. There are lower cost products from India and China 🇨🇳.

Oscar 100 narrowband

 

It seems ages since I took a look at the webSDR by the BATC at Goonhilly in Cornwall. It would appear nothing much has happened on the narrowband transponder although I wonder if there is any free software to decode the DATV transmitted through it on the wide band transponder? Or if anyone has a website of screenshots?

Sunspots - Thursday September 4th

 Solar flux is 180 and the SSN 128. A=12 and K=2.

Dessert

 

My wife and I shared this dessert as for one person it would have been far too much. We soon travel home.

Dutch Resistance Museum

 

At the end of WW2 my dad dropped food to the starving people of the Netherlands from a Lancaster plane. I am so pleased he was able to help them. 

Today we visited the Dutch Resistance Museum. It was excellent and shows how brave some people were.

This little book was just one Euro, which is excellent value 

The Fermi paradox

 This is the apparent mismatch between the number of planets that should support intelligent life and the total absence of any evidence that intelligent life exists.To my knowledge we have been looking for about 60-70 years without any success.

Sunspots - Wednesday September 3rd

 Solar flux is 187 and the SSN 175. A=34 and K=4.

Hotel window view

 

This is the view from our hotel bedroom in Amsterdam overlooking the Singel canal.

More Amsterdam

EchoLink

Not having access to my radios I tried listening to my local repeater by EchoLink.  Imagine my surprise finding someone on it!

Sunspots- Tuesday September 2nd

 Solar flux is 202 and the SSN 165. A=16 and K=5. 

Amsterdam

 This is a fantastic city. We have been here 7 times and I have been here for work.

Amazing fact - human brains

Yesterday, I read that the capacity of the human brain has been estimated as 2.5 million gigabytes, which is huge.  When you think of a lifetime of memories it has to be enormous. 

It makes our computer memories look tiny by comparison. I wonder if they will work out how to create artificial memories as large one day? Imagine being able to store this much data!  If possible, perhaps we could have "add on" memories to store, for example, a new language.

You could imagine that memory research based on neural networks (much like the human brain) is rich for exploration. I could imagine that in 50 years' time huge memories might be possible making those of today look tiny.  I imagine that the US and Chinese governments are already working on this.

Imagine the computing power of these mega-computers working in parallel. Frightening.

Sunspots - Monday September 1st

 Solar flux is 217 and the SSN 188. A=8 and K=1.

This autumn

As Es is likely to be much less frequent than in the spring and summer, I shall probably switch to 10m QRP FT8 before long, with the occasional outing on 6m FT8. 

I can imagine 10m FT8  being quite good this autumn.