Perhaps I am a sucker for punishment! Once again, I am on 4m FT8 on 70.154 MHz. No spots. Last weekend I was spotted by a few stations and had a contact on 4m FT8 with a station in Wales.
UPDATE 1627z: Still no 4m FT8 spots! I find it hard to believe that days have passed and nobody, absolutely nobody, spotted. Looking on PSKreporter, there look to be very few monitors as well.
UPDATE 1757z: Just G3SHK (200km) spotted, but he could not copy me sadly.
Usually this is a dry part of the UK with very little rain. February was exceptionally dry, but March was exceptionally wet. I think we had more rain in March than the whole winter! We needed the rain, but March was very dull.
This was very successful. John gave me an RS58 report which was very satisfying for 2W indoors to a 2 el yagi indoors. John suggested an FT8 test at some point in the future, which I shall do. Aiming the small beam in all sorts of directions made little difference on John's signal.
Peoples' shopping habits are changing. In my view, the shops that will still be here are those that adjust to this new model, perhaps acting as showcases for goods ordered online.
Today was an interesting experiment. I tried 6m and 4m FT8. The difference could not be more stark. On 6m I got plenty of spots, whereas on 4m none at all. Many modern transceivers in Europe include 4m, yet activity on this great band seems very poor.
I guess people are more interested in working new DX than chatting, not that you can chat on FT8! There is no doubt amateur radio is changing. In many ways this is for the worse.
Putting a RX on 6m FT8 is more likely to have something "new" than 4m FT8 outside of the Es season. Even so, I am surprised how bad 4m seems to be. I was expecting some activity!
Unless things change, amateur radio will be gone before 2040. At the very least, it will be radically different.
UPDATE 1336z: What will the future of amateur radio look like? The short answer is I do not know! I can see national agencies like the FCC and OFCOM tiring of amateur radio. Instead I can see the allocation of callsigns being delegated to the ARRL and the RSGB. I can see this spreading across the world. I can see a time when the amateur bands that remain become a free for all, without licences, as long as no interference is caused. I can see a merging of licence free bands and amateur radio.
At 1140z, I turned on my 4m FT8 with my compromise antenna of the 2m big-wheel and coax tuned via the auto ATU in the FT-710 So far, no spots of me.
UPDATE 1235z: I decided to go back to 6m FT8 as I was getting no spots on 4m. Clearly few come on 4m outside the Es season.
At the moment I am on 6m FT8 with the FT-710. Several UK spots of me on TX, but no RX spots.
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| Stations spotting me today on 6m FT8 TX |
As an experiment just now, I asked Chat GPT4 to generate me an essay about amateur radio. GPT4 is a form of artificial intelligence.
The essay looked remarkably accurate and was just as if a human being had written it. I stopped after about 30 lines. I also asked it to create a couple of poems about places I knew. These were amazing.
You can see both the good and bad here: the good is getting AI to do what humans find boring and hard. The bad is where does this stop?
Although I do not want to sound like a Luddite, I can see dangers ahead.
So far, 38 stations have spotted me and I have copied a lot more! 2 QSOs so far.
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| Stations spotting me today on 10m FT8 QRP |
We have just heard of the death of the husband of my wife's old work colleague. They live in Australia. Although expected, it must be such a shock when it actually happens.
I guess it is also a wake-up call to our own mortality. I am reminded of this poem.
See https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44400/spring-and-fall .
Assuming G4BAO confirms, my intention is to have a 23cm sked on 1296.2 MHz SSB at 1430z today. As yet, he has not confirmed!!
UPDATE 1650z: We are trying at 1430z on Friday March 31st on 1296.2 MHz SSB. 3.30pm BST.
See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/homebrew/10m-lesser-chirpy .
Assuming the thunder storms keep away, my plan is to go on 10m FT8 later.
This is a reminder of this rally this coming Sunday. As I always say, please be sure it is on before travelling far.
Sunday April 2nd - Hack Green Surplus Sale and Militaria, Nantwich, Cheshire , CW5 8AL. Contact coldwar@hackgreen.co.uk.
This worries me.
Just now I tried Google's version called Bard again. It tries to make sense of the data it knows about and writes about this. Some answers were remarkably good, whereas some were useless and factually incorrect.
Now, used properly I can see lot of uses. However, many will (wrongly) take everything it says as factually correct when it is not. I can see a future when many people accept everything produced by AI as factually correct. "Brave New World", as Aldous Huxley Huxley said?
Several times I have tried to contact John to arrange a quick sked on 23m SSB. It seems odd to me that he has not replied even when I sent to an address he had used quite recently and another that I had.
At first I wondered if my address had gone into SPAM by mistake. I have come to the conclusion he is away.... or I am no longer in his good books,HI!
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| Stations spotting my 6m FT8 until 1602z |
Luckily, I have one of the few legal permits in the UK to TX on 8m. For the last year, I have used my FT817ND on 8m FT8. So far, with just low power and a low wire dipole, I have been copied on 4 continents and in 21 countries (it may be more now).
I am curious to know if the FT-710 can be simply modified to TX on 8m just with button presses. Although I have no plans to use my FT-710 on 8m, I am just wondering. I am sure there will be wideband mods by changing diodes internally, but I do not want to do this.
Once again on 4m FT8. So far, no spots.
UPDATE 1508z: After a whole day with absolutely no 4m FT8 spots (and apparently no monitors either!) I have QSYed to 6m FT8 and was immediately spotted across England. Probably I shall give 4m a miss until Es kicks in. It is unlikely I shall bother with a halo for 4m as my "ad hoc" arrangement seems to work perfectly. This will certainly get me Es contacts into Europe on 4m FT8.
At about 1810z, my 4m FT8 was turned on. My compromise antenna is again the 2m big-wheel and coax tuned via the auto-ATU in the FT-710. After about 50 minutes, no spots.
UPDATE 2000z: No spots.
At the moment, 10m is again in great shape. Most days DX from across the world may be copied. Come May, June, July and August we see the peak Es season in the northern hemisphere which will allow DX up to about 1500km almost daily and some times further. F2 is currently very good. 10m is usually best for DX in the sunlight hours.
There even some single band multi mode 10m rigs available. These are based on CB radios, but can be very good as 10m radios.
There is little doubt that 10m (28MHz) is my favourite band of all. In the past I have used these with CB verticals very successfully on 10m.
See https://sites.google.com/view/g3xbm4/home/hf-mf-and-lf/10m-operation .
A reminder than OFCOM usually updates the data it holds on licences weekly. It has also published several documents this week. See the OFCOM website for details.
At 0955z my 8m FT8 was turned on. I am not really expecting any spots. Currently, no spots!
UPDATE 1455z: No spots.
