A QRPer's brain

Yesterday I went to get my brain MRI scanned as part of a Cambridge University research project on speech and language. The result is attached. I spent nearly 90 minutes being scanned whilst listening to various sentences.

Someone suggested the missing top part of the brain explains why I am a QRPer!

6m Es

A good opening on 6m his evening with lots of 59+ signals from southern Spain and Portugal coming through. There are supposed to be some CN8 and EA8 stations on too but not heard or worked any yet.

Some Es statistics (2008)

Check out http://www.vhfdx.net/states2008.html which has some fascinating data about the extent of Es openings in Europe in the 2008 season. At times, the MUF for Es reached 250MHz. The VHF.net has a great deal of other useful data and is well worth a regular visit.

Several stations worked by Es today - LA5AKA, SM4EXP, I0KNQ and YO2QC.

Increasing sunspot activity

Sunspot number running at 18 today, a value not seen in a LONG time and solar flux in the mid 70s. Even HF conditions shown as "fair" instead of "poor". Yet more signs we are, at last, coming out of the bottom of the cycle.

GMs on 10m (Es)

Two nice 10m QSOs today with 10W SSB and halo: GM8LFB and GM4JYB (in IO88HP). Usually I have to wait until later in the summer to work GMs on 10m. I was very happy when GM4JYB found me first in a minor pileup! At times the GMs were 59+20dB and would have been audible with 100mW, or even less, given a clear frequency.

DXing - realtime maps

This is a useful resource from VHFDX.net to track openings on 10m and upwards into the VHF bands. A mapping system that plots recently reported QSOs. Thanks to G4ILO for pointing this out to me.

See http://www.vhfdx.net/spots/map.php

Poor Es so far?

Is it just me or is this Es season well below par so far? Very little heard on 6m so far and even on 10m the openings have been short and signal strengths not exceptional. Most stations I hear I can work, even with my wire halo and 5-10W, but there don't seem to be that many on! Tonight for example, 2 EAs and 1 CT1 heard and worked, but that's all. Later I worked SM3EAE with 5W CW.

10m F2 DX

Well, last night 10m opened up a bit with PY2WAS in Sao Paulo, Brazil coming through weakly around teatime. At this time of year there are sometimes North-South openings in which part of the path is assisted by sporadic-E for the first "hop" linking then with F2 propagation further south. Last night's opening may have had a bit of this, but there was little spor-E about and that was all weakish. Earlier there was an OH8 station audible from Oulu in northern Finland and I swear he sounded auroral.

Scout Regen RX kit

Hendrick's QRP Kits in the USA have just introduced a nice little regen receiver kit for beginners and more experienced hams and SWLs. The Scout is a simple 2 band regenerative receiver covering from 3.5 -11MHz. It is based on the classic design by Charles Kitchin published in QST some years ago. It is to be launched at Dayton and on sale from May 12th.

See http://www.qrpkits.com/scoutregen.html for more details.

New (lower) sunspot peak predicted

NOAA has just a few minutes ago (1600z May 8th) released a new sunspot prediction with a peak of just 90 and much later than forecast before (now in 2013).

See http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/

Maybe I'll have to give 10GHz rainscatter a go after all...

Grandson time

We have two grandchildren. One came to stay with us for the last week and this is a shot of him and I in our garden. If I recall, we were discussing something really deep and serious like the bird that had just landed on the bird table! Both grandchildren bring us such joy and being a granddad is such a wonderful thing.

DXing has to take a back seat when he is with us, but who cares too much? Now our grandson has gone back to his home, I am a little more active on 10m and 6m again.

Stations worked on 10m QRP

Pavel, UR5WCQ was a good signal, but alone, on 10m SSB at 1323z and was worked giving me a report of RS53-55.

Earlier, EA5ON/M was on 10m calling a W4 station across the pond, but I could not hear the W4.

Tuesday May 5th and nice QSO with Andy SQ9MEE in the log on 10m SSB

More sporadic-E now

This evening at 1800z I turned on the 10m rig and heard EA3BOX booming in on 28.487MHz SSB. A quick call and back came a 58 to 59+ report. Yesterday I heard SM3NQM on 6m SSB, so the season has clearly started now.

10m open (spor-E)

II0DIVA (special call) coming through on 10m SSB this evening. This is the first sporadic-E heard this season. Later, at 1910z, I worked IY7GM, another special call, with a 59 report received using the IC703 and the wire Homebase-10 halo. He was 58 with me.

Sunspots are GO!!

At the end of April we seem to be seeing green shoots of recovery not only in the economy, but also in the sunspot count: today the sunspot number reached 15, a number not seen in some while.This was just a few days after another spot was present, albeit very briefly. Can we hope that this signals the real end of the minimum with better HF days ahead? Let's see what things are like in another 28 days .....and keep fingers and toes crossed.

Sporadic-E

For most of April I've been putting out CQs on 10m CW/SSB/FM and checking the DX cluster for signs of sporadic-E propagation into Europe. So far, all is very quiet. It is still early in the season, but usually there've been some openings by now. May, June and July are the best months in the northern hemisphere.

At times, sporadic-E signals can be very strong indeed. I recall some Icelandic stations on 6m SSB 2 years ago who were truly S9+50dB suggesting that, on a clear frequency, they would have been workable with microwatts!

There is a nice tutorial on sporadic-E at this link.

As of April 29th, still no spor-E yet detected this season here.

Quaker News

The QRP community has a lot in common with Quakers (Society of Friends) , especially their ethos of living simply and fairly. If you have never done so, do check them out. They have been instrumental in much good work around the world, but this is usually done quietly behind the scenes e.g. they did a lot of work on reconciling the groups in Northern Ireland helping to work for peace there. The latest copy of Quaker News is available on-line. It has some interesting articles e.g. on the upcoming Copenhagen climate change conference later this year and on the need for urgent and fair action worldwide.

Morse's birthday

Today is the anniversary of Samuel Morse's birthday. To mark it, Google has its usual banner in Morse rather than letters - a nice touch to remind the world about CW.

Simple 500kHz TX design by GW3UEP

A very neat and simple MF TX called the E-QTX has appeared on the Google UK500khz group website. This design looks so straightforward that even I should be able to make it in the back of the garage. It comes from GW3UEP (via G3XIZ) and is aimed at encouraging more NoV holders to come on the band. It produces 8-10W with a 12V supply and more than double this from a higher supply voltage.

See http://groups.google.com/group/uk500khz/web/gw3uep-cw-tx.

Simple SDR links

Already some replies on the quest for ultra-simple SDR transceiver ideas - thank you. For example see the LY1GP site http://www.qrz.lt/ly1gp/SDR/index.html

Simon Brown HB9DRV mentions work on the SoftRock which is simple and not too expensive. 1W 30m/20m/17m with a new console being written starting July 1st.

Simplest possible SDR transceiver?

A challenge - what is the simplest possible SDR transceiver that can be built that would allow credible results on HF QRP? Does anyone know of any links to such ideas? Is there an "SDR equivalent" to the Pixie or similar ultra-simple QRP rigs, possibly supporting all modes but using just a handful of parts?

Software Defined Radio (SDR) kits

Received this today about SDR kits from Australia:

Hi Roger -

Here is a piece of information that may be of interest to your blog readers / website visitors: our little SDR KIT project is gaining momentum - we've been in business for less than one month yet we now have builders in 14 countries. See http://www.genesisradio.com.au/G40/ . We also have 2 new models coming out very soon: 20m and 30m duobander and single 80m SDR transceiver.

Thanks for reading.

Best 73
Nick VK1AA

Anyone built the Gnat-1 micro-transceiver?

Has anyone reading this blog built the neat little GNAT-1 transceiver featured in SPRAT 138 (Spring 2009) by Chris Trask N7ZWY? This looks a very elegant design making good use of the small number of parts needed. I must have a go. Unlike the FETer and similar micro-transceivers it doesn't need complex switching and it produces a decent RF output.

Chris tells me he hasn't actually air-tested the circuit (surprisingly), so I'd like to hear how people get on. It is important to keep the key leads short Chris advises.

Hurrah - a sunspot!!!

Solar flux reaching the giddy heights of 71.0 and today there is 1 sunspot on the visible side of the sun. Things may be looking up after an absence of spots for 2 months.....

Next day it had gone :-(

10m activity (of sorts)

Just checked 10m for signs of sporadic-E but only heard a UK station M0CHK who appeared to be testing his rig audio with another unidentified station. Signal was weak with me.

20m AM

IK6BGJ was a good signal this afternoon on 20m AM on 14.251MHz. Although he called CQ AM many times he did not work anyone and was unable to hear my QRP reply when running 4W AM. Pity - it is a very long time since I've worked anyone on AM on 20m. 1967 to be precise!

70ms QRP FM simplex

QSOs this afternoon with G4BFS/M and M3VDO/M on 433.5 FM - local mobile stations running QRP at all ends. No great DX (best about 20kms), but nice to work some stations on the band mid afternoon.

70cms lift conditions today

Conditions on 70cms were good this morning: at breakfast time (around 0700z) several more distant repeaters were coming in at good strength here in East Cambridgeshire. Amongst them was the Leicester repeater GB3LE which was fully quieting here and easily accessible with about 2W ERP. I called and said I was listening on 433.5 for simplex QSOs, but there was no-one about. 70cms has frequent localised openings which appear for a few hours then disappear, It is a great pity there is not more simplex FM on 70cms as it is good fun working DX with QRP using this mode with simple colinear antennas or even handhelds.

HF broadcast band reception

With the broadcasters supposedly moving out of the 7.1-7.2 MHz slot from earlier this month I thought I'd check who was still there last night. Firstly Radio Ethiopia on 7.11 was a strong signal as was Voice of Broad Masses of Eritrea on 7.175MHz, both around 1915z last night. Also heard on 7.570MHz was Radio Thailand. I guess this is in the new 41m band allocation?

At much the same time a listen on 15.120MHz brought in Radio Nigeria at good strength at 1930z with their news commentary in English.

All this BC listening made me quite nostalgic for those heady days in the 1960s when the joys of Radio Sofia, Radio Prague International, Radio Moscow and others graced the airwaves with their propaganda. Although I never cared for the propaganda I did like the interval signals which thrilled me when receiving them on a crystal set under the bed clothes late at night. Hear these again at http://www.intervalsignals.net/ .

A useful guide to English language BC schedules and frequencies can be found at http://www.primetimeshortwave.com/ .

The VERY quiet Sun

Have you noticed how long we've been now without any sunspots? The graph at http://www.solen.info/solar/ suggests it's been almost 7 weeks now. A few months ago we were expecting the start of cycle 24 and some hopeful signs were emerging. Then things turned down again and it is doubtful we've started to enter cycle 24, although the slightly increased solar flux levels may be a hint. We can only wait and see.

At least the higher HF bands plus 6 and 4m will be livened up by sporadic-E shortly. If we were entering a long Maunder minimum (I doubt it) then the summer spor-E "sport" could be the best DX opportunities we'd get on 10 and 6m.

Ham radio and a school football team reunion

Last night, I attended a reunion of my junior school football team of 1959. Amazingly, of the team of 11, everyone attended apart from one person who sadly died last year. Among those attending the reunion was someone I have not seen in over 40 years who, it turns out, has been working in VK-land in mobile radio. Paul has the calls VK2ZPB and more recently M0GJL. As you can imagine, we talked as much about ham radio as the football matches back in 1959.

JF1OZL - still the best!

http://www.intio.or.jp/jf10zl/ is a magic site if you are keen on simple QRP homebrew radios. Kazuhiro Sunamura has such a creative talent and I just love his hand-drawn schematics and layouts. He has a unique ability to turn a few components into a fantastic QRP SSB, DSB, AM or CW transceiver. Not to be missed!

VLF resources

Radio Waves below 22kHz at http://www.vlf.it/ is an excellent place to find information on VLF and ELF natural radio. Renato Romero who hosts this page also has a book called Radio Nature on the subject.

At some point I want to restart my interest in this part of the spectrum but at the moment I am short of time.

DX Crystal sets

Jim's Crystal Radio Page at http://www.hobbytech.com/crystalradio/crystalradio.htm has some very neat crystal set designs with high performance receivers. These units also look like works of art as they are so elegant.

There are other excellent resources at Gollum's Crystal Receiver World http://www.oldradioworld.de/gollum/ .

VHF AM controversy

This Sunday's RSGB News contains a piece about AM operation on 145.8MHz in Scotland and alleges that some AM operators have been deliberately interfering with International Space Station communications on the same frequency. I do not know if this is true or not. If it is, then it should stop: there is no place for such behaviour in our fine hobby.

What I do know is that the RSGB has been EXTREMELY slow in publishing frequencies for VHF AM in the UK. Although people have been urging the RSGB to put an AM "centre of activity" or calling frequency in the band plans, this has still not happened, although a brief mention of 144.55MHz has been added in the footnotes a few months ago.

My recommendations are:

(1) All AM users in the UK migrate to 144.55MHz.
(2) AM operation on 145.8MHz should be phased out as soon as possible.
(3) Use of 145.8MHz for AM should be done with care to avoid any interference with ISS operations.
(4) The RSGB should publish 144.55MHz in the 2m bandplan as the agreed centre of activity for AM users.

AM is a great mode allowing simple homemade gear to make useful contacts. It would be a shame if AM users got a bad name as a result of this negative publicity.

S54S website

The website of Aleksander S54S has some great circuit ideas including many fine QRP transceivers such as the Tinka shown here. See http://lea.hamradio.si/~s57nan/ham_radio/index.html

Ham gear reliability "league table"?

As yet, I've not had a single failure with any piece of commercial ham radio gear I've owned and operated in nearly 40 years. OK, the gear is usually QRP, working in a benign shack environment and not abused. Perhaps I'm just lucky.

I'm wondering if anywhere there is a "league table" showing how reliable various makes and models of ham radio gear are? It sounds like something that someone may have compiled but I've not seen one. The nearest are the reviews on eHam.net.

Back home again

Now back home after our holiday in NZ. It is a wonderful country with splendid scenery and very kind and friendly people. We felt very "at home" there despite being on the opposite side of the planet from the UK. It is good to know such nice places and people still exist in our crowded little world.

As yet, I've not managed to do any operating back home as we are looking after our little grandson. Hopefully I will get on the air this week in the evenings.

ZL operation (more)

This is a picture of ZL/G3XBM/P operating from the hotel balcony in Queenstown, South Island, NZ. Nothing heard or worked on this occasion. Next real opportunity is Thursday March 12th when we get back to Christchurch. The far west coast of South Island around Haast is pretty remote with no mobile phone coverage at all, the nearest fuel 90-120kms away, nearest fire station 2 hours away and only one BC station audible on MW and Band 2 FM.

ZL operation

Although I still take a listen most nights with the VX2 handheld, I have to report that sightseeing is taking a higher priority than QRP operation on 70cms FM in ZL-land at the moment.

The country is SO beautiful, so clean, so uncrowded and the people everywhere are genuinely kind, helpful and interested in you. New Zealand is a lovely place.

Next 70cms FM operation likely to be March 12th when we arrive back in Christchurch on our last night before flying to VK-land to see friends then flying home.