Got my shack back

For the last 9 days my little grandson has been sleeping in the single bed in my shack, so amateur radio activity was on  hold, especially in the evenings. Today he went back to London so the shack was free again. I went on 500kHz WSPR again with 1mW ERP this evening and managed 4 unique reports so far with best DX 306kms to PA3ABK. At the end of next week I'm planning on repainting the room, so will again be unable to operate for a few days.

G3RJV QRP lecture on the BATC streaming site

A talk called "QRP Why and How" by G3RJV is available now on the BATC website. Go to http://www.batc.tv/ and click on the 'Film Archive' icon and select "G3RJV QRP Lecture" from the drop-down list on the left hand side. The BATC site has a wide choice of videos available to view on-line as well as streamed outputs of amateur TV stations and repeaters.

Sporadic-E season

As we approach the end of April, the first signs of the summer sporadic-E season will be appearing with decent, strong openings to Europe from the UK on the higher HF bands plus 6m, 4m and occasionally 2m. Every year there are also multi-hop openings to much greater distances such as the USA, Middle East, Caribbean and South America. This year, more stations will be using WSPR beaconing on these bands, so even fleeting openings will be noticed. My plan is to WSPR beacon on 6m whenever around and not working stations using QRP on 10m or 6m. It will be good to see some remarkable 6m DX on the WSPR database.

Volcanic ash and propagation

My son, his wife and 1 year old son are currently stuck in Los Angeles: all came down with a virus and were unable to travel back to the UK after a 2 week holiday. Not that they could have flown anyway, because all the planes were cancelled as a result of the Icelandic volanic ash. They are now stuck there until May 1st, the next available flight, and that is assuming the volcanic ash is not an issue then.

An upside of the flight ban are the beautifully clear blue skies in the UK completely devoid of vapour trails for days now. Not sure what effect, if any, this has on VHF/UHF tropo or even sporadic-E conditions.

DX birds: swallows have arrived

This morning I saw that the first swallows of the spring had arrived in our village. The swallows fly from Southern Africa all the way to Europe every spring arriving between late March and the end of April. Many nest in the same nest for years and years. The returning swallows, house martins and swifts remind me that this magical journey has been done for thousands of years and that we humans are just one small part of the Earth's diversity.

New 80m AM transceiver kit from Small Wonder Labs

Dave Benson K1SWL has produced a QRP 80m AM rig with a crystal controlled TX and 50kHz tunable receiver. Full details at http://smallwonderlabs.com/Retro-75.htm including a PDF builders guide. There is also a Yahoo Group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SWLRetro75/

VLF amateur DX in Poland (290kms) on 9.6kHz

Marcin SQ2BXI has sent me this message today (April 17th 2010):

In last night we have VLF eksperiment in 9,6kHz in SP2KDS Club.Club signal copied Jacek SQ5BPF -distance 290km.
Movie tranmiter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sn6AmpkwlU&feature=player_embedded
and Polish page: http://www.sp2kds.pl/136khz/298-pierwsze-proby-nadajnika-w-pamie-marzycieli.html

Next experiments will soon have to 8.970kHz...
73! Marcin SQ2BXI

Next 8.97kHz German test delayed 2 weeks

Stefan DK7FC says it will be a couple of weeks before his next VLF test transmission on 8.97kHz. This gives me more time to get the RX ready.

Icelandic fireworks - lots more to come?

Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to be getting worse with more activity recently. Disruption to air flights in the N.Atlantic may become more common. See this article in New Scientist.

Ham and other books on eBay - still time to grab a bargain

My ham and other books including some magazines about the remote island of Tristan da Cunha (ZD9) selling on eBay still have a few days to run, so you still have time to get a bargain. Check out http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/rlapthorn