Sporadic-E season

We are now approaching the summer sporadic-E season in the northern hemisphere with excellent 10m, 6m and 4m (plus 2m on a few occasions) propagation across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and sometimes far beyond.

On 6m and 10m it is possible to work out to around 2000 miles quite easily with very simple omni-directional antennas and a few watts by single or multi-hop Es.

With some luck much further is possible: a few summers back I recall the thrill of working the USA on 6m with 2.5W out from the FT817 (via a coax cable with around 3dB loss) to a V2000 vertical. ERP was just over 1W. Of course CW was used for this QSO.

Keep an eye out on these bands in the next few months as you may be surprised what can be copied. Better equipped QRO stations will be working South America, deep into Africa and Japan on 6m. Even when the sunspots don't play ball, we'll still have summertime Es. Half the fun is the surprise openings to distant places that appear and sometimes disappear within a few minutes. At other times the lower VHF bands can be wide open with S9 DX signals for hours and hours.

RSGB UK VHF/UHF Activity Contests - Tuesday nights

This year I keep forgetting to have a go in the regular UKAC contests every Tuesday evening. Activity in these is usually very good and they are great fun. Last year I went out in the field to a local high spot on both 70cm and 2m and achieved some good results with just 2.5W - remember I only found out the FT817 "3 blobs" setting was not 5W in December!  Before moving in to my new East Anglian "hilltop" QTH - well it is 20m ASL :-) - I think I'll have to do some of these contests /P from the new back garden to see how the new location will be on VHF and UHF. 

Trying to fix an HP8640B sig gen ....and failing

The disconnected shaft is just to the RHS of the YIG oscillator

In my days as a young engineer (that's a long time ago) one of the "modern" pieces of test gear on the bench was an HP8640B signal generator. I used one, on and off, throughout my RF design days in the 1970s and 1980s.. On retirement I managed to borrow one on indefinite loan from a colleague who managed to buy some of the old stock items when well past their useful lifetimes. This has worked OK for several years but a few months ago the fine tune control shaft fell off inside the box. It is not broken, it just became disconnected.  Today I attempted to fix it and expected it to be easy. I could see that it was basically 2 pieces of metal connected with a small plastic part. But can I get at it?  Can I heck!

You forget how USELESS 1960s and 1970s designs were in terms of ease of manufacture and repair. To get at the part, it looks like you have to take apart about 1 zillion screws and plastic cog wheels, and all because the designer didn't put the control about 5mm  to the left, in which case none of these complicated mechanical arrangements would have been needed!  These days, where competition, manufacturing and repair costs matter, the design would not be so unnecessarily complicated. After trying to join the 2 pieces together for nearly an hour, I gave up.  In the coming days I'll return the 8640B to its owner and I expect he'll have the manual and the patience to fix it. My eyesight is also not as good as it was and that didn't help.

The tiny Elecraft XG3 signal generator (about the size of a pack of cards) would do all I need (and a lot more) and I think will be a good investment. It also weighs about 1/100th the weight of the 8640B. I am not after a signal generator with professional calibration and noise floor performance, just a simple way of checking the performance of simple receivers.

Unless absolutely necessary KISS - keep it simple stupid. This applies as much to professional gear as to amateur gear. Don't make life harder than it need be.

The KD1JV Survivor 75/80m SSB transceiver

http://www.qrpkits.com/images/survivor04a.jpg

A recent visit to Hendricks Kits shows they now sell a new (to me at least) 10W pep 80m SSB transceiver called the KD1JV Survivor inspired by the Epiphyte 80m design of a quarter of a century ago. Parts for the latter became increasingly difficult to find and this new radio uses modern parts and increases the power out. A very small, 10W pep, SSB rig for 80m is an attractive idea and is sure to be popular, especially for holiday and field use. In its basic form it is around $100 and a little more if the digital display option is added.

The specs are:

• ~10W pep @ 13.8V
• 0.2uV receiver sensitivity
• 5 pole crystal ladder filter for selectivity
• 325 or 175 kHz tuning range, selectable at build
• Coarse and Fine tuning controls
• 8 ohm - 500 mW speaker output
• SSB, CW, and, "TUNE" mode
• 50mA Rx current (with optional Digital Dial)
• Inexpensive electret microphone input
• All through hole construction
• Professional silk screened and solder masked pcb
• Full aluminum chassis w/bail, cutout for optional digital dial
• Small size, 6" x 4" x 1.5"
• Assembled weight, w/dd: 330g./11.6 oz.
• 13.8 @ 2A, min. recommended power supply

Waters and Stanton respond on the FT817ND price increase

Today I received an email from Mark Francis, the sales director at Waters & Stanton PLC regarding the price of the FT817ND. You may recall I was suspicious that the price had risen when the Yen was weakening.

Mark explained that they are working to the tightest of margins these days and the price is basically set by Yaesu. He also pointed out that compared with 25 years ago we are getting a lot more for our money reminding me that back then the same money would have bought just a 2m FT290, whereas now we get a multi-band HF/VHF/UHF, multi-mode transceiver.

So, I stand corrected and accept what Mark has said.

I'm still looking around for the best deal on a new FT817ND to compliment my 12 year old FT817 that has been used just about every day since I bought it, but may well buy from W&S if they can match the best UK price.

Windows PC bargain

After some deliberation because of adverse reviews I ordered an Asus X101ch netbook from Amazon last week. When it arrived I added a 4GB class 10 SD card running Readyboost, deleted the junk software that was not needed, added MS Essentials virus protection and got going.

Well, for under £170 new I am blown away! This little machine is great: I have already used it for WSPR and had my first JT9-1 QSO with it on 20m just a few minutes ago. Spectran seems to work too. For web browsing it is just fine. The screen resolution and clarity are good. I have not had it slow down once and it has, touch wood, not crashed yet.

In fact my view is this is an excellent little 10.1 inch Win7 netbook for the things I need. Although intended as a second PC for /P use (optical beaconing and VLF in the field) it is currently being used as my main PC and working beautifully.

The windows experience index by the way is 3.2, which I think is average.

ATV today

Amateur TV seems to be in decline these days with fewer and fewer interested. A well known ATV local G3KKD reports activity well down in recent times.

In a move aimed at reversing the trend G8YTZ has announced some Amateur Digital TV TX and RX modules. However, when visiting Justin's site I was flabergasted by the prices: over £700 for the transmitter and  over £300 for the receiver! To attract newcomers surely some simple low cost modules retailing below £100 are needed.

Another version of my 472kHz transverter (G8AGN)

Emeritus Prof Barry Chambers G8AGN from Sheffield (more usually a microwaves and nanowaves operator) has just sent me a couple of photos of his version of my 472kHz transverter that he's just finished. Unlike me, Barry sensibly put it in a decent sized aluminium box which will help reduce heat affecting the LO frequency stability. 

G8AGN's version of the 472kHz transverter

I've lost count how many of these transverters, or variants thereof, have now been built but there must be a good few in use around the world now. I have still to box up the 137kHz version which was used a few months ago to span 250km with just the earth-electrode antenna.

Japanese Yen and radio gear prices

Today alone the pound-yen exchange rate has improved by over 4% in favour of the pound: basically Japanese goods are 4% cheaper than yesterday. UK dealers, please note: your customers are expecting product prices for Japanese radios to FALL please in the coming days and not rise!

The yen-pound exchange rate is now around 23% better (for purchasers of Japanese equipment) than a year ago, so some VERY good deals should be expected on Yaesu, Icom and Kenwood products.

A couple of 20m JT9 QSOs in the log already

QSO with UA4PPQ on 20m JT9-1 today

Well that was pretty easy: I loaded the latest software, listened a bit, then called CQ in JT9-1 and managed a couple of QSOs within 15 minutes (it takes about 6 minutes per QSO). Reports also received from the USA, Canada and Siberia, so everything working well.

The mode certainly seems to be very useful on HF and takes up very little bandwidth - the scale on the screenshot above is in Hz above 14.078MHz, which is the USB dial frequency.

Using 2.5W to the end fed Par 10/20/40 antenna, but reports suggest much lower power would be fine too. Now QSYed to 28.078 MHz USB dial JT9-1 and calling CQ.