6m FT8 (mainly RX)

Yet again, I am back on 6m FT8. After a very brief CQ call earlier (2.5W, 2 UK spots) I am now RX only. There appears to be plenty of Es about.

Best DX currently on 6m FT8 RX is S01WS (3075km) in Western Sahara. So far, 21 different stations spotted in 9 countries on 6m FT8 RX.

UPDATE 1646z: 6m looks more like 20m! Plenty of Es again today and yet again more northern latitude stations logged. At the moment 6m FT8 is still good.

UPDATE 1725z: 21 countries spotted on 6m FT8 today. I have lost count of the number of stations.

UPDATE 2137z: Yet again I am spotting stateside stations on 6m FT8 RX. So far, on my very basic system, I have spotted 4 stations in the north of the USA or in Canada. Es? I somehow doubt this, but some sort of chordal E layer? Maybe. Signals are quite strong although I expect these stations are running high power and big beams.

July solar data

This is now available and shows how quiet the sun was last month with low sunspot numbers and low flux.

See http://www.solen.info/solar/

Insurance crappery - NOT amateur radio

Every year I get the same nonsense. I have never made a claim on my home insurance, yet the amount creeps up.

Yet again, I rang up and said it was too much. At first they offered to increase the excesses to which I replied , "no, I want the same policy but for less". Yet again I was offered a "loyalty bonus" and the premium dropped 15%. Such rubbish!!! Why not offer loyal customers decent premiums in the first place?

No doubt I shall have to do the same with my car insurance.

It really p**sses me off. It is all so unnecessary. They depend on customers just paying up and not complaining. No doubt I shall have to ring up next year too.

Miracles do happen on 6m

This is probably my most treasured QSL card. It is for a transatlantic 6m CW QSO in 2007 when I was running about 1W ERP. That evening 6m sounded like 20m and was filled with stateside SSB and CW signals. That was before FT8! The propagation was summer Es.

More recently, I have been mainly looking on 6m FT8 RX with the occasional TX period. I am using my FT817ND (at 2.5W out) and the V2000 vertical omni antenna fed with cheap CB coax.

Sunspots - Saturday August 4th 2018

Solar flux is 69 today and the SSN 11. A=6 and K=1.

BOTs? - NOT amateur radio

Visitor numbers to one of my other blogs suddenly shot up. Guess what, this coincided with a great increase in visits from Russia. Now, the Russians could suddenly have taken a great interest in one of my other blogs, but numbers up by five times? Suspicious.

It is some time since those with malicious intent have taken an interest in this blog. I keep a pretty close eye on all my blogs and change passwords often. If anything does slip through that looks like bots or irrelevant rubbish, it gets deleted.

Moral - my blogs are a waste of time for BOTs and those after free adverts.

Go away.

No rallies?

Maybe it is the time of year, but notifications I used to get about UK rallies seem to have stopped. Perhaps the person who did this (at the RSGB?) has stopped sending them out. As it is August and the UK weather is good, I would have expected to have been swamped. The other explanation is the person is on holiday.

No 6m today

Tomorrow I expect someone will tell me, "you should have been on 6m yesterday as conditions were the best for years".  It always happens!  Still, 10m FT8 RX has been good and much better than I dared hope, so all is not lost.

One thing our hobby has taught me: this is just a hobby and there is always tomorrow. The main objective is to have fun whatever "turns you on".

HF conditions

For the next two years we can expect HF conditions to deteriorate still further. The most probable time for the next solar minimum is sometime in 2020, although we have to be some way past to be sure. Luckily, modes like FT8 have come to the rescue allowing us to find openings that in the past might have been missed. At the moment the "experts" are expecting the next peak to be similar to the last one, although no-one can be sure.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/hfcondx .

Quiet lane - NOT amateur radio

When on holiday last week at Home next the Sea in Norfolk we had glorious weather. Most mornings we did a walk before breakfast.