Anglesey Abbey - NOT amateur radio

These flowers were seen at Anglesey Abbey a few days ago. My wife did the collage.

Royal Funeral - NOT amateur radio

Like millions around the world, we watched the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh from Windsor Castle. 

I am not a great royalist and cannot imagine the royal family surviving another 50 years unless it changes. When the queen dies the English royal family will be in mortal peril. No, I think what was really being mourned was the end (or very near end) of an era.

Privilege, as a result of who you are, will end. Minor royals who live wealthy lives off UK taxpayers will end. I think the royal family has to evolve. I cannot think of a suitable president should we become a republic. No, I think we will still have a royal family, but very different.

I feel very sorry for the queen who has lost a lifelong husband and companion. They we married for 73 years, which is a long time!

10m Phaser FT8 kit

Apparently, this 4W SSB kit designed for 10m FT8 is about to ship from the USA. Being designed by Dave Benson, K1SWL, it should be good. All SMA parts are already fitted.

As well as my DSB rig, the 10FT8R, this is a project I must build.

Yet more incentive to get my external 10m antenna up!

See https://midnightdesignsolutions.com/phaser/ . 

Twente SDR

My very first post was about the web SDR at Twente in the Netherlands. That was in 2008! It is still there.

See http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ .

10m FT8 RX

My 10m FT8 gear (2.5W to the indoor loop) was turned on at 0808z. After a very brief TX period, I am on RX only. So far, no spots.

UPDATE 1018z: Just G0FWX (160km) spotted so far. No Es or F2 propagation evident here yet.

UPDATE 1120z: 7 stations spotted. Looks like Es to Iberia.

UPDATE 1700z: 11 stations spotted today. See the log for details including one from Brazil.

Sunspots - Saturday April 17th 2021

 77 19 5 Solar flux is 77 and the SSN 44. A=19 and K=5.

Loops

As you may know I have had a good deal of success with tiny indoor loop antennas. The photo shows the loop for 10m. 

At the moment I have no HF antennas outside, so I do not know how well my loop antennas compare with "real" antennas.   

All I can say is the loops work much better than I expected.

Home video conversion - NOT amateur radio

Like many, we had lots of VHS and Video 8 tapes, but no way to play them! A few weeks ago I had these converted to DVD. Later today I hope to copy these to the PC as a backup. Later, I will copy these to flash drives for our sons who feature a lot. Many of these have not been seen for years! 

We should have done this years ago, but I suspect, like many, we were nervous of sending these precious memories away. What if they were lost? 

In the end, we used a company called EachMoment who were excellent. At every stage of the process we were kept informed. The resulting DVDs came back with the original tapes about 2 weeks later. Thankfully, even after all these years, they copied fine.

I would have no hesitation using them again.

See https://eachmoment.co.uk/

Haircut day - NOT amateur radio

On Wednesday I had my hair cut in the garden by my son as the photo shows .  My wife had her hair cut too at a local salon. 

Shack some years ago

The photo shows my shack some years ago. I am a dedicated QRPer and rarely use much power.