The Backs yesterday - NOT amateur radio

The Backs are what the backs of the Cambridge colleges are known as. They back onto the R.Cam, famous for punting! The photo shows the approach to King's College yesterday. I don't think I have posted it before. The photo has appeared in many places already, so if this is twice, please accept my apologies. 

My wife took the photo and put it on 365project, which she has done every day for over 10 years now. This  is totally free and is a good visual "Pepys diary" of life.

10m QRP FT8 (Wednesday) with the QDX

At the moment I am on 10m FT8 with the QRP QDX rig. So far today (after about 15 minutes) 11 stations have spotted me. The QDX is tiny!!

UPDATE 1143z: 13 stations spotting me today (see map).

UPDATE 1610z:  So far today, 58 unique stations have spotted my QRP FT8 TX.

UPDATE 1841z:   91 unique stations have spotted me today. Furthermost on RX is TW4OGX (15697km) in the Wallis and Futuna Is in the Pacific.

Other sites

This is just a reminder of the other sites I maintain. Hopefully, you will find some inspiration on these. Overall, I hope you have fun.

http://www.g3xbm.co.uk
https://www.youtube.com/@G3XBM
http://g3xbm-qrp.blogspot.com/

Free PDF G3XBM Project Scrapbook

CDARC Wednesday Net

At 1900z on Wednesday evenings, the Cambridge and district amateur radio club (CDARC) holds a very informal net on 145.55 MHz FM. Anyone in range is welcome whether a club member or not. Usually there are between 3 and 7 members on. Polarisation is vertical and there is a web SDR if you are having difficulties receiving. I thought the link for this SDR was on the CDARC website, but cannot find it. 

Most people on the net are in the greater Cambridge area (surrounding villages). The net usually lasts for 20-60 minutes, but people come and go as they want. It is rarely technical!

See cdarcvhfrx.hopto.org:8073 for the webSDR.

Matching the earth-electrode antenna in the ground

To allow the auto ATU in the FT-710 to match the earth-electrode antenna on 80m (see the excellent results yesterday) I had to use this transformer.  As you can see, it is not pretty!!  With it, the load presented to the FT-710 was obviously less than 3:1 as it matched well.

12 years ago

Earth-mode experiments in 2011

 
This was my earth-mode signal 4.5km away from home in 2011 at 1.095 kHz using Spectran software on the PC. Strictly speaking, I suppose this is ULF!

It is a long time since I have done any earth-mode experiments, but my health has got in the way. It would be good to do some more experiments.

Sunspots - Wednesday April 12th 2023

Solar flux is 143 and the SSN 103. A=6 and K=1.

70cm activity contest

After copying no stations at all (!) I gave up. I expect the next 70cm FT8 activity contest will be much better!

80m FT8 (Tuesday)

As 6m was so poor, I QSYed to 80m FT8 using the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground. Although I am receiving spots of my signal from right across Europe, it says I am receiving none. This is rubbish as I can see loads of stations locally. Either there is a delay with uploads from me or, more probably, my spots are not getting to PSKreporter. Shortly I shall do reset to see if this cures it.

UPDATE 1922z:  The reset did the trick with lots of spots on RX. On TX 36 unique station spots of me so far.

UPDATE 2119z:  112 stations have spotted my 10W 80m FT8 TX this evening. Now QRT on all bands.

6m FT8 (Tuesday)

In a word, hopeless. I have been on 6m FT8 for about a hour and have been spotted very strongly by just one station not too far away (50km). On RX absolutely nobody copied.

UPDATE 1708z: Still useless!  Just 2 stations have spotted me and I have spotted nobody! Soon be time to try another band. I might give 80m FT8 a go with the earth-electrode "antenna" in the ground - probably after tea.