10m 500mW WSPR TX (Tuesday)

 At about 0930z I decided to try 10m WSPR as the antenna was free when I went on 6m FT8.

UPDATE  1030z:  No spots yet.

6m 5W FT8 (Tuesday)

 At  about 0930z, I QSYed to 6m FT8.

UPDATE 1025z:  Spotted by 8 stations, some in mainland Europe.

Gaza

Politically, I have always been a "floating voter"  voting for the party that best represents my views.

Whilst fully understanding the revulsion felt by Israel for the horrific acts by Hamas on October 7th and the wish by its enemies to see the destruction of the state if Israel, I am sickened by the apparent wish to destroy and drive out the people of Gaza. The Israeli government will claim their only wish is to destroy Hamas.

In the eyes of the world, Israel is seen as the aggressor in Gaza. You would think after the sheer horror of the holocaust in WW2, they would not want innocents to suffer.

The aggression and killing must stop. 

The only long-term peace will come from talking around a table. All sides will have to make some compromises.

Does Israel really believe they will defeat Hamas?  Their actions are likely to result in even more people turning against Israel.

Give peace and reconciliation a chance!

WSJT-X

 Although the officially released version is 2.7, my friend Steve G1KQH has pointed out that there is a release candidate of version 3.0. This is designed for experimenters and beta testers and may be unstable. It is usually released as a "proper" version some months later.

See https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx.html .

10m 3W FT8 (Tuesday)

My gear was turned on just before breakfast.

UPDATE 0830z:  9 stations spotting me. Some Es?

UPDATE  1347z: Back on 3W 10m FT8 after a spell on 6m QRP FT8. Just a single spot from a local.

Sunspots- Tuesday September 16th

 Solar flux is 130 and the SSN 110. A=48 and K=5.

Noise floors

Most times I have no issues with QRP, but we all know that in many built-up areas noise can be an increasing problem. Over the years we have more gadgets in our homes which can produce RFI. Over time this is likely to get worse.

Weak signals can sometimes be masked by this noise, meaning QRP signals would be harder to spot. It will be interesting to see if QRP operation gets more difficult in the years ahead. 

With narrow modes like FT8 (50Hz wide only) and WSPR (6Hz wide needed) this can be less of a problem as we can avoid noise on certain frequencies. Often man-made noise can drift.

Often people are surprised how low the noise floor can be when out /P.

Windy!!

For this early in the autumn it is unusually windy here. 

Winds in October are common, but it is very unusual to get strong winds here when the trees are still with green leaves. 

It would not surprise me if we see some trees in the UK uprooted.

10m 2W FT8 (Monday)

My gear was turned on at about 0832z.

UPDATE  1030z:  Spotted by just 1 local and a station in Israel. Power increased to 3W and re-synced clock.  One station in Zambia on RX, but not on PSKreporter.

UPDATE 1826z: Just 6 stations spotted me all day. See map.

Really low cost HF radios

There are some very low cost radios available (I presume) from China. This review was on YouTube and the writer on YouTube feels the quality is improving. This is available from Banngood for about £60!!