JF1OZL - still the best!

http://www.intio.or.jp/jf10zl/ is a magic site if you are keen on simple QRP homebrew radios. Kazuhiro Sunamura has such a creative talent and I just love his hand-drawn schematics and layouts. He has a unique ability to turn a few components into a fantastic QRP SSB, DSB, AM or CW transceiver. Not to be missed!

VLF resources

Radio Waves below 22kHz at http://www.vlf.it/ is an excellent place to find information on VLF and ELF natural radio. Renato Romero who hosts this page also has a book called Radio Nature on the subject.

At some point I want to restart my interest in this part of the spectrum but at the moment I am short of time.

DX Crystal sets

Jim's Crystal Radio Page at http://www.hobbytech.com/crystalradio/crystalradio.htm has some very neat crystal set designs with high performance receivers. These units also look like works of art as they are so elegant.

There are other excellent resources at Gollum's Crystal Receiver World http://www.oldradioworld.de/gollum/ .

VHF AM controversy

This Sunday's RSGB News contains a piece about AM operation on 145.8MHz in Scotland and alleges that some AM operators have been deliberately interfering with International Space Station communications on the same frequency. I do not know if this is true or not. If it is, then it should stop: there is no place for such behaviour in our fine hobby.

What I do know is that the RSGB has been EXTREMELY slow in publishing frequencies for VHF AM in the UK. Although people have been urging the RSGB to put an AM "centre of activity" or calling frequency in the band plans, this has still not happened, although a brief mention of 144.55MHz has been added in the footnotes a few months ago.

My recommendations are:

(1) All AM users in the UK migrate to 144.55MHz.
(2) AM operation on 145.8MHz should be phased out as soon as possible.
(3) Use of 145.8MHz for AM should be done with care to avoid any interference with ISS operations.
(4) The RSGB should publish 144.55MHz in the 2m bandplan as the agreed centre of activity for AM users.

AM is a great mode allowing simple homemade gear to make useful contacts. It would be a shame if AM users got a bad name as a result of this negative publicity.

S54S website

The website of Aleksander S54S has some great circuit ideas including many fine QRP transceivers such as the Tinka shown here. See http://lea.hamradio.si/~s57nan/ham_radio/index.html

Ham gear reliability "league table"?

As yet, I've not had a single failure with any piece of commercial ham radio gear I've owned and operated in nearly 40 years. OK, the gear is usually QRP, working in a benign shack environment and not abused. Perhaps I'm just lucky.

I'm wondering if anywhere there is a "league table" showing how reliable various makes and models of ham radio gear are? It sounds like something that someone may have compiled but I've not seen one. The nearest are the reviews on eHam.net.

Back home again

Now back home after our holiday in NZ. It is a wonderful country with splendid scenery and very kind and friendly people. We felt very "at home" there despite being on the opposite side of the planet from the UK. It is good to know such nice places and people still exist in our crowded little world.

As yet, I've not managed to do any operating back home as we are looking after our little grandson. Hopefully I will get on the air this week in the evenings.

ZL operation (more)

This is a picture of ZL/G3XBM/P operating from the hotel balcony in Queenstown, South Island, NZ. Nothing heard or worked on this occasion. Next real opportunity is Thursday March 12th when we get back to Christchurch. The far west coast of South Island around Haast is pretty remote with no mobile phone coverage at all, the nearest fuel 90-120kms away, nearest fire station 2 hours away and only one BC station audible on MW and Band 2 FM.

ZL operation

Although I still take a listen most nights with the VX2 handheld, I have to report that sightseeing is taking a higher priority than QRP operation on 70cms FM in ZL-land at the moment.

The country is SO beautiful, so clean, so uncrowded and the people everywhere are genuinely kind, helpful and interested in you. New Zealand is a lovely place.

Next 70cms FM operation likely to be March 12th when we arrive back in Christchurch on our last night before flying to VK-land to see friends then flying home.

ZL QSO in Nelson

Worked ZL3SCO in Nelson on 70cms on Feb 23rd. Turns our Brian comes from the UK. He is a keen model railway man and they have a busy club in Nelson, NZ.

I continue to spot HF ham antennas in ZL-land. The last was a 3-el HF beam in Kaikoura on the east coast of South Island. If only I could work some with QRP when back home in the UK!

First QSOs in ZL land

This evening, Friday Feb 20th, I managed to work ZL1UHR via the Wellington repeater linked into their national linked repeater network. He was in Hamilton NZ. The QSO was with my little VX2 handheld running 1W to the helical from my hotel room in Wellington, NZ. Later I worked ZL1SAT up in Auckland.

Today the weather has been dreadful: really heavy rain all the way from Taupo down to Wellington (355kms) by car. Tomorrow things look a little better and when we cross to South Island the sun is expected to shine again. New Zealand is a wonderful place with friendly people, great scenery and no crowds. The picture is of two delightful Maori girls we met on Wednesday when we went to a Maori evening with dancing, singing and Maori food.

Lake Taupo repeaters (NZ)

This was a picture my XYL took a few days ago in the Bay of Islands. Isn't it just idyllic and a perfect spot for operating with the FT817, although I didn't bring it with me.....

Today we arrived at Lake Taupo in central North Island, New Zealand. The last few days I've been too busy enjoying the natural world to do any ham radio but I hope to check out the local VHF/UHF repeaters tonight or tomorrow. I have printed out a list and a map of these.

On our travels I've spotted a couple of HF antennas so there are at least two ZL stations on HF in North Island!

My holiday blog is at http://roglap.blogspot.com if you want to follow progress.

New Zealand repeaters

Just arrived in ZL-land and tried listening to the UHF repeaters in Auckland, North Island. Although hearing stations on the linked national network of repeaters on 439.875MHz in Auckland, I have been unable to access it. This may be because my VX2 signal is just too weak or I may need a CTCSS code or DCS code I don't know.

Anyway, the scenery here up on the Bay of Islands at Russell is just breathtaking so who needs ham radio right now....

Dinner with W6PI

Last night I met up with an old colleague and his XYL, Jon (now W6PI) in San Francisco for a meal. I used to work with Jon in Philips Paging back in the late 1990s. Jon has been living in Fremont, CA since then. This was my second ham eyeball ham QSO that day.

Eyeball QSO

By chance, waiting for a tour bus in San Francisco today, I got talking with someone who turned out to be a fellow ham - AC7FP from Lake Oswego in Oregon. George is a keen HF man who likes working 75m and 20m DX on the key.

Also, heard my first stateside ham activity on 146.625 - the repeater run by KN6EF (if I copied the call right) with the words "the east side repeater".

W6/G3XBM

Currently in San Francisco where the weather is pleasantly sunny. May take a listen on 2m FM later.
This picture is of the Canadian Rockies taken at 11kms from the window of the 747-400.

Sunspots - slow start to 2009

The expected upturn in solar flux and sunspots have been very slow to materialise yet this winter, as yet. I haven't seen a very recent prediction from people like the solar physicist Hathaway who was, a few years ago, predicting a very large cycle 24 peak. The bets must now be on a much more modest peak?

My own experience on bands like 15 and 10m is we are still very much in the doldrums. Even the brief sunspot minimum openings I used to hear to South America (when I could work LU and PY stations even with 10W SSB) seem to be absent.

G3XIZ's 15mW successes - updated

Chris G3XIZ has just sent me an updated list of his beacon reports and 2-way QSOs with his 15mW FETer transceiver. His best 2-way DX is now over 450kms and he has worked 3 countries already. Remember this is ordinary speed CW, not QRSS and sub-hertz digital signal processing stuff. Chris has "good ears" and is a very good operator. A lot of his success is down to his skills.

He told me, "The little TX is doing far better than I had ever imagined and as a result I must now re-appraise my perception of QRP operations - Hi !"

Stealth antennas

Some very sensible advice on stealth (hidden/disguised) antennas is at G4ILO's website, from where I found the useful propagation table code on the RHS of this blog. http://www.g4ilo.com/stealth.html

Snow

Today we had more snow at this QTH than I can remember in a very long time, certainly for at least 18 years. Here is a picture of the G3XBM back garden today. The 15m end-fed long-wire antenna slopes from the house guttering down to a post in front of the tree in the back left of the picture. You can just make out the antenna wire.

FETer airing today

Hearing all about the great success Chris G3XIZ has had with his FETer transceiver, I fired mine up this afternoon and put a few CQs out on 3560. No takers yet, but have heard a couple of 2W QRP stations over 100kms away (G4ARI and G4FQZ) on the 1 FET receiver.

Earlier, G3XIZ worked GM3OXX for his furtherest 2-way QSO with his 15mW transceiver. This is a remarkable distance for such QRPP and such a simple receiver.

HF Maritime radio and CW?

I thought HF marine stations had abandoned CW, yet I heard 3 sending CW IDs today: IAR on 8.418MHz , SVO on 8.424MHz and A9M on 8.428MHz.

Topo Lighthouse EU-175

Just worked CU5T on 18MHz CW in the Azores. He gave me 599 when I was running 5W. This was the S.Jorge DX'pediton 2009 station to Topo Lighthouse.

QRPP 80m QSOs with G3XIZ

Just completed a nice QSO with G3XIZ 45kms away when he was using the FETer 15mW 1 FET transceiver. I gave him RST529. After our contact finished Chris went on to work Richard G3CWI (Macclesfield) and then Pat G0GMA (East Lincolnshire). Great stuff for 15mW! BTW, I was running real QRO (5W). Claude HB9CGL, in Switzerland, copied Chris's 15mW TX some hours earlier - amazing.

Listening to G3XIZ's 15mW 80m beacon

G3XIZ's beacon running 15mW on 3.555MHz to his FETer transceiver was excellent copy this morning. At peaks it was running RST569 at a distance of around 45kms.

Here is the sound clip of his signal at 10.10am today, 30 Jan 2009.

RQ or CQR call for quick report only?

When using QRP there are times when all I want is a quick report in response to a CQ and not a long QSO with names. QTH, WX, power, antennas and general chit-chat. I wonder if we should have a different CQ format for this e.g. RQ or CQR (meaning CQ for report only).

Is this a good idea or a daft one? Let me know what you think.

VHF AM Yahoo group

This is a picture of G4BYE's version of my own Fredbox 2m AM transceiver design - a neat unit his is complete with proper PCB.

Many blog readers are already members of the Yahoo VHFam group. To join visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VHFam/ and follow the joining instructions.

At last VHF AM operation has got a mention in the latest UK VHF bandplans with the agreed "centre of AM activity" being notified in the footnotes as 144.55MHz. This spot in the European all-modes area is also used by some other users - I hear SSTV here sometimes - so it is NOT an exclusive spot, rather somewhere to look for 2m AM activity in the first instance. There's some AM activity on 145.8 still in Scotland but it would be good if users there would move to 144.55 so this became a UK-wide spot on which AM activity is likely to be found. Users can also be found on 70.26MHz on 4m.

VHF AM gear can be very simple to make and AM is an ideal mode for QRP building and experimenting. There's plenty of ex-PMR AM gear still to be found for next to nothing, ripe for use on 2m/4m AM.

More FETers around

Today I hear that Bill Meara N2CQR and Chris Osborn G3XIZ have built FETer, 1 FET, transceivers. Chris was beaconing his 15mW version this afternoon and it has been copied here at RST229 and in Kent at RST339. You can see Bill's version at his famous Soldersmoke blog.

Rockbound?

Walking home from the bus stop today I noticed a tiny piece of clunch on the ground, a local chalk stone from the Cretaceous age, the period of geological time approximately 143-65 million years ago. In the stone were two small fossil shells. Amazing to think these two creatures were living not far from my home all that time ago.

....and radio is only just over 100 years old.

GQRP Club and SPRAT

Attached is the 6V6 valve transceiver by Geoff, G3YVF, from SPRAT magazine number 137 (Winter 2008/9). It uses 19 parts in all.

Join the GQRP club and receive the excellent SPRAT magazine every 3 months. The fee is only £6 per year (or equivalent in other currencies) which is excellent value. See: http://www.gqrp.org/join.htm for details on how to join. You can now pay with Paypal too if you prefer. BTW, if times got hard and all other radio mags had to go then SPRAT would be the one I'd keep.

Every quarter SPRAT is packed with circuits, ideas and news of interest to those who enjoy QRP. Back issues of editions 1-132 are also available on a GQRP club CD for just £5 if you are a club member.

Help in the shack?

Contest operating was a little slower this morning as I had a "little helper" in the shack. This is my 14 month old grandson who is staying with us at the moment.

He was fascinated by the morse key, so there is hope that a future radio ham is in the making.

Update from W2UW on his 20mW transceiver

My FETer (1 FET transceiver for 80m) appeared in SPRAT this month. The circuit is very much based on a 40m transceiver created by Glenn Yingling, W2UW. His original 40m version, on which mine was heavily based, is called the FET-1. Today I got a nice e-mail from him with an update on his results.

Dear Roger, I was surprised to see your little article in the sprat mag about your FETer, it was interesting. I am glad to see that you credited me.

By the way, you might be interested in knowing that I have made 451 QSOs with my little rig. I have not met my goal of working all of the states east of the Mississippi river. HI I still have 4 to go (Fla., Ala., Geo., and Miss.) They are way down there! I may have to wait until the next "peak".

I am 81 yrs. old and still think radio is "magic". Hi

Glenn

W2UW

451 QSOs with a tiny little 1 FET transceiver is pretty good going Glenn. Well done!

2-way transatlantic QRP

Just worked VE3DJX on 14.060MHz CW. He was using 5W to a 3el and I was using 5W to my (low) 15m long end-fed long wire. Despite the poor sunspot conditions it is still possible to make 2-way transatlantic QSOs using QRP with the most basic of stations and antennas.

2m AM now on the RSGB band plan

At last 2m AM gets a mention in the bandplan as published in the Feb 2009 edition of RadCom. Sadly not as the 144.55MHz "centre of activity" on the 2m chart, but rather as a comment in the footnotes.

Still this is better than nothing and people interested in 2m AM now know that 144.55MHz is the place of preference to centre AM operations. There is still interest in 2m AM as (a) simple gear is easy to build and (b) there is a lot of surplus ex-PMR AM gear around going for almost nothing. Also it is interesting to compare AM and FM as part of self-training.

It would be good if the AMers in GM-land would migrate off 145.8 down to 144.55 now so that all AM in the UK was on/around one common frequency.

HUGE 160m 3el yagi antenna

Take a look at this antenna for 160m and 80m. It is the antenna used by OH8X and is absolutely massive.

This is certainly not my idea of ham radio, and the complete antithesis of QRP, but you have to take your hat off to these guys for the engineering of this monster beam which weighs tons. I wouldn't fancy scraping the ice off in mid-winter!

Long-term HF deterioration?

Some time back I recall discussion about a theory that the ionosphere was not behaving nowadays as it was, say, 50 years ago. I'm not talking here about sunspot cycle issues but whether or not there are factors at work that mean HF comms today is more difficult than many years ago due to ionospheric structural changes. I'm also ignoring things like increased noise floors due to SMPSUs, lights etc.

Can anyone point me in the direction of any definitive references to this theory?

AA1TJ's 1 transistor transceiver

Take a look at Mike's neat 1 transistor VXO controlled 80m 80mW transceiver, The Reggie, which uses a passive RX with the VXO acting as LO for a heterodyne mixer. He's worked some decent distances with this modest little rig. Mike has a great website with plenty of other fine ideas. The little Reggie circuit continues to evolve so keep checking back to his site.

http://mjrainey.googlepages.com/reggie

Update 19/1/09: Mike tells me he has measured the MDS as -87dBm (using a sig gen and a stepped attenuator/20dB pad) which is pretty remarkable for essentially a passive RX using a switching mixer. It implies Mike can hear around -90dBm clearly in his ST3 headphones.

The spots return...

After weeks without sunspots the sun is showing signs of life again with solar flux levels around 70 (the highest for a year nearly) and sunspot numbers between 13-20 depending on who is doing the counting. Time will tell if this is the start of better things to come or another false dawn.

See http://www.solen.info/solar/

Some off-air historical ham recordings

Thank you to those of you who have submitted ham audio links. Here are some for starters. I will add others if people let me have links.

http://files.myopera.com/davews/files/vp8.mp3 A recording of Bob McLeod VP8LP in Goose Green on the 20m amateur band on the evening of the Argentine invasion in the mid-1980s made by Dave Sergeant G3YMC.

http://files.myopera.com/davews/files/zl3gq.mp3 A short recording of a CW contact with Peter Watson ZL3GQ in Christchurch, NZ made by Dave Sergeant G3YMC on 4th October 1977 when using just 10W at Dave's end.

http://www.qsl.net/wa5iyx/ra/zk1aa69a.ra ZK1AA 6m keyer/beacon in 1969.

http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Internet_and_Radio/Sounds/ has many different audio clips spanning many years and many bands.

Off-air historical ham recordings

Looking around for a site which has off-air historical ham recordings I found http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Internet_and_Radio/Sounds/ which has quite a lot.

Somewhere I have a reel-to-reel tape recording made off-air 42 years ago of G4PJ (Salcombe, Devon) and I also have a recording made at the peak of cycle 22 (I think) when I tuned across 10m SSB hearing stations from Europe, South America, the USA and ZD9 (Tristan) amongst others.

There is an excellent website for SW broadcast interval signals at
http://www.intervalsignals.net/ which I believe I've mentioned before.