10m FT8 QRP TX (Wednesday)

 8 stations spotted me today on 10m WSPR with my 500mW WSPR beacon by W5OLF.

China - NOT amateur radio

Recently, I attended a University of the Third Age lecture on China. There is little doubt that China will once again become a major world power in the 21st century. 

There is always a tendency to judge China by western standards. In many ways we question their records on human rights. At the same time it was the UK that started the opium wars, and gun crime and treatment of ex-slaves in the USA is hardly great! 

We have to be very careful not to judge by our western standards: we have been, and still are, far from perfect. Culturally, China differs from us in many ways. The Chinese are far from perfect, but so are we in the west.

It would be good if we could all strive for a better world, but not preaching as if we are perfect, when we in the west are not.

Solar predictions

 My favourite website for solar data usually updates early in the month. The last I heard was the forecast for the next solar peak was slightly better than the last peak. We seem to be slightly ahead of predictions. Solar activity forecasting is becoming better as time goes by, but predictions vary wildly.

See https://www.solen.info/solar/ .

10m QRP WSPR TX

In the last day, my 500mW 10m WSPR signal has been copied by 13 stations as shown. This morning I was getting local spots by G4KPX (14km) and spots again by EA8BFK (2880km).

17m FT8 RX (Wednesday)

This is a band I have not tried with the Wellgood active RX loop, so I am giving it a try. It has been on about 15 minutes and so far 39 stations spotted on RX. As far as I can tell, it works well.

UPDATE 1107z: 124 stations spotted with the furthermost BG0CHC (6142km).

UPDATE 1927z:  605 stations spotted today om 17m FT8 RX with the Wellgood active loop.

Two years ago - NOT amateur radio

 

This was nearby Anglesey Abbey in 2019. As you can tell, the sun was shining.

137kHz WSPR overnight

As an experiment I was on 137kHz WSPR overnight with the Wellgood active loop RX antenna, but spotted nobody!! 

Sunspots - Wednesday December 1st 2021

Solar flux is 90 and the SSN 61.  A=11 and K=4.

137kHz WSPR

At the moment I am on 137kHz WSPR with the Wellgood active loop. It will stay on overnight. It would be a miracle if I copy anything! As usual, lots of stations on RX, but very few on TX.

UPDATE 2044z:  Still no spots, although I am not surprised.

Scale - NOT amateur radio

For a very long time I have been puzzled by scale. One the one hand the universe seems immensely vast. On the other hand at the atomic scale things are immensely small. We experience things at our scale. 

What I wonder is this: does something link these two? Is the universe actually within us? Our brains cannot begin to comprehend, but our thinking about both the macro and micro scales has radically changed in 200 years.

In another 200 years people may look back at us in amazement.