I came across this video when looking at (W2LJ) blog and it just goes to show some people are just willing to learn something new no matter what it is and with abit of effort what can be achieve.
Salute to him!
"Be bored or interested, but never idle" - Jacob Markham (@tortelikeatiger)
At 0940hrs I switched on my WSPR beacon, lets see what today brings as the DX cluster looks promising!
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| 28Mhz QSO's |
Update 2224hrs
Well abit better but still poor. Plus the station down by Madagascar is a France SWL who location is wrong I believe?
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| 28MHz WSPR spots |
As always I forget about the RSGB contests and today was 70MHz CW contest. I was able to catch the last 1 hour and abit. I made one QSO with GM4CXM 539 report and then I tried with two other G stations but was unlucky and didnt manage to complete the contact. I know some people have been on for few hours taking part but when the contest finishes everyone just disappears!
Bands like 70Mhz I feel need the activity and the contest should start the activity and people should hang around allowing others to work each other who don't do contest?
10M WSPR
Has there been some solar activity knocking out the HF bands or are the servers down? I've been on WSPR from around 9am and looking at the WSPR maps I've not been spotted once.....
As I have been repointing the brickwork on the front garden wall, I decided to leave my WSPR transmitters on.
I now have two decided WSPR transmitter, W5OLF 10M WSPR-AXE-CW and I recently picked up a 2nd hand WSPRlite that I mainly use on 20M.
Just before I checked the online WSPR map my web browser always boots up on the RSGB DX cluster page. After looking at what had been worked by other stations on 10M today I was quite disappointed when I saw my WSPR spots! I know there are quite a few stations montoring so conditions must be poor.
The WSPR-AXE-CW is 500mW and has its own decided EFHW
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| 28Mhz WSPR spots with 500mW |
20M had quite a few reports across Europe and two spots across the pond. The WPSRlite puts out 200mW and the antenna is EFHW (PAR 40/20/10M) slightly higher up at both ends.
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| 14Mhz WSPR spots with 200mW |
Left the the FT-817ND with the V-2000 on 70cms this evening and was quite suprised what I could receive. I did try and call a few stations but with 2.5watts I wasn't expecting much.
As I'm not a major VHF/UHF op and use it for local QSO's my coax is only RG-8mini so some loss but able to catch a few station PH2M being my best ODX at 519kms.
For some reason not all spots were uploaded to PSK reporter as I did see stations in and around London calling.
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| 70cms FT8 |
Yesterday, for a change we had some good weather even though they predicted rain! So I quickly got the 70MHz halo antenna from the loft and mounted it outside on the same mast I use for my Diamond V-2000.
The 70MHz halo is a commerically made antenna I bought from a company in the UK (Moonraker). Following there measurements I was able to get a match of 1.6:1 but it's not until I done a larger sweep on the AA-600 analzyer I noticed a better dip around 67MHz at 1.1 so at some point will need to make the halo elements shorter and fine tune it again.
Even so the beacon has been running for the last 24hrs and I have received two reports via email from stations approx 25miles away. Jeremy M0XVF can hear the beacon but at the moment struggling to decode the FT8 and Terry G1LPS can receive FT8 and CW loud and he's also using a halo. Today Terry emailed saying he found the beacon very useful to do some tweaks his end and now receiving the beacon at +10.
This is one of the reasons I set up the beacon as it will hopefully help people carry out the necessary checks/tweaks to there setup.
