Monday 24 December 2012

This is what happens when...

...I let a half decent long wire play with my 756proIII for the day on 30m.

Unfortunately, again, all of the tasty dx hears me but I can't hear them. I think the best reciprocal contact (i.e. close to proper QSO) here is Israel.

This is 30m, 5 watts, long wire. More than I normally use with the 817. But there isn't THAT much difference with the an 817 on 2.5W with no preamp, is there? That's 817,2.5W, poor LW, this one is a considerably more expensive Icom 756ProIII, sloghtly better LW and 5W

And a Happy Christmas to All

Saturday 22 December 2012

30m

It's easy to forget 30m. It's neither to long, nor too short, not too wide, and it's one of those suspicious WARC bands. For me, yesterday, it was the Goldilocks band. I couldn't get much out of 10m, and I didn't want to spend the day on 160m (I tend to drop down there at dusk), so 30m it was.

This is the whole day - from about 9AM until about 9PM 21st December. Operating at 2.5W. Most of the DX heard me, but I didn't hear them (usual poor antenna problems at M0DEV)- but I am perpetually surprised at how well I get out.

I'm running on 30m again today, but this time with 500mW. Clearly, a direct comparison doesn't mean a great deal, but it will be interesting. KK5MR has already spotted me from what appears from his station notes to be a relatively modest setup.

Monday 17 December 2012

Meteor Scatter

The recent Geminid meteor shower got me wondering whether I could hear anything with my current, rather lowly setup, having pretty much failed with satellites (that's another story...) so I set to to discover information on where the action is

It is not that easy to find, of course! http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-meteor-scatter.htm is quite informative on gear if not frequencies. So, having read and digested that I then went looking for where the skeds are arranged

Every web page points you to pingjockey, but as far as I can see nearly everything, if not everything, is US based. Then there's on4kst's pages. These are used by Europeans. Once logged in you'll find pages with QRGs on.

But in the end, I heard activity using the good old fashioned route of rotating the large knob on the front and listening. 144.370 seems to be used as a calling channel, certainly in Europe. Indeed, activity seems to be so sparse that the two calls I have heard so far have all opted to carry out the QSO on the channel, which certainly makes life easier

Then there's the mode. ISCAT seems to be the flavour used for 6m MS, because the bursts are longer. A slower mode is preferable. However, for 2m, FSK441 seems to be the mode of choice: it gets the entire message in several times in a short space of time.

So, I'm listening using FSK441 on 144.370. Fortunately, it's all recording what it hears and, much to my surprise, I have managed to capture a couple of CQ calls from foreign stations on my collinear.

The best so far is one from EA3AXV, captured at 16:02 on the 16th. Here's what I saw:

I wonder what power and antenna system he was using. he's about 1300km from me, so the capture is a good one

There is, according to the experts, no point in even trying a QSO without substantially more than 100W and a beam. The beam must be a mixed blessing, and I imagine one doesn't want too much directivity.

http://stardate.org/nightsky/meteors is a useful reference for when showers occur. But there is always activity.

Saturday 15 December 2012

JT65 encapsulated

JT65 transmissions in the 30m band plotted in three dimensions. To the right is time, to the left is frequency and up is "energy"

I do like representations like this.

Plotted with speclab - which is wonderful. And free.

Friday 14 December 2012

Using WSPR

I thought I'd try using WSPR to work out where to expend my loggable efforts this morning (the WX being fit for nothing else)

Five minutes on WSPRnet maps followed by a quick hour on 40m WSPR convinced me that 40m was a band worth trying. Here is the result of an hour or so this morning, on the 817 at 1W to a LW:

So, I get the better rig out, power about 20W, tune to 7.039MHz (I looked it up on http://hflink.com/jt65/ - I don't often try 40m JT65) and set up a JT65 CQ. Twenty minutes later, I have heard absolutely nothing. Eventually, I fetch up the PSKReporter map and discover three monitors on 40m, but they are all on 7.076MHz.

My bandplan says 7.076 is all modes but excludes digimodes.

Confused.

Anyway, I migrate up to 7.076 and, of course, it's knee deep in SSB. I've got one decode, but I can't see anything clear to TX into.

40m is a mess!

Wednesday 12 December 2012

DX-ing

One of the more annoying features of propagation is that our signals get weaker the further they travel. This adds to the general frisson of working DX and nowhere is this more apparent than with JT65 and the "weak" modes.

Let's talk hypothetically. I see a nice tasty piece of DX pop up on the decode list - let's say it's Hawaii or somewhere quite difficult to get from the UK. I'm running about 10W which, as far as I am concerned is about the reasonable limit (I might occasionally go up to 20W on 160m when it's silent and I know I am not getting out). What almost invariably happens is that a station nearer to the "dx" will call at the same time, and our friend only gets one decode - the stronger one. So I wait till next time. And so on

This makes working pile-ups in JT65 (an odd concept, I know, but it does happen) almost impossible. I've watched one or two and, what happens often is an arms race. The combatants are blissfully unaware of each others existence. All they know is that they are on frequency and the guy isn't responding. So it's a little tweak on the power. After two or three goes the power is quite clearly, shall we say, large, and neither party has got through. Progress is only made when one of the pair gives up.

Compare this with CW, where one can work split, and the callers can (and do...) smear out along a portion of spectrum so that the DX can pick them off one by one.

Now I have a low boredom threshold. I listen to CW pileups and maybe have a halfhearted go, but I don't stand much chance with 50W and a LW. I *can* work DX in JT65, but it's frustrating because there are unscrupulous players with large power knobs.

So, make it your New Year Resolution to support the DX Code of Conduct

The DX Code of Conduct

And, if you want a sad and slightly different tale, try reading Randy Johnson's piece here

Tuesday 11 December 2012

I wish...

This was not bidirectional. I heard him. He didn't hear me.
Nuuk and Greenland would be utterly great for me. But that's the frustration of WSPR - it's amazing to see what you can pick up using simple wire antennas (in my case, frozen to a height of 2m) but these aren't QSOs. I'm using 500mW, and he hasn't spotted me. Sometimes, they aren't *really* QSOs - but in this case it's nowhere near. He hasn't heard me. But there's still a draw here. I've spend the last hour footling around on 160m and have managed a DL. I get far more buzz from hearing an XP...

This particular screenshot is 80m.

The other WSPR frustration is that I have no really neat way of logging this.

Monday 3 December 2012

30m by accident


I ended up on 30m by accident. The 817 on 80m and the 756 on 160m didn't get on - desensing wasn't the word. The antennas were "coupled" in every sense of the word. So I stuck the 817 on 30m and 5W and left it to it.

This is a couple of hours this evening on my usual unsophisticated antenna system ( a bit of wire).

I must get a real mode out on 30m in the evening.

The interesting thing here is that this particular piece of wire runs pretty much east-west. So how does this work?

Sunday 2 December 2012

160m JT9-1

I've been trying 500mW. It is a weak signal mode after all. No joy.

Eventually, I switch to a rig wit a bit more oomph, and go 10W QRO

Get a QSO first call. Here's the far half of the exchange:

2117 10 -3 -0.1 1401. 0 M0DEV OEXXX (maidenhead)
I send his report
2119 10 -4 -0.1 1401. 0 M0DEV OEXXX RRR
I send RRR
2121 10 -3 -0.1 1401. 0 50W INV-L 73
I admit I should not have sent RRR

  • No report for me :-(
  • 50W ??!!!

Antennas- properly.

There's an object lesson for you. Do it properly.

I spent an hour this morning re-arranging a long wire antenna - it's now insulated, is not (now) lying on anything, and I connected the other side to an earth stake instead of a flimsy counterpoise ending on the (admittedly metal) washing line post.

The signals I'm seeing on 80m WSPR now are awesome, even though I am still only up about 4m. G8JNJ/A (I assume it was him) came in at +9, and in the last 10 mins of operation I haven't seen a negative dB

TX seems better too - I'm using my usual 500mW, and DK4XI is hearing me.

I'd better re-fettle the "main" LW at M0DEV, methinks. It's got the good earth, but the route runs through trees, in a zig-zag. There must be points where some RF escapes to earth...

Saturday 1 December 2012

Radio Is Odd

I'm perpetually surprised by what keeps me coming back to this curious pastime of ours. I've blown hot and cold about it for years, but today has been an interesting day. Not because of the log - five or so entries, and no great DX - a CW with G3SES in Chester on 80m being memorably because we had a chat. And an attempt at 70cm WSPR with G4VXE being memorably because we didn't.

Working with cheap wires means what whilst I'm playing with CW on 80 and WSPR on 70cm I can leave the 817 (ex-SOTA, battered...) with the Very Long Wire Across End Of Garden running on 160m.

I had thought that 10m would be interesting today. It looked that way about 09:40z, when the continent had an opening to VK land. That didn't metamorphose over to the UK and, byt he time I got home from work at 1PM, 10m was dead.

160m yielded this this afternoon:

I've been on my usual 500mW, and the two DX contacts are "heard me" and, in the case of OZ7IT, it worked both ways - almost a QSO.

What's really interesting is that I have started to use WSPR to look at propagation. Instead of the International Beacon Project. It looks to me as if 10m prop, for example, is much more granular. The opening to VK this morning was quite a small footprint on the map. And the key thing was, there were enough of the WSPR dummies doing all the legwork to produce the map.

Utterly brilliant. Thanks Joe! And the JT9-1 QSO on 17m with OM5NA was a nice catch. He was buried under QRO RTTY. Didn't stop JT9-1 working.

And today's log contains 6 entries. Content!