Saturday, May 18, 2013
Mobile rig for the price of a (Chinese) HT
So cheap you just have to buy one! According to the the listing it's VHF not UHF. Thanks to Steve G1KQH for the tip-off.
Labels: Chinese radios, VHF
6m 18 May 2013
This Saturday morning there was a big Sporadic-E opening on 6m. There were some pretty big signals, though once again I seemed to be on the edge of the opening. The Sporadic-E seemed centered over northern Europe and you can see from the map that it was pretty intense!.
I had KComm's DX Cluster window open. I don't use the cluster on HF and dislike it intensely, but spotting stations on the cluster (in a specific format with locators for both endpoints) is how VHF contact information gets to DXMaps.com.
I saw a couple of contacts from Ireland spotted on 2m so I switched bands.
As you can see, two lucky EI stations managed to work into northern Italy, one of them using a vertical antenna! Signals must have been strong but when I QSYed to 2m I didn't hear anything. The Es must have been over the northern French coast and you can see that the same Es cloud must have permitted F6HTJ to spot the GB3ANG beacon and enabled DG7IG to work EA1CCM as the paths intersect at the exact same point..
I wasn't lucky on 2m but I was a bit more successful on data and tuned to the PSK part of the 6m band just in time to catch a French station signing off with Tim, G4VXE. I managed QSOs with Gerard F4LKG and George EA4GB but I don't think many stations were listening because my CQs went unanswered.
It seems as if the 2013 Sporadic-E season is off to a good start!
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| 6m on 18 May 2013 at 0930z. Map from DXMaps.com |
I saw a couple of contacts from Ireland spotted on 2m so I switched bands.
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| 2m on 18 May 2013 at 0940z. Map from DXMaps.com |
I wasn't lucky on 2m but I was a bit more successful on data and tuned to the PSK part of the 6m band just in time to catch a French station signing off with Tim, G4VXE. I managed QSOs with Gerard F4LKG and George EA4GB but I don't think many stations were listening because my CQs went unanswered.
It seems as if the 2013 Sporadic-E season is off to a good start!
Labels: 2m, 6m, Contacts, Sporadic-E
Friday, May 17, 2013
Life on 6m
Six metres came to life today but it was not what I would call "wide open". I had to hunt around for contacts. I started off using SSB but switched to CW which had a bit more action.
| 2013/05/17 | 12:02 | 50.140 | SSB | I2PJA | 59 | 59 | Tony | JN45pb | ||
| 2013/05/17 | 12:06 | 50.175 | SSB | OK1VAM | 57 | 57 | JN79ix | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 12:14 | 50.146 | SSB | EA3EVL | 59 | 59 | JN00hr | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 12:24 | 50.141 | SSB | EA1DR | 59 | 59 | Oscar | IN83aj | ||
| 2013/05/17 | 12:39 | 50.094 | CW | EB3DYS | 599 | 599 | ||||
| 2013/05/17 | 14:05 | 50.083 | CW | EA3AR | 599 | 579 | JN12db | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 14:11 | 50.093 | CW | EA4GB | 599 | 579 | IN80el | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 14:15 | 50.097 | CW | F5JGL | 599 | 579 | IN95re | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 14:21 | 50.101 | CW | EA3NT | 599 | 579 | JN01pe | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 14:40 | 50.100 | CW | EA1SI | 599 | 579 | IN73dm | |||
| 2013/05/17 | 14:47 | 50.090 | CW | HA3LI | 599 | 579 | Ali | JN96av | ||
| 2013/05/17 | 15:00 | 50.089 | CW | OM5XX | 599 | 579 | JN97bs |
Something seems to have gone wrong with the logging this afternoon because I'm sure I received some 599 reports and I'm even surer that I gave out some 579s. When someone gives me a report that is not 599 I usually try and give them a realistic report. But it really is easier if everyone is 599 because KComm remembers the last report sent and receive and logs it as the same unless I remember to change it. Normally I've forgotten what report I was given two seconds after receiving it.
Operating and logging at the same time is more than my poor brain can cope with these days. I prefer digimodes where you get a printout of the complete exchange and can fill in the log at your leisure.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
10m 16 May 2013
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| 10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 1242z 16 May 2013 |
In the autumn the picture changed slowly through the day. Now, in springtime, the picture changes all the time. Stations pop up for a few cycles and then disappear, never to be heard of again. The signal reports vary wildly as well, from just above the noise to +10dB or even higher in the space of a few minutes. This didn't happen in November. It is a clear indication of Sporadic-E propagation: reflections from fast-moving clouds that are highly ionized and very reflective, creating a path with very little loss.
From time to time I pause the WSPR and tune the band to see what activity there is. I've also tried 6m for short periods. I've had a few spots on 6 (this is with 5W to my attic dipole) but the magic band is still fairly quiet at 55 degrees north. 10m is far from being wide open yet too. I've still to see what WSPR is like when the band is open and signals are romping in at S9+. So I will continue with my WSPR monitoring in the expectation that things will get even more interesting.
Labels: 10m, Propagation, WSPR
Good or Evuln?
A few weeks ago one of our websites was hacked. We didn't notice for almost a week due to browsers caching the pages. The consequence of the hack was that every page accessed returned a 404 error meaning that the page was not found. During that week Google's spiders visited with the result that almost the entire site was lost from the search engine.
I discovered the hack just in time to be able to restore from my web host's oldest backup. It was a real hassle as well as a stressful time and I wanted to find a way to alert me more quickly if it happened again.
My first thought was to use ChangeDetection.com, the site I use to alert me when a change occurs to the IBP Beacon Status page. That was no good as both sites contain dynamic content that changes frequently.
A couple of days ago I was visiting some ham sites and I came across one with a badge stating that the site was scanned and malware free. I clicked on the badge and it took me to evuln.com, a site containing a lot of information about how to secure a website and offering tools to detect an attack.
Tools include a malware scanner that will check your site to see if it contains something bad. You can have this check run daily for free if you display a badge on the site. This appeared to be just what I was looking for, so I registered with the site and added the badge to both G4ILO's Shack and ham-directory.com.
Evuln.com also offers a service to clean and fix websites. This is something I might well have used a few weeks ago if my web hosts's support hadn't been helpful in assisting me to identify the hacked files. But the cynic in me rang an alarm bell. It would be in evuln.com's interest to claim that my site was hacked and then offer to clean it up for a fee. What a good scam! In fact the owners of a couple of sites that had been told they had been hacked thought it was a scam and that their site had been hacked by evuln.com!
So is evuln.com good or evil? I did a lot of digging. I think that if it was a scam I would have found a lot more evidence of people who had been scammed. Evuln.com has been running for several years and contains good information. The owner replies quickly and promptly to enquiries. There is an address and contact information on the site. I believe that evuln.com is a genuine attempt to provide a useful service.
I have since found other similar services such as ScanMyServer which do not offer a site cleanup service. Come to your own conclusion.
My first thought was to use ChangeDetection.com, the site I use to alert me when a change occurs to the IBP Beacon Status page. That was no good as both sites contain dynamic content that changes frequently.
A couple of days ago I was visiting some ham sites and I came across one with a badge stating that the site was scanned and malware free. I clicked on the badge and it took me to evuln.com, a site containing a lot of information about how to secure a website and offering tools to detect an attack.
Tools include a malware scanner that will check your site to see if it contains something bad. You can have this check run daily for free if you display a badge on the site. This appeared to be just what I was looking for, so I registered with the site and added the badge to both G4ILO's Shack and ham-directory.com.
Evuln.com also offers a service to clean and fix websites. This is something I might well have used a few weeks ago if my web hosts's support hadn't been helpful in assisting me to identify the hacked files. But the cynic in me rang an alarm bell. It would be in evuln.com's interest to claim that my site was hacked and then offer to clean it up for a fee. What a good scam! In fact the owners of a couple of sites that had been told they had been hacked thought it was a scam and that their site had been hacked by evuln.com!
So is evuln.com good or evil? I did a lot of digging. I think that if it was a scam I would have found a lot more evidence of people who had been scammed. Evuln.com has been running for several years and contains good information. The owner replies quickly and promptly to enquiries. There is an address and contact information on the site. I believe that evuln.com is a genuine attempt to provide a useful service.
I have since found other similar services such as ScanMyServer which do not offer a site cleanup service. Come to your own conclusion.
Labels: Website
