Events in Ukraine

I have just got off the air after making several  contactsintoRussia and Ukraine on 10m PSK31. Ham radio transcends political boundaries and engenders friendships betweenpeople of all nations. All politicians could learn from it. My thoughts today are particularly with my radio friends living in Ukraine I hope that peace and normality are restored soon

до свидания!

Across the pond on 10m with 200mW

WSPR never loses its ability to astound. Today I've been WSPRing on 10m, still with 0.2W. My signal was decoded by 5 different Stateside stations.

Timestamp	Call	MHz	SNR	Drift	Grid	Pwr	Reporter	RGrid	km	az
2014-01-18 14:26	G4ILO	28.126105	-25	0	IO84hp	0.02	KZ8C	EM88pm	5973	287
2014-01-18 14:36	G4ILO	28.126145	-22	1	IO84hp	0.02	KB9PVH	EN53oi	5959	296
2014-01-18 14:44	G4ILO	28.126131	-16	0	IO84hp	0.02	VE3SWS	FN06ge	5201	293
2014-01-18 15:18	G4ILO	28.126107	-9	0	IO84hp	0.02	N2NOM	FN22bg	5267	286
2014-01-18 15:38	G4ILO	28.126104	-23	0	IO84hp	0.02	K9AN	EN50wc	6175	293

Whispering with 20mW

Many people who operate the weak signal mode WSPR use too much power. If you don't use very low power (QRPp) you'll never find out what this mode is capable of. So to remind myself I thought I'd do some whispering on 10m using 20mW of power. It's easy to use low power with the Elecraft K3 as the power level is adjustable in 0.01 watt increments.

10m stations hearing or heard by G4ILO on 8 Jan 2015

It's a pity that the WSPRwebsite can't display a map showing only spots of one callsign. The map shows spots involving one callsign. sent or received. So the map shows WSPR signals I decoded, not only those who heard me. Some of those stations were using as much as 37dBm - whatever that is in watts. Here are the stations that decoded my tiny signal. My 20mW into an attic diopole made it across the pond on several occasions

Timestamp	Call	MHz	SNR	Drift	Grid	Pwr	Reporter	RGrid	km	az
2014-01-08 15:44	G4ILO	28.126104	-24	0	IO84hp	0.02	W9HLY	EN70mt	5930	291
2014-01-08 15:24	G4ILO	28.126112	-21	0	IO84hp	0.02	KZ8C	EM88pm	5973	287
2014-01-08 15:24	G4ILO	28.126104	-27	0	IO84hp	0.02	K4RCG	FM08xl	5688	284
2014-01-08 15:06	G4ILO	28.126103	-24	0	IO84hp	0.02	W8AC	EN91jm	5649	289
2014-01-08 15:06	G4ILO	28.126110	-18	0	IO84hp	0.02	KB9VLR	EN54vj	5845	296
2014-01-08 15:06	G4ILO	28.126144	-19	0	IO84hp	0.02	ND6M	EM55se	6594	289
2014-01-08 14:56	G4ILO	28.126106	-21	0	IO84hp	0.02	KB9AMG	EN52tx	5964	295
2014-01-08 14:46	G4ILO	28.126167	-22	-1	IO84hp	0.02	KC9YSR	EM69il	6175	291
2014-01-08 14:38	G4ILO	28.126106	-18	0	IO84hp	0.02	VE3SWS	FN06ge	5201	293
2014-01-08 14:18	G4ILO	28.126098	-26	0	IO84hp	0.02	K9AN	EN50wc	6175	293
2014-01-08 14:00	G4ILO	28.126101	-28	0	IO84hp	0.02	ZR6LU	KG43av	9468	152
2014-01-08 13:40	G4ILO	28.126015	-7	0	IO84hp	0.02	LZ1OI	KN22id	2470	113

10m still lively

Still seeing plenty of transatlantic stations on 10m WSPR. I wonder how long it will last?

WSPR spots on 10m band at G4ILO

Two 2xK3 contacts in PSK31

Conditoins remain excellent on the 10m band. I made several contacts and even had Stateside DX stations reply to my CQs. Two of my contacts were with Elecraft K3 users - don't often hear K3s on digital though they are the perfect rig for it.

When I'm not actively working stations I like to look at the PSK Reporter reception reports map.  It's more interesting than WSPR as the reports are of actual PSK31 signals. It's a pity there isn't a beacon mode because you have got to transmit or call CQ to see reports of your own signal. At least it is motivation to actually go on the air rather than just lurk!

Interference to 10m WSPR

Take a look at this diabolical interference on the 10m WSPR frequency.

Fortunately it doesn't seem to affect decoding too much. The PSK31 sub band is free of it too.

10m 16 May 2013

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 1242z 16 May 2013

By running WSPR day after day on the same band you start to get a feel for how propagation behaves that you don't get from casual operation. It's interesting to compare this map of WSPR spots for G4ILO around lunchtime today with the kind of results I was getting in November. Then I was getting DX spots throughout the day. Now I'm getting mostly local spots, within Europe.

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.

JT-Alert

I know conditions on 10m are going to be good when I turn on the Albrecht 10m handheld and can hear activity on its 6 inch antenna. Sure enough when I turned on the K3 the band was alive with wall-to-wall Russians at S9 plus.

I made some QSOs on SSB including one with Vadim UA1ZFG from the icy wastes of Murmansk. The nice thing about eQSLs is you don't have to wait long to receive them.

I also heard two stations from Thailand HS0ZEO and HS0ZJS, probably the first time I have heard that country on SSB, but I could not work them because of pileups. I curse the person who invented the DX Cluster as it has taken away the chance for weaker stations to work a DX just by luck tuning across them and turned it in to a contest where he who has the biggest power wins.

I switched to PSK31 where I made several more Russian contacts. Then I decided to try some JT65. My first JT65 contact of the day was with UA3TN whom I had worked before. I only found this out after logging the contact because my JT-Alert utility seems to have stopped working.

After lunch I continued with JT65 and found that all I could now hear was US stations. The first contact of the afternoon was with Tom K4AFR, then I made three other Stateside contacts all first time QSOs.

I downloaded and installed a new version of JT-Alert which is supposed to alert you when someone calls CQ or replies to your call. It also flags stations you have worked before, which I find very handy as I have a poor memory. But this feature is not working. It's probably some stupid setting I've got wrong, but I'm darned if I can see it.

A nice new facility in the new version of JT-Alert is the ability to log contacts to a third party database such as MixW. This just happens to be the log format KComm uses. It's very handy, avoiding the need to import contacts from an ADIF file one at a time, so it is worth running JT-Alert for that reason alone. But I really wish I could get those alerts working!

10m 26 November 2012

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 26 November 2012

What this map doesn't show is that all the spots are barely visible, -25 to -27dB, so propagation would not be good enough to support a regular communication mode.

25 November 2012

The last day of the CQ WW DX CW contest. But nothing of interest to report. Sunday morning was one of those mornings when I didn't seem to fully wake up. It was after 11am before I got into the shack.

My intention was to make some more contest contacts on 10m. Although I don't compete seriously, I usually decide what category I am going to play in - single or multi-band, QRP or Low Power - and stick to it so that if I do make a decent number of contacts I can send an entry in. But this time my effort didn't even justify sending in a check log.

I heard some interesting big gun stations such as in Africa (Gambia, Senegal) but I just could not be heard over the others calling. One Russian station seemed to be following me around and he wasn't having much luck either. It was hard going even with the more run of the mill stations. I felt like I was running QRP. In fact, I've had better results when I did run QRP (such as for the CQ WW WPX back in May, when I used the KX3 ) than I was having this weekend.

It was obviously a mistake to limit myself to 10 metres. Not everyone was having such bad luck as me though. I heard a DX station who wasn't hearing my calls working fellow blogger Tim G4VXE. So much for the magic dipole!

After I broke off for lunch I couldn't be bothered to get back on the air again and so I spent the afternoon listening to a broadcast concert. I will draw a veil over my lamentable effort. (Those who are really interested to see the extent of my embarrassment can take a look at my contact log.)

10m 24 November 2012

The first day of the CQ WW DX CW contest and propagation on 10m is disappointingly down compared to previous days.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 24 November 2012

No propagation to USA as you can see.

I have made a handful of contest contacts on 10m but I have been too preoccupied with computer issues to really get into it. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

10m 23 November 2012

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 23 November 2012

Propagation on 10m was not as good as yesterday. WSPR traces were fainter as signals were weaker. On the air conditions were not stable and deep QSB affected most QSOs. An hour in the afternoon resulted in these contacts:

2012/11/23	14:29	28.121	BPSK31	KC2VOU	599		539		Jon	Earlville, NY
2012/11/23	14:41	28.122	BPSK31	K2PSD	599		599		Ron	Randolph, New...
2012/11/23	14:49	28.122	BPSK31	KF2GQ	599		599		Robert	Jupiter FL
2012/11/23	14:58	28.122	BPSK31	WA4FLZ	599		589		Shep	Miami FL
2012/11/23	15:21	28.121	BPSK31	N0BIV	599		599		Don	Jefferson Cit...

---

Gotaways were: CN2OS (Morocco) and HK2LS (Colombia).

10m 22 November 2012

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 22 November 2012

Really excellent propagation this afternoon to the eastern USA as the WSPR spots show. An hour's break before afternoon tea resulted in QSOs with 7 new stations.  I actually had people calling me after I signed with another station. I like the callsign of the first station...

2012/11/22	14:41	28.123	BPSK31	W2PSK	599		599		Andy	South River, ...
2012/11/22	14:53	28.121	BPSK31	KB8ZUN	599		599		Jeffrey	North Ridgevi...
2012/11/22	14:57	28.122	BPSK31	KD4JMV	599		599		Harry	Naples FL
2012/11/22	15:07	28.123	BPSK31	W3SW	599		599		Andy	Binghamton NY
2012/11/22	15:20	28.120	BPSK31	KA3UJE	599		599		Terry	Lykens, PA
2012/11/22	15:26	28.120	BPSK31	WA2VMO	599		579		Bob	Staten Is. NY
2012/11/22	15:36	28.121	BPSK31	KB3CUP	599		599		Elza	Greensboro, PA

10m 21 November 2012

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 21 November 2012

20 November 2012

Today my main rig has spent even more time on other things than WSPR. Besides trying to work some PSK31 DX I have also been testing a beta release of K3 firmware. This new version has an improved CW decoder that is a bit less finicky about settings. It works very well but is still beaten by the Windows program MRP40 which I regard as the gold standard for CW decoders. As Wayne N6KR says, the MRP40 algorithm is probably ten times more sophisticated and the K3 MCU doesn't have enough code space for it.

I've been interested in Morse decoders since the first home computers and can remember keying in a program listing in BASIC from a QST article in the late 70s. Later I wrote a decoder in Hisoft Pascal which ran on my ZX Spectrum. It actually decoded strong, perfectly sent Morse but it was not reliable enough to be useful. More recently I tried implementing a Morse decoder in KComm but it was a total failure.

I didn't have a lot of success with PSK31 DXing on 10m either. I only made two contacts but I heard what would have been two new South American countries: HC7AE in Ecuador and CE4BRO in Chile. I didn't need to look up HC in a book as I remember from my teenage SWLing days hearing HCJB Quito, the Voice of the Andes!

I think band conditions were better today but they supported more propagation from Europe so there were higher QRM levels (and lower operating standards ;) ) I moved up the band to try and get away from all the IMD products but hardly anyone was listening up there so it was a bit futile.

Someone who did hear my CQ calls was Vito IZ7DMT. He was a whopping signal but was signing IZ7DMT/QRP. He told me he was running 5 watts from an FT-817 and was rather indignant that I wouldn't use the illegal /QRP suffix during handovers. Nice QSL though!

Here is the result of today's WSPRing:

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 20 November 2012

10m 19 November 2012

Another day of good propagation allowed my love affair with 10m to continue.

2012/11/19	12:34	28.121	BPSK31	NP4EG	599		599		Edgar	N. Puerto Rico
2012/11/19	12:50	28.122	BPSK31	UT5AJ	599		599		Vlad	Kramatorsk
2012/11/19	13:50	28.123	BPSK31	UR4QX	599		599		Yuri	Berdyansk
2012/11/19	14:11	28.121	BPSK31	RG5A	599		599		Alex	Moscow
2012/11/19	14:25	28.122	BPSK31	YY4HAH	599		599		Heiroun	Valencia Vene...
2012/11/19	14:35	28.122	BPSK31	N4PJL	559		599		Pete	Deep Creek La...
2012/11/19	14:41	28.122	BPSK31	AB8O	599		599		John	Milford, OH n...
2012/11/19	14:59	28.122	BPSK31	KJ4LEC	599		599		Marion	Cumberland Ga...
2012/11/19	15:08	28.122	BPSK31	W5FER	599		599		Jim	San Antonio, TX
2012/11/19	15:17	28.122	BPSK31	VE3NOO	599		599		Michael	Sandhurst, On...
2012/11/19	15:23	28.122	BPSK31	AE5XI	599		599		Terry	Las Cruces, NM
2012/11/19	15:44	28.122	BPSK31	K9ZJ	579		579		Rich	Waukesha, WI

Besides these contacts I heard, but couldn't catch, stations in Mexico and Paraguay. I'm hoping the good propagation will continue so that I can add these to the log.

Because of this, not too much time was spent on WSPR today, so the WSPR map looked like this:

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 19 November 2012

10m 18 November 2012

I nearly got myself locked out of the WSPR map page today. I must have managed to save the settings to try to display spots for all bands for the last 24 jours, or something like that, because whenever I went to the page the web browser froze up while it tried to render the map and I couln't get back to the settings boxes to change it. I had to find out how to delete all cached files in Chrome before I could access it again.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 18 November 2012

I lost quite a lot of time trying to sort that out. I also spent an hour or so seeing what I could work on 10m PSK31. I managed to QSO with several US stations including N7WET in Tucson, Arizona and KB5IAV in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I worked two all time new countries as well. Fabio CU3HN in the Azores has one of those QSLs that never fail to bring a smile to my face.

QSL of CU3HN

Victor, HP1AVS in Panama I had heard before but not managed to work. So I was pleased to add his call to the log as well.

QSL of HP1AVS

I love 10 metres!

10m 17 November 2012

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 17 November 2012

Another day of good propagation. I don't know why OH1CO was using the suffix /QRP (aren't most WSPRers using 5w or less?) but it really upset the WSPR encoding algorithm. His call was being decoded at my end as OH1/P00XEK!

It's magic!

I'm starting to believe that my attic dipole does have magical powers on 10 metres. Right now I'm hearing or being heard by 8 different stations but they are only hearing or being heard by me!

10m 16 November 2012

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 16 November 2012