K3 vs KX3 on 6m

There was a good opening on 6m this morning which lasted until early afternoon. I'd just been reading some list traffic on how good the KX3 receiver is so I thought I would plug it in to the antenna and see what I could do. After all, Six is the magic band, who needs 100 watts?

Listening on the two receivers was like night and day. On the KX3 the band sounded much more lively. Stations that were only peaking an S7 on the K3 were S9 plus.

On the KX3 with just 10 watts, just because a station was loud it didn't mean I could work them. I got some 59 reports but with several stations they didn't hear me even if I had no competition. The loudest stations had a lot of callers and they just didn't hear me over the crowd. You wouldn't think 9dB would make all that much difference but it does!

I've seen comments about the K3 being deaf on 6m, or even 10m, but I had never really bothered about it until now. If I can hear them on the K3 I can usually work them even though I generally limit the power to 80 watts.

But I ended up a bit dissatisfied with the K3's receive performance on one of my favourite bands. The simple solution - fit a preamp between RX IN and RX OUT - isn't an option for me as I need those ports to plumb in the MFJ noise cancelling device. It's a pity no-one has come up with a mod to boost the K3's fairly useless internal preamp on 50MHz.

Sporadic on Six

Today there has been a really big Sporadic-E opening on 6m which lasted for several hours. In fact it is still going on as I type this.

This snapshot of activity from DXMaps gives an idea of what the opening was like at its peak. The whole of western Europe must have been covered by a reflective Sporadic-E cloud!

From DXMaps I could see that the opening extended up to 2m for a time, though I didn't hear anything myself. Unfortunately my QTH is poor for VHF so conditions have to be exceptionally good for me to hear any 2m DX let alone work it. So 6 remains my favourite VHF band.

I made several 6m contacts on SSB and several on PSK31. The most interesting call was LY44WFF, a DXpedition to Klaipeda, Lithuania KO05oi which is quite a rare square so I'm told. Best DX on PSK31 was probably David, 5B4AHY.

I never quite know how to answer calls on 6m PSK31. Some operators seem to use quick, contest style operating while others reel out their name, QTH, EPC number and so on. I prefer the quick format myself, with the aim of getting the contact completed before the conditions fade out. But if someone wants to exchange a bit more information I try to do that too.

A station operating RTTY was an unwelcome presence among the PSK just above 50.250. One RTTY station came up right smack on top of someone operating PSK63. Surprisingly I got perfect copy of the PSK63 station which was straddled by the RTTY signal! Surely it is time to abandon this old, wide, slow outmoded mode?

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!.

6m on 18 May 2013 at 0930z. Map from DXMaps.com

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.

2m on 18 May 2013 at 0940z. Map from DXMaps.com

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!

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.

Spring is here!

Testing a new build of WSJTX for K1JT I hopped on to 10m and was surprised to see a strong signal. It soon revealed itself to be SM6NZV who gave me a +8dB report on my 5 watts.

This reminded me that it is May 1 today, the start of Spring and usually also the start of the Sporadic-E season. I tuned around on 6m and heard a couple of weak stations on my dipole, also a couple of stronger GMs working stations I could not hear.

I thought about installing the SDR-4+ as a panadapter for the K3 which had been one of the things I had intended to use it for. But something was amiss and I didn't have control of the receiver's frequency. I think the settings had got hosed, probably when I was playing around with using a USB DVB dongle as an SDR. I have no idea how to get it working again and I started getting stressed about it so I decided to abandon the idea.

SDRs are not for me, or at least not those that use a PC for a user interface. Windows is just too fragile, though if Linux is any better it's only because there are fewer things to install on it in the first place!

Instead I will set up scanning on the K3 to scan a section of the 6m band. I always forget how to do this so I had to dig out the manual. Load the start frequency into VFO A and the end frequency in VFOB, make sure the mode and frequency are what you want and store it in a memory. I used memory 6 for 6m scanning.

To start a scan you just recall memory 6 (M>V, 6) and press and hold SCAN. I'll probably forget that sequence of button presses as well so I looked up the CAT commands in the K3 Programmers Reference (SWT23;SWT29;SWH41;) and stored it in a KComm shortcut. I'll probably make one for 2m as well though the chances of hearing any 2m Es up here are slim indeed. Last year I don't think here was a single opening that extended this far north on 2m.

Ping!

WSPRing on 6m this afternoon and I captured this trace:

I'm not seeing anything else, though F6HTL spotted my transmission 2 minutes later. I wonder what type of propagation that was?

(Interesting that WSPR decoded the transmission even though the signal was only present for half a cycle.)

6m WSPR

On 10th June DX Sherlock showed that a big Sporadic E opening was in progress. The red lines showing contact paths stopped tantalizingly short of north-west Cumbria, unfortunately.

I listened on 10m but I didn't hear the S9+ signals such an opening would suggest so I thought I would do some WSPR on 10m, moving to 6m if the 10m signals suggested the skip would be short enough. They eventually did, as DX Sherlock indicated the lift was getting stronger. I moved to 6m, running 5W to the attic multi-band dipole, and eventually spotted or was spotted by stations as far afield as Austria, Spain and Morocco.

During the peak of the opening I broke off from WSPR to tune the bands and make a few contacts. On 10m I worked TM210VH - a special call commemorating 210 years since the birth of Victor Hugo. I made contacts into Italy, Switzerland and France on 6m as well.

Seeing some massively strong signals now on 10m WSPR so time to check out 6m I think!

First 6m Sporadic-E

On Sunday afternoon, while the WPX contest was still on, DX Sherlock sent me an email to say that there was a possibility of Sporadic-E propagation on 4m from my location. Getting equipped for 4m is something I'm going to have to leave for another year - right now I'm not steady enough on my feet to go clambering about in the attic making additions to my antenna farm. But I do have a 6m antenna, though it's only a dipole. The KX3 was plugged into it, so I had a tune around 6m, heard a few stations and managed to work OK2OV with 59 reports both ways. Not bad for 10W to an attic dipole.

Station of OK2OV, Czech Republic (from qrz.com)

I was quite tired after my session in the CQ WW WPX contest so I called it a day. The following morning DX Sherlock sent another email alert to say there was possible Sporadic-E on 6m. I quickly switched the KX3 on and sure enough, there was a big Sporadic-E opening in progress. I made 18 contacts in all into France, Spain, Italy and Slovenia and heard OK2OV for a second time. Some of the signals were absolutely enormous and I received 59+ signal reports. This was with 10W of SSB to a dipole, remember.

Hopefully there will be more Sporadic-E fun before the end of summer.

Look, No IP

A couple of years ago we changed our broadband Internet service provider. The new provider did not support a static IP address. I have a QNAP network attached storage device which is primarily used for backup. However, it's actually a Linux box that runs the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) software which I occasionally use as a web server for experimentation. I sometimes need it to be accessible from the internet. So I opened a free account with DynDNS in order to access the server using a host name.

Some time last year after I came out of hospital I started to receive emails from DynDNS informing me that my account was being disabled due to abuse and inviting me to open a paid account. As far as I could tell, the only "abuse" was that my script to inform DynDNS of my current IP address was running more than the number of times DynDNS permitted. I had no idea why it should start misbehaving like that and cynically thought it was just a ploy to convert free users to paid subscriptions. I was in no frame of mind to deal with the problem, nor to dig into my wallet, so I simply closed the account and had done with it. This would have had the effect of breaking some APRS-related functions on my site but I had other things of greater concern to think about.

A few days ago I decided to look into why the CDGVHF ANSRVR group was not sending any messages. ANSRVR is an APRS tool used to send APRS messages to groups of interested people. CDGVHF stands for Cumbria Dumfries and Galloway VHF group and it is intended to disseminate alerts about VHF and UHF openings in the Cumbria, Dumfries and Galloway area (grid square IO84.) It's essentially a filter that acts on emails sent out by DX Sherlock and converts them to APRS messages addressed to ANSRVR. I could, of course, just have the emails sent to my smartphone. But it's more fun to make use of ham radio!

I looked for an alternative free service to DynDNS and decided to try No-IP Free. As far as I can tell, No-IP won't accuse you of abuse for updating your IP address too frequently, in fact its client software appears to do this every few minutes which seems like plenty. It does have a requirement that you confirm your account is being used once a month, which could be a bit annoying, but I'll see what happens at the next update.

In the meantime, CDGVHF is now sending out propagation alerts again. To receive alerts of VHF and UHF openings in the IO84 area just send an APRS message to ANSRVR with the text CQ CDGVHF. You'll need to repeat this from time to time as the server unsubscribes you from the group after 8 hours of no activity, unless you are using KJ4ERJ's APRSISCE software which can maintain your subscription for you.

First Sporadic-E of 2012

A DX Sherlock VHF propagation alert popped into my mailbox this afternoon to warn me about a possible Sporadic-E opening on 6 metres.

6m Sporadic-E opening 29 Apr 2012

My K3 was WSPRing on 10m at the time and when I went to look several new stations had been spotted indicating the presence of short skip propagation.

10m WSPR spots at G4ILO

I switched to 6m but very few WSPR stations were active and no spots were made or received. I tuned the receiver and heard a weak Polish station on SSB but the opening was over and no contacts were made.

Still, it is good to see some activity on the "magic band." Things can only get better!

Opera on 6

I haven't used the Opera digital mode on HF for a bit as it seemed that interest had dropped off and there is not much point in beaconing in no-one is receiving. It seems to be one of those modes where there is a resurgence of interest whenever there is something new to try. This weekend the new thing was some fast Opera modes for use on VHF so I fired up the K3 on 6m (50.700MHz) to see if I could receive anything.

As you can see, not only did I receive some other stations but my own Opera signals were received around the UK. No great DX, but I was only using 20W to my attic dipole and would not expect to hear anything on 6m at this time.

If enough people were prepared to use it, this could be a good tool for discovering Sporadic-E openings on the VHF bands. The 30 second transmit cycle seems more appropriate for this type of propagation than WSPR's two minute periods.

6m digital DX

Conditions were again great on 6 metres yesterday afternoon and evening, with the Sporadic E favouring Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. After making a few contacts on SSB - it's always gratifying when using an attic dipole to have stations come right back to your call and give you a 59 report - I was tuning up the band and heard the unmistakable sound of PSK31 activity.

I worked LA8OKA and OH2NAF using PSK31 and SM7OYP using PSK63. I thought these may have been my first PSK contacts on 6m but my log tells me I worked Spain using the digimode during June last year.

Signals were strong and steady and most people were using their regular macros and brag files and exchanging greetings rather than sending quick report and locator overs as you might expect for sporadic propagation.

Some bloggers have been advocating using the weak signal digital modes like WSPR or JT65A on 6m but when propagation is this strong I'd rather use a digital mode that allows me to have a proper QSO and exchange names and other details with the stations I'm working.

6m magic

Today was the first really big Sporadic-E opening of the year. Six metres was wide open across the whole of Europe and Scandinavia. There was even a good 2 metre Sporadic-E opening in central Europe though no propagation appeared to reach the UK.

Yesterday I worked a string of Spanish stations on Six but that opening was not as good as today's. This morning's fun began with a contact with OK2IEN, then it was mostly Germans with a few other countries until round about lunch time.

I prefer the relaxing pace of Search and Pounce but when most of the stations you pounce on either have a pile-up and don't hear you or are S&Ping themselves and move away it's time to call CQ. It's not something I often do and it's almost more than my brain can cope with to talk to people while simultaneously typing into the computer their report, locator and call, but I quickly worked a string of stations and often had two or three at once replying to my CQ calls. This isn't something that happens often when you run a stealth dipole so you have to enjoy it when you can!

In the afternoon, for a break, I tried JT65A. A lot of the interest in monitoring 50.076 seems to have evaporated when conditions were flat but a few stations were on and I made three contacts using the mode, though none were DX I could not have worked on SSB.

Later the propagation seemed to have shifted North to favour Denmark and Sweden and I worked a number of stations from there, many at massive signal strength. In all I made 45 contacts today - probably more than I have ever made during a single day except when playing in a contest.

I love six metres - it really is the magic band!

Life on 6m

The 6 metre band is showing signs of life, as this map of WSPR activity from this afternoon shows.

However, some of the traces on the WSPR application screen look a bit odd.

I don't claim to be an expert but I think what I am seeing is the result of doppler shift on the signals being reflected by fast-moving Sporadic-E clouds. In several cases what seems to be a trace has not been decoded.

I've said this before, but I wonder if WSPR mode with its 110 second transmit periods and tiny frequency shift encoding is really suitable for detecting Sporadic-E propagation. But no-one has ever commented on this, leaving me to wonder whether they think I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about or whether nobody knows.

The digital mode most people seem to use on 6m is JT6M, however this entails using the WSJT program which I find rather confusing. I'm interested in trying JT65A but I'm not sure if it is any more suitable than WSPR for this type of work.

In the absence of any expert advice I'm going to try JT65A using a dial frequency of 50.276MHz. With the JT-Alert accessory to tell me when anyone replies I can leave the rig calling CQ whilst I am otherwise occupied. It will be interesting to see what we can work on 6m with the JT65A mode.

Sporadic-E on 6m

The first bit of live data I received from my APRS VHF propagation alert reflector was a warning of a possible Sporadic-E opening on six metres. I was rather surprised that there was Sporadic-E this early in the year, but I went to the DX Sherlock website and sure enough contacts had been reported between a station even further north than here and one in the Czech Republic. I then clicked on the map to see the actual contact details and was surprised to find they were WSPR spots!

I went to the WSPR website and sure enough the same signals were shown. I decided to fire up WSPR on 6m myself but by then the OK station had gone and no new spots appeared from anywhere.

I have been, and still am, somewhat sceptical of the value of WSPR in showing VHF Sporadic-E propagation. One of the characteristics of Sporadic-E, particularly at the start and end of the season or on the higher frequencies like 2m is that it is very fleeting. A signal can be there for one minute, literally, and gone the next. On the other hand, signals can be really strong when reflected by Sporadic-E. WSPR is designed for detecting weak signals under steady propagation conditions and uses a 2 minute transmit cycle during which the data is transmitted very slowly. It seems to me that what you want to detect Sporadic-E is a mode with short transmit cycles where the data is transmitted quickly, perhaps something more akin to the modes used for meteor-scatter. I wonder if K1JT could come up with something?

Nevertheless I am very interested in anything that helps to detect VHF openings that might otherwise go undetected. I plan on WSPRing more on the 6m band, as long as there are others doing likewise so there is a chance of being received!