AmateurRadio.com

I have taken advantage of the poor propagation conditions – the WSPR application waterfall has been blank all day and just two stations have spotted my 10m beacons, while APRS on 30m is only just beginning to receive any other stations – to make available a new version of my logging program for Elecraft transceivers, KComm, which is now version 2.0.

The main difference in the new version is that the Elecraft KX3 is supported (though it could be used in older versions by pretending it is a K3.) I have also added an option for specifying alternative URLs such as QRZCQ.com for looking-up callsigns, so you can now say goodbye to logging in to QRZ.com every five minutes if you want to.

The other changes are all minor bug fixes and small improvements that probably no-one will notice.

My regrets to Linux users but I no longer have a Linux system available so I cannot provide a Linux archive of the new version. I really need a Linux user to install Lazarus and compile the source code then send me a new tar.gz file to put on the web site.

Propagation is really poor at the moment. Never has my WebProp propagation widget been quite so accurate. On 10m WSPR I am hearing nothing and no-one is hearing me. On 30m APRS it’s just as bad. I’m not picking up a single packet.

I opened WebProp’s page in Google Chrome and noticed that the small format widget had a vertical scrollbar on the right hand side. I thought I could remove it by adding a few pixels to the iframe height attribute but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I think a bug in Chrome might be causing this. The presence of the scrollbar reduces the width of the table causing several lines to wrap and making the table taller.

I found that the scrollbar was eliminated by adding the attribute scrolling=”no” to the iframe definition. If you are using WebProp on your website I recommend you do the same. If you aren’t sure exactly what to do then go to the WebProp web page. The code examples have all been updated with this extra attribute.

I recommend you to do this even if you don’t see the scrollbar in Google Chrome. That will prevent it from appearing in any web browser.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 13 November 2012

Some pretty good propagation on 10m today, though not exceptional. During the morning it was interesting to note several spots of G and GW stations. I was received by fellow blogger Tim G4VXE. I didn’t hear him though.

I took time out to make a few digital contacts. I worked two Russians on 12m (using the 10m dipole) then a few more plus a couple of Americans on 10m. Best contact was NP3IR Hector in Puerto Rico, who has just this minute spotted me on WSPR too!

That’s cool! I can mark and copy lines from my contact log, then paste them into Blogger and they come out formatted. Never knew you could do that.

After many years as a stalwart Firefox user I have today made Google Chrome my default web browser.

I had tried Chrome once before. It was probably too early a version as I could not get on with it and missed too many of my Firefox extensions. Since then I have grown less dependent on those extensions and Chrome has become compatible with or has gained alternatives to those I need.

I installed Chrome a second time in an attempt to solve a problem that I thought was an issue with Firefox and turned out to be something else entirely! The installation was quick and easy. Chrome imported all my Firefox bookmarks with ease, reminding me to close Firefox so it could access them. I didn’t allow the installer to make Chrome the default browser initially, but after half an hour I was ready to take the plunge.

This won’t be news to those of you already using Google Chrome but the new browser feels much faster than Firefox. I see that 20% of visitors to G4ILO’s Shack are using the Chrome browser. I think it won’t be long until it overtakes the 27% of my visitors using Firefox.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 11 November 2012

Ten metres seems to have perked up a bit today, though conditions don’t seem as good as they were a week or so ago.

During the afternoon on PSK31 I heard, but didn’t work, Mexico and Panama. No WSPR monitors there so they don’t show up on the map.

Calling CQ resulted in contacts with some East coast USA stations. Propagation to Europe can’t have been that good. I think this is the first time that I didn’t get called by European and Russian stations.

I heard several USA stations working in a 10-10 contest. I don’t have a 10-10 number so I didn’t try to contact them. As a fan of 10m I like the idea of 10-10 but to be a member you have got to be sponsored by several existing members and then pay a membership fee. That’s way too much hassle and expense just to get a number to send people. The European PSK Club has the right idea. Membership is free to anyone and communication with members is via a web site.