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10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 7 November 2012

 Another fairly quiet day on 10m. I took time out from WSPR during the early afternoon to do some PSK31 operating. There was some good DX about. First I worked Ian 3B8IK in Mauritius. I heard 5H3NP in Tanzania, but he didn’t appear to be CQing. I found a clear spot and called CQ myself hoping to be heard by the African station but every time a station from the Eastern USA called me! It was better than when the band was wide open as there was less QRM making it easier to hear stations.

I like working stateside because ops seem more willing to have a proper QSO instead of just exchanging reports and details. I don’t think that says anything about the relative friendliness of Americans and Europeans, it’s just down to the fact that Yanks and us both speak the same language whereas for the European stations that are all I can usually work English is not their native language.

PSK Reporter map showing stations heard/worked by G4ILO on 8 November 2012

A few months ago I began using the No-IP Free service in order to be able to access my home network using a hostname or  fixed IP address. This worked well until a couple of weeks ago when I started getting the error “no host”. I logged in to No-IP and could find no reference to my account. So I recreated it with the same details and it is working fine again.

I vaguely recall seeing something to the effect that to keep the free account active you are supposed to log in once a month. The trouble is I find it hard enough remembering what day of the week it is never mind something like that. Previously I had used the DynDNS free service but that didn’t like the frequency with which my broadband changes IP address. My broadband provider says that I can only have a fixed IP address if I have a business account. It would be cheaper to stump up $20 a year for the No-IP Enhanced account. But being a dyed-in-the-wool cheapskate I’d like to avoid doing that. Any recommendations for free IP services that stay working as long as you want?

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 7 November 2012

Very few WSPR signals received at G4ILO today. A number of weak transatlantic spots of my 2 watt signal make the picture look better than expected.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 6 November 2012

Strange conditions today. I’m seeing hardly any traces at the moment but several east coast US stations are spotting me. I even checked to make sure I wasn’t running 100w by accident!

My website G4ILO’s Shack is currently down. It appears to be down for everyone, not just me.

Sometimes a site appears to be down when it’s really a problem at your end. There’s a really useful site you can use to check if the server is down or not. It goes by the memorable name downforeveryoneorjustme.com. It’s worth bookmarking, especially if you have a website of your own.

I’ve opened a support ticket with the hosting service. Hopefully my site will be back up by the time you read this.