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Remember that QRN I had a year ago. It suddenly disappeared after a few days. I never found the real troublemaker but suspected it came from the house or from nearby. Now since we are going to build a new bathroom next week, I had to rebuilt part of the house and wiring I came accross some mains wiring above the ceiling that probabely caused this QRN. When I opened a junction box and touched the wire nuts lights went on and off. Actually all connections were very poor made and the last owner of the house apparently tried to stick everything together with tape, besides that he probabely was colorblind. I removed all nuts and made new connections with new connectors no nuts again. As a result of that blindness wires were switched, I noticed a short circuit at first after reconnecting I thought. But in the end it seems the safety earth was used as switch wire, so it became a life wire as well. That was a 2 weeks ago, in the mean time I did a rebuilt and rewiring, that junction box has been removed together with a lot of other junk. I already made some preparations for the new radioshack and of course for the new bathroom and finally switched over to the new wiring last Sunday. Unfortenately I think other wiring in the house is just the same mess as this, although that wiring is from a earlier date I think around 1950-1960. I already removed parts of it when building the baby room last year and found some nice porcelain wire nuts at one of the old junction boxes. They are originally from the first mains wiring when the house was built, great to find such items in our 1935 house. Well despite a lack of time I’ve tried some radio as well looking for T32C in the evening, reading other blogs it seems they are easy to work from North America. But although I saw a lot of dx cluster spots on 20, 15, 12 and 10m from stations in Europe and even from the Netherlands I could not even hear a whisper from them. So I guess to work them you really need a beam from this part of the world, or I’m just not lucky? If time allows I’ll try again next few days till the DXpedition is over.

With the help of PC4T’s tutorial I made this graphic in excel. The blue line represents my signal at Casey TI2/NA7U and the green line represents Casey’s signal at my QTH. The strange thing is that I did not receive Casey after around 01:52 UTC. But of course it could be he only listened after that time. Peak on 30m was around 02:50 UTC after that you see propagation is going up and down slowly sloping downwards. Sunset greyline at Costa Rica is at 23:20 UTC if I’m not mistaking. You see a small rise of my signal being received by Casey at that time. Casey’s signal peaked also at that time, but is difficult to see as the graphic is 3D. So I quickly made another graphic showing this. Besides WSPR on 30m I did some 10m too for 2 days, I’ve been heard in 23 DXCC now and even logged a all time new one Kazakhstan bringing me at 64 DXCC on WSPR all band. 

Combined result RTX Saturday

I left WSPR running at 10m this weekend. Although there was a huge difference between propagation at Saturday and Sunday. Since my computer chrashed a couple of months ago this was the first time that I installed WSPR again and Saturday around 10:00 UTC I was finally on air with my usual 1W. A little late as I already heard several Japanese stations with big signals on both 10m and 12m. Anyway, my WSPR signal was heard from Australia to Africa and North and South America. I could note several new DXCC and I count 18 till now on 10m WSPR that received met 1W signal. As always I received a lot more, and there was something that was conspicuous. There were stations that transmit with 50W and stations that transmit with only 0,1W. I did remember what Paul PC4T wrote about the QRO stations that appear on JT65A as well. Then I thought why? Why is someone using that much power on QRP modes like WSPR and JT65 or even PSK? I think it is a matter of confidence. Confidence in your station and in your antenna system or even the propagation. Probabely someone that has no confidence in it will use more power so he is certain to be heard. It could also be something else, like a wall of QRM/QRN in very populated or industrial areas. Imagine you always have to struggle with S7-9 QRM on all bands and you occasionally spot something on WSPR or JT65? Using QRO could be a scream for others to do the same so it’s finally possible to QSO or spot a WSPR signal. I don’t know, I hope someone that use more then 5W on WSPR or JT65 can tell his story why? Most confident station this weekend on 10m was N4AU with 0,1W over 7337km (4559mls) my report -6dB. No confidence at all had DF4PV who was transmitting 50W and had a signal of +2dB. Later he switched to 10-1 and 5W, probabely gained some confidence after all.

Still like the QSL side of the hobby. Last time I attended the local radioclub there was  pile of QSL cards waiting. Along them a long awaited card from ZD7X Tom who was operating from St.Helena in 2007. I got him confirmed now on 20, 17, 12 an 10m. When setting up WSPR this morning I heard a lot of Japanese stations booming in on 12m and 10m. But since I got a father-daughter day today I had no opportunity to make a QSO. Left WSPR on at 10m.

Dragonfly photographed in our garden in the evening sun

The weather was beautifull the last 2 weeks. Temperatures around 20-24 C without that much wind, a real nice autumn. Unfortenately work had to be done both at the job and at home. Not much time for radio, although… at monday I heard a few locals on 10m. They seem to have a kind of net there on 28.400 USB. I heard some known voices and decided to jump in. After a short hello I discovered a couple of them were old friends from the CB years. I did a lot of 11 Mtr DX about 20 years ago with one of them and now he got his license as PD1BM. I remember Bert very well as we did a lot of DX together, I even visited him now and then after school back then just to do some DX. Bert has a ear for special DX and also has a exceptional location between 2 large canals which apparently gives him a advantage. I welcome him on the amateurbands and hope he enjoys it a lot. Bert already made some very nice DX with his 4 element LFA yagi for 10 Mtr. Last friday we had a meeting from our radioclub VERON dep. Hunsingo, there was a pile of QSL cards waiting for me. Another pile was for a neigbour HAM PC5F which I had to deliver to another local HAM. Very complicated….end of the story he made a telephone call to me and met me at my job to get his cards. Never spoke this guy although he is living in the same street that was my QTH for 12 years. So, I decided to e-mail him for a sked. We did meet at 80m PSK31 at Tuesday evening and had a chat for a while. PC5F Ferdinand has all his antennas inside the house on the attic, and makes some very nice DX for instance to North America on 10m! And with Hawaii on 20m! That is really nice, why do we need all those big antennas??

1. Is it possible (i.e. cost-effective) to implement in the cpu some mechanism that intentionally disables it after a predetermined amount of usage?

2. Can such an implementation be made undetectible?

3. Do any cpu manufacturers actually do this?

A few months ago I wrote about some failing technology, now I got the feeling there is a conspiracy going on. After a succesfull restore of my Windows Vista OS and some radio software like WSPR, HRD, JT65HF.  And finally installing the drivers to communicate with the radio. I could not start the computer yesterday, fans were running but that was it. First I thought it was the videocard, but replacing it by a new one I already bought last year did not change anything. There were also no usual beeps from the bios and the LED which is normally blinking was not doing anything as well. So what could I do? I checked memory and all connectors, they were all ferm in place. I suspect the powersupply but what if I buy a new one and it is another problem? Well, I decided to bring it to the nearest computershop for examination so we have to wait. But now the strange thing…..a colleague from my job has exactly the same computer. He had  the same problem with the videocard in the warranty period. And believe it or not this morning I told him my computer had probabely died, he couldn’t believe it as he has exactly the same problem and experience with his computer since last weekend !!!! So that’s why I think this has to be a kind of insidious computer hardware conspiracy !!!