AmateurRadio.com

For me, and I’m sure I’ve said this before, one of the fascinations of radio is how how signals travel from one place to another; how signals can be strong one day and almost inaudible another. I find this true at both VHF and HF.

One of the pleasures I find on HF is to listen to a band that you think should be closed and see what’s coming through. That’s what happened the other night. I’d had a quick spin around 28MHz which wasn’t doing anything at all (it was well after sunset) so I went down onto the bottom end of 14MHz.

The band was pretty quiet – but the great thing was that the only signals coming through were from several thousand miles away. First heard was a chirpy weak one, which turned out to be from Honduras, working into the USA. I listened to him for a while and tuned up and down the band a bit, only to find a Venezuelan station at good strength. He was also working into the USA.

Though I didn’t get a chance to call, I’ll bet a contact would have been possible and it’s often fun to surprise people with a call from far away.

Even when you think the band is closed – have a listen!

This is PROBABLY the only time you’ll see QSL cards mentioned on this blog. It’s really not my thing. BUT, I know it’s important to a lot of radio amateurs and, as long as you don’t force me to send bits of cardboard around the globe, then that’s ok with me….

Over at amateurRadio.com where Matt, W1MST kindly syndicates my blog, you can win 1000 QSL cards from KB3IFH QSL cards. The cards look great!

So, why not enter the competition and try and win the QSLs? If you do, and you’ve worked me, you don’t need to send me one, though. Thanks all the same. Good luck!

Last weekend I enjoyed running my 1W WSPR system up on 7MHz and was surprised by just how far it went. I wondered how a 1W CW signal would fare this weekend on the same band, given the activity in the CQWW CW contest. The activity of course is both a good thing; plenty of people to call and a bad thing; lots of interference.

After I’d finished writing my Practical Wireless column today I tuned up 7MHz and checked the output was set at 1W. I did what the low power guys recommend and called the loud ones. After all, if they’re way over S9, I shouldn’t be *that* many dB down!

First in the log was EA2EA, quickly followed by DF0HQ. RX4W, 9A1A, YL9W and OG2A all get the ‘Golden Ears’ award! By that stage I’d lost interest, having proven that it worked, but made a note to try 7MHz later when it opened to the USA.

I was curious whether 28MHz would be open. Certainly not in a major way, but I could hear some African activity and some meteor bursts from European activity. I kept tuning up and down waiting to see what would appear. What appeared was PJ4A. They took a little working, but after a minute or two I had them in the log. Also coming in from the Caribbean were ZF1A (great to hear, as I’ve operated from there!) and KP3Z though I only heard those two briefly. Some US stations were heard, though not worked; KC1XX, W4SUL, AD4ES and K1TO amongst others. An hour or so later, I checked the band again and was interested to hear C5A coming through. To my surprise, and how often does this happen when you run 100W to a vertical, they came back first call.

After supper, I thought it was time to see if I could work the US on 7MHz with 1W. KC1XX was the poor unfortunate I picked. But we did it! It took a few repeats but the team there pulled all the information out and I was glad to hear that they took a lot of care to make sure they’d got the information ok. Next time guys, I promise I’ll call with higher power and make an easier QSO for you.

I enjoyed the 1W challenge. No doubt Justin will be pleased I played ‘real radio’, but I suspect that my next 1W operation will probably be on WSPR again!

Not too much time to spend here today, but I just saw an interesting blog from Sivan, 4X6IZ about getting WSPR to ‘frequency hop’. In other words, you could operate on several bands at the same time!

Have a look here

Clever!

It’s a long while since I spent a whole afternoon on a single HF band, but it’s quite an interesting thing to do, watching the propagation change. I decided I would try my 1W WSPR tests again. I started off at around 1230z.

Reports from around the UK and near Europe were constant, with distances as little as 20km (thanks to Peter, 2E0SQL just over the hill in Oxford!) and further into Germany. Interestingly, Peter, running 5W was heard at consistently further afield than me, as you’d expect, but I was keen to stick at the 1W power level and see how it performed.

As the afternoon wore on, some of the UK stations faded, and I started to be heard by LA9JO in the far north of Norway at just under 2200kms. Late afternoon too, I heard UA3ARC in KO85 (though he did not report hearing me until much later in the day). After around 1815z or so, I stopped copying very much at all and wondered whether I should continue transmitting.

I was glad I did though, as around 1915z I was reported in Spain and Portugal and I wondered whether this was a precursor to the path to the USA opening. Sure enough it was and on the next transmit period, I was very pleased to be heard by K1JT and WB2JEP. After a few minutes more, reports dried up for a while, though then things seemed to swing around to the east with reports from EW1LN and UA3ARC, as well as some Italian stations.

Just before I closed at around 2230z, there were more reports from further into the USA, with AD3X at 5683kms and most distant for the day’s trials was W3GXT at 5747kms.

Lots of fun and I was pleased to see how the 1W signal propagated. With the CQWW CW contest set to take over the bands next weekend, I think I can guarantee it won’t be worth playing WSPR, But it might be interesting to spend some time at the 1W power level and see just how many contacts I can make on CW. I’m guessing not many, but I’d love to be proven wrong!

Continuing my idea of plotting up what I hear on VHF/UHF from the car, here’s the map from last week. Nice to get back on GB3FX (Farnham 50MHz) for a couple of QSOs with Roger, G4HZA who I used to work often in the mornings. I was also pleased to work M1ELK/M on Beacon Hill near Newbury on 145MHz simplex (those simplex contacts are gold-dust) and interested to hear a mobile on the hills near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, which is a good haul from here

View Heard this week 19/11 in a larger map

Not shown on the map are D-STAR QSOs made from home, of course. But I had a particularly enjoyable QSO on Wednesday evening with Keith, WD8AFB in Orlando. I’ve spoken to Keith a couple of times before and we share an interest in low power HF portable operating which it’s always fun to talk about. Keith had just got an FT817 and was trying to find the optimum antenna to use from hotel rooms when he’s out on the road.

I should share with you that after my blog post about the Marconi Memorial CW contest last weekend, I had an e-mail from a friend who will remain nameless, who said ‘Nice to see you doing some real radio for a change’. I replied that it was nice to keep the ‘Wireless Preservation Society’ in business…

So this weekend I thought it would be nice to play around with some digital modes on HF. I didn’t know, but apparently it was the WAE RTTY contest taking place. I tuned across the digi bands and there was RTTY everywhere. Somehow, I didn’t fancy doing that, though I decoded a few for fun, using MMTTY. I’d read some things about the PSK Reporter network in the week, so I thought it might be fun to play some PSK. I set up Digital Master (DM780)’s Superbrowser, so I could sit my receiver on 14.070 and the Superbrowser would decode the streams of all the different QSOs going on. Quite interesting – but didn’t grab me as far as transmitting was concerned!

I decided I was more interested in playing with WSPR again. I had the software on my laptop from the last time I used it at the end of last year. I quickly set it going on 7.038MHz (this was mid afternoon) and was soon logging other WSPR users across the country, across Europe and as far away as UA3ARC (KO85). I couldn’t get it to transmit though. When it was time to transmit, the speaker emitted a click and that was it.

I couldn’t understand what was up – and frankly gave up for a while and just ran it on receive, as that was interesting enough anyway. But of course, curiosity got the better of me (must be the cats’ influence) and I tinkered around a bit, without success. I googled around and found that someone had similar issues solved by a reinstall of WSPR.

I removed the program directory, deleted all the files and reinstalled WSPR 2.11. It worked! I could hear tones on transmit! No idea why this had happened, but glad to be QRV again.

By the time all this had happened, 7MHz was starting to be swamped by the WAE contest stations, so a mere watt or so of WSPR wasn’t going to go far was it? To my surprise, my 1W signal was heard by a number of German stations as well as in northern Italy. Later on, I set the transmitter going for a period or two and was heard in Serbia at around 2000km.

With the contest out the way, I might try and run the 1W WSPR signal in the evenings this week and see how I get on. It ought to go a reasonable way…