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For the last week or so I have been using the K3 for WSPR on 10m to detect the signs of any Sporadic-E openings. Since the opening of May 3rd there has been nothing very exciting to report, though it has been interesting to see spots of stations previously never heard suddenly appear, often at good strength, as a patch of ionization materializes in just the right place.

What has been intriguing over the last few days is the consistent appearance of spots involving OY1OF throughout the day, often with stations in the UK but also with those in Holland, France or Germany.

The distance is too far, obviously, for the ground wave propagation that is often the only propagation reported between closely located stations. The spots are too frequent and too widespread to be Sporadic-E. And they surely cannot be regular F2 layer reflections, as the MUF in this part of the world at this point in the solar cycle is still far too low (the F2 critical frequency is around 4MHz according to the IPS Radiowave Propagation Center.)

Could it be scatter from the ash of the Icelandic volcano?

Thank you Potomac Valley Radio Club for sponsoring Contesting 101: Maximize Your Score and Your Fun webinar. The schedule time was right on and, for this mid-40 something, ideal for a Friday night.

Kirk, K4RO hit all the function buttons with his informative presentation. Well done!

I especially enjoyed his insight into station construction, component selection, brief yet important mention of antenna systems, and calling CQ even when one is low power, low profile like myself.

Calling CQ more often is a target going into CQ WPX CW at the end of the month.

Contest on.

P.S. Ham radio has moved to a new level of passion with Ham Radio Deluxe and Digital Mode 780 in the shack relaxation zone. Wow factor nine point nine!

The objective of today’s walk was Fellbarrow, a minor Wainwright fell WOTA number LDW-199 in the North Western Fells. It had never been activated before and I thought it would be an easy walk, so off I went.

I set off along the lane that goes behind Whin Fell. By a field gate I was checking the map to see if this was where I turned off the lane to go up on to the fells, and someone walked by and asked if I was lost. I said I was just checking to see if this was the way to Fellbarrow and he said yes, you can go that way, so I did. After about 15 or 20 minutes of walking I found that I was at the far end of a large field surrounded by a dry stone wall with barbed wire on either side and no way I could see to go any further.

Eventually I did find a place where the wall had fallen down and it was possible to negotiate the barbed wire, only tearing my walking trousers a little bit. I carried on but found the directions I thought I needed to go blocked by walls and gates.

The trouble with these grassy minor fells is that they don’t look very distinctive so they aren’t obvious targets to aim for, and they are infrequently walked so there is no obvious path to follow. Basically, I was lost. APRSISCE on my mobile phone was no help as the mapping it uses contains no topographical detail at all. I tried Google Maps but it informed me that there was no network coverage so it couldn’t download any maps. I plodded on until I saw a path that descended into the valley and I decided to stop, have my lunch and go back.

After lunch I decided I would follow some tyre tracks up hill just to see where they went. After about 5 minutes I saw a stile in the fence and a path. I followed this and after a couple more stiles found myself on the top of Fellbarrow with its Ordnance Survey trig point.

I got out the Motorola GP300, made a couple of calls on 145.500 FM and was answered by Colin 2E0XSD. However despite a take-off that covered Whitehaven, the Isle of Man, Workington, Cockermouth and the Dumfries and Galloway area of Scotland I got no other responses. I checked the repeaters and heard Richard MI6BJG/P putting a call into the GB3GI repeater. He was walking into Belfast with a hand held radio and we had a chat for a few minutes until he started dropping out of the repeater. I also heard a repeater GB3BT on the channel marked for GB3EV, which I later found is at Berwick on the north-east coast.

I still couldn’t raise anyone on FM simplex, so I decided to come back. The return route was a bit easier and used the path I should have taken if I had walked for another 5 minutes beyond the point that I was misdirected. I think I need GPS software with OS maps on my HTC Touch.

Series Three Episode Ten of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:

• Caister Marconi station contacts 29 countries
• Government will kill off FM
• Radio Kuwait cleared from amateur band
• Morse practice via Echolink
• WebSDR Remote Radio in Virginia
• Hamvention D-STAR linking announcement
• Gigabit Powerline Adaptor interference video
• GB3YR now live on internet
• The future of amateur radio is youth
• Global Simulated Emergency Tests 2010
• Retro 75 AM Transceiver kit group formed
• Caiguaran - low-cost Cuban transceiver
• GB3VHF back on the air
• Tyco offers free electronics courses

Your feedback, upcoming events and Martin (M1MRB) tells us about Holiday Emergency Antenna.

A recent discussion on the WSPRnet website concerns whether one should log WSPR contacts. It was pointed out that normal WSPR “spots” are not contacts. However it appears that some operators consider that if two stations spot each others’ signals within a short interval of time then they treat it as a contact and QSL it.

In my opinion WSPR spots, even if they occur both ways within a short time, are not contacts because you have no way of knowing if someone else received your transmission (or what signal report you got) without using the internet. It would be nice if the WSPR protocol provided a way to discover who is hearing your signals without using the internet but it doesn’t. I have no issue with QSLing WSPR “spots” as SWL reports. But they are not contacts, and if anyone uses eQSL to send a QSL to me for a WSPR spot it will be rejected as “not in log.”

The message is clear and it is social media. A cluster of ham radio operators understood a few years ago that a wave, no more like a tsunami, would crash against the shores of culture and it is here. It is not a fad. Social media is transforming our daily lives from inter-personal relationships to business-to-business transactions.

Perhaps, one might say as Alvin Toffler did, this is a power shift.

Failure to realize this transformation, most likely, will leave institutions, organizations, and individuals on the boondocks of the 20th Century.

73 from the shack relaxation zone and thank you FRRL for the content.

Today I replaced the home made 2m Moxon Rectangle with a Vine Antennas SuperMoxon. As you can see from the picture of it installed in my attic it is a Moxon Rectangle with two directors that are also folded into a rectangle.

My attic, like my house, is very small. As is usual with modern British houses, the roof trusses are made of thin wood with cross-bracing for strength, so the attic area isn’t open to allow the free rotation of antennas. I have crammed rather a lot of antennas into this space to try to cover the maximum number of bands, so the VHF antennas have been forced into odd corners. Using a conventional small beam is not possible as there is insufficient space to allow rotation.

Vine Antennas claim that no other antenna gives so much gain in such a small turning circle, so it seemed like an ideal design for this situation. They claim that the directors add an extra 3dB of gain to the Moxon Rectangle design – about 9dBi which is more than a three element Yagi.

The antenna was quite expensive to buy. It is quite rugged and heavy but looks a bit home made. While the driven element and reflector made use of Jubilee clamps to tighten the main elements on to the smaller tubing used to form the corners, the directors used self tapping screws which had worked loose in transit (and probably would work loose in use due to wind vibration) and which stripped the inner hole when I tried to tighten them. You are left to your own devices to find a way to weather proof the feeder connection. Since my antenna is going to live a cosseted life away from the wind and rain I was not bothered by these issues.

The antenna presents a 50 ohm load but needs a balun to prevent feeder radiation. Vine Antennas offers a choke balun (apparently several turns of coaxial cable held in a loop using cable ties) for an extra £15. I decided to do without this, but I placed a clamp-on RFI ferrite over the cable close to the feed point which will hopefully achieve the same result.

The SWR is almost 1.0:1 at 144.0 MHz, as the plot from my AA-200 antenna analyzer shows, but it rises steeply to 1.4:1 at 144.4MHz and 2:1 at 144.8MHz. Clearly I had better not use this antenna to work satellites.

It’s a bit early to say how performance compares with my old Moxon Rectangle. The beam width does seem sharper and the front to back ratio seems quite noticeable. I heard the GB3VHF beacon for the first time since it moved to its new location, but it is in and out of the noise on slow fading as it always used to be. I can clearly hear the Northern Ireland beacon GB3NGI, which curiously is the same strength on the SuperMoxon as it is on the ribbon cable Slim Jim (which is also due for replacement with a commercial antenna.)

This antenna is probably as good as I am going to get given the restricted space available. The SuperMoxon design is copyright Vine Antennas and commercial reproduction is prohibited, which should be borne in mind if you try to make your own version.