AmateurRadio.com

Like a lot of you in other places, we’ve been on a bit of a temperature roller coaster lately.  Last weekend, after Christmas, it was up in the mid 50s (12C) here in New Jersey. This weekend, after New Year, we went as low as -3F (-19C) and our high for the day on Saturday was about 20F (-6C). That was just two days ago.

This morning, when I drove into work, it was 54F (12C).  Now, after lunch, it is 38F (3C) and the temperature continues to free fall.  By the time I leave to go home, I am sure that the temperature will be somewhere around the mid-20s (-4C).  And over the next 24 hours, we’re supposed to get some of the coldest weather we’ve had here in over 20 years.  The temperatures are expected to go below 0F (-17C) at night again, but this time with wind chills way lower than that. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only somewhere around 11F (-11C).  But then, later towards the upcoming weekend, it’s supposed to warm up again to more like springtime temperatures.

Stop the roller coaster, I want to get off!  I am NOT a big fan of the cold, but I sure wish that it would already stay one way or the other for a while.  It’s winter time, so even though I don’t like it, I can deal with the cold for a bit.  This teasing of Spring, and then the plunge back into the deep freeze is just cruel.

On a radio note, I was looking at the solar conditions yesterday and I was licking my lips.  High SFI, a goodly number of sun spots and low A and K values. Having some free time for a change,  I got on the air, expecting to hear a lot, and for a while I thought ALL my antennas were on the fritz!  Nothing much heard yesterday, and nothing much worked.  What a let down.  At first I thought maybe everyone was working the ARRL RTTY Roundup, but even RTTY signals seemed sparse to me.  In a major RTTY contest, we often get interlopers all the way down to the lowest of the low part of the bands. Yesterday, all the RTTY stations that I heard seemed to be staying way above the .060, QRP Watering Hole areas.

Maybe all the RF is freezing from the cold air and is just dropping out of the sky.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Yesterday’s post entitled “Car keys in the 70 cm band” showed a very busy band around 433.92 MHz with up to 10 simultaneous transmissions. That snapshot was taken on a Sunday afternoon at 16:32 local time. Here is a much less crowded snapshot taken with the USB SDR-RTL dongle under the same conditions as the previous blog post. The difference is that this is from late Monday night at 23:34 local time:

Press image for a larger view

Thanks to all viewers who have made the former blog post the most popular on my blog for this week. Thanks also to the RTL-SDR blog which gave it publicity in the blog post “Looking at the 432 to 438 MHz ISM band“.

Related posts:

• “Car keys in the 70 cm band”
• “Video of busy 70 cm ISM band due to car key fobs”

It’s always a pleasure to work Bert (F6HKA) in France but especially so this morning when I heard the familiar strong signal here on the east coast. He always has a 599 signal. This morning I worked him on 10 meters. I’ve been very busy since the beginning of the new year and Bert was my first DX contact for the 2014  log book. He was sending K3Y/EU but I knew exactly who he was when I hear him. We’ve worked 9 different times now and he always takes a few extra moments to say hello and how are you? He’s a true gentleman and he enjoys working QRP stations.

I was skipping across the bands now and I worked the next station who was in Madrid and on 12 meters. This contact into Spain was much more difficult but I finally worked EC4DEX after several attempts.

I now dropped down to 15 meters and caught this station (IQ2CJ) in Northern Italy. It was also difficult to copy but we finally managed to exchange call signs and move onward to other stations. I was hearing a station in Ireland but couldn’t work him.

It’s freezing cold this morning. The temperature is -11 Celcius and the wind is blowing at 32 kph. We’re expecting a low tonight of -20 Celcius with a wind chill of -39 C. BBBBrrrrrrrrr……….

As I continued to travel towards the lower bands; I stopped on the 30 meter band and threw my call out on the QRP frequencies. I was answered by Hal (KA4SDU) in nearby Louisville Kentucky. He lives next to the Ohio River and enjoys watching the barge traffic as it moves downstream. We both being Navy Veterans, we had a delightful talk about several different things.

 Hal loves to play with antennas and produces a really neat one called Hal’s Bamboo Beast

The month of December brought NO outside activity for the WV Chapter of the NAQCC Club and I doubt for the next couple of months. I don’t want to end up like that frozen rabbit in the upper picture.

Our monthly club breakfast, at the Charleston downtown restaurant, is this coming Wednesday. A few days later Eric (AC8LJ) will drive to a fellow CW operators home to see a variety of different keys. I’m assuming the weather will be a little warmer at that time.

Don’t want to end up like that frozen rabbit……



    
                                                         

I received a note from Thomas Andersen, OZ1AA, sharing some information about his around-the-world bike trek:

This is the story of an adventure across countries, continents and cultures, enriched by the spirit of Amateur Radio.

Apart from ham radio I have been interested in cycling since I was a kid. I also love to travel so it was somewhat natural for me to combine my passions in life into a perfect match. I first did some shorter bike trips in Europe including a three week ride through the Balkans in 2007. A year later in the middle of the financial crisis, the startup company I was working for suddenly went bankrupt. I wasn’t slow to hit the internet and look for a cheap flight ticket to a warm place. I spent the next 2 months cycling from South India to Delhi and had an amazing time. After the trip I decided to plan for “The Big Ride”, but first I needed to earn more money.

When I came home from India a got a job on Faroe Islands. Apart from the fact that the beer up there is incredible expensive, I figured it would be a good place to save up some cash as there wouldn’t be a lot of other things to spend money on. During a long and dark winter I managed to make 28000 QSOs as OY3AA and save up the money I needed. In the beginning of October 2010 I came back to Denmark and one week later I was saying goodbye to friends and family on the central square in Copenhagen.

After more than 20,000 km and three years on the road, I learned that there is always a radio amateur around, ready to give a helping hand. I have now reached South America and started cycling north from Ushuaia. The goal is to reach Canada within a year.

I think it would have been possible to do what I am doing without being a radio amateur, but there is no doubt in my mind that it would be a much more boring trip. I can’t honestly think of any other hobby where you can show up in any town in any part of the world and be welcomed like I have been. I have realized this is unique because my non-radio friends simply can’t understand how I can know so many people. They think I am the world’s best networker, but all I can tell them is: Become a Ham and you will have 1 million friends around the world as well.

A sincere thank you to all hams who helped making this possible. Amateur radio spirit is alive!

Follow his ride via cyclingtheglobe.com or via Twitter. Also, if you’re on his route (the North American portion is mostly Eastern U.S./Canada), consider showing him some local ham hospitality! 🙂

Solar Flare Alert:

Active Sunspot Region 11944 has a 75% chance of producing an M-class flare, and a 30% chance of producing an X-class flare, in the next 24 hours. Smaller flares are also possible.

We are expecting a glancing blow from a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) sometime in the next 24 hours.

The Earth’s polar regions are under a proton event (Polar Cap Absorption, or PCA, event). This is degrading HF communications over polar regions.

(Live data and more info at https://Facebook.com/spacewx.hfradio or http://SunSpotWatch.com/ )

In a surprise announcement tonight, Ed Griffin of Import Communications (Wouxun.us) has abruptly ended sales and support of the popular Wouxun radios.

As one of the largest Wouxun distributors, Import Communications was selling as many as 500 radios per month, according to the company.

In an email to customers, Griffin indicated that he had been having difficulty dealing with the manufacturer in China. He also claimed that all Wouxun radios contain an “internal defect” which the factory is unwilling to address.

Griffin’s description of the lost memory problem / reverting to speaking Chinese matches my experience with two of my Wouxun radios.

Griffin wrote that he would continue to sell Wouxun accessories and is in the process of importing a new dual-band HT manufactured by Anytone.

Press image for a larger view

Related posts:

• “Not so busy 70 cm ISM band” showing the status on a late Monday night
• “Video of busy 70 cm ISM band due to car key fobs“