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Today my main rig has spent even more time on other things than WSPR. Besides trying to work some PSK31 DX I have also been testing a beta release of K3 firmware. This new version has an improved CW decoder that is a bit less finicky about settings. It works very well but is still beaten by the Windows program MRP40 which I regard as the gold standard for CW decoders. As Wayne N6KR says, the MRP40 algorithm is probably ten times more sophisticated and the K3 MCU doesn’t have enough code space for it.

I’ve been interested in Morse decoders since the first home computers and can remember keying in a program listing in BASIC from a QST article in the late 70s. Later I wrote a decoder in Hisoft Pascal which ran on my ZX Spectrum. It actually decoded strong, perfectly sent Morse but it was not reliable enough to be useful. More recently I tried implementing a Morse decoder in KComm but it was a total failure.

I didn’t have a lot of success with PSK31 DXing on 10m either. I only made two contacts but I heard what would have been two new South American countries: HC7AE in Ecuador and CE4BRO in Chile. I didn’t need to look up HC in a book as I remember from my teenage SWLing days hearing HCJB Quito, the Voice of the Andes!

I think band conditions were better today but they supported more propagation from Europe so there were higher QRM levels (and lower operating standards 😉 ) I moved up the band to try and get away from all the IMD products but hardly anyone was listening up there so it was a bit futile.

Someone who did hear my CQ calls was Vito IZ7DMT. He was a whopping signal but was signing IZ7DMT/QRP. He told me he was running 5 watts from an FT-817 and was rather indignant that I wouldn’t use the illegal /QRP suffix during handovers. Nice QSL though!

Here is the result of today’s WSPRing:

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 20 November 2012

I nearly got myself locked out of the WSPR map page today. I must have managed to save the settings to try to display spots for all bands for the last 24 jours, or something like that, because whenever I went to the page the web browser froze up while it tried to render the map and I couln’t get back to the settings boxes to change it. I had to find out how to delete all cached files in Chrome before I could access it again.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 18 November 2012

I lost quite a lot of time trying to sort that out. I also spent an hour or so seeing what I could work on 10m PSK31. I managed to QSO with several US stations including N7WET in Tucson, Arizona and KB5IAV in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I worked two all time new countries as well. Fabio CU3HN in the Azores has one of those QSLs that never fail to bring a smile to my face.

QSL of CU3HN

Victor, HP1AVS in Panama I had heard before but not managed to work. So I was pleased to add his call to the log as well.

QSL of HP1AVS

I love 10 metres!

Ten metres has been wide open today. Stations have been heard or worked in just about all directions. I ran 2 watts of WSPR during the periods that I wasn’t in the shack and the program screen resembled 30m!

WSPR spots on 10m at G4ILO, 26/9/2012

After a short period of WSPR I switched to voice mode and made a nice SSB contact with Ken, JA2FJP near Nagoya (nothing to do with cheap Chinese antennas!) After a rubber-stamp contact with R100BG I found phone a bit hard going with all the QRM and pileups so I retreated to the more restful pastime of working digimodes.

Digital stations hrd/wkd at G4ILO, 26/9/2012

I made one more Japanese contact – with JI4POR – and made my first-ever China contact – with BG8GAM – all on PSK31. I heard several more stations from those countries and also one from Korea (South, presumably) and one from Indonesia but didn’t manage to work them. Better luck next time!

A session of calling CQ produced an endless succession of Russian stations. Where do they all come from? There is no chance of working interesting DX unless you search and pounce on the DX stations. Even when calling a specific DX station I was being called by Russian stations! Why do they do it? I lost the chance of a couple of first contacts because of it.

As the afternoon wore on many stations from North America and Canada started to be in evidence. My final PSK31 contact for the day was with Bob KZ0G in Missouri which is probably a first for that state for me.

Not a bad haul for a few hours listening / operating using a maximum of 40 watts PSK31 to an attic dipole. I wish there were more days like that!

Conditions have been good recently on 15m. On that band I have a choice of two antennas – the multiband dipole or the magnetic loop. The multiband dipole doesn’t actually have elements for 15m so on that band I think the 40m element must do the work. The K3 ATU is needed to produce a good match.

There is quite a big difference in performance between the two antennas on 15m. The magnetic loop, surprisingly, has a higher noise level but it also produces stronger signals on some stations. On other stations the dipole seems best. It’s a pity I don’t have a sub-receiver in the K3. It would be interesting to try diversity reception one day.

Amman, Jordan

Whenever a band is open you can usually find some PSK31 activity even if you can’t hear any phone. That was the case yesterday on 15 metres when I worked Nart, JY5IB from Amman, Jordan. That’s an all-time new country for me so I was very pleased to get him into the log. On this occasion it was the magnetic loop that did the job.