Amateur radio ⁽²⁵⁶⁾

I managed to get the endorsements for all 6 bands from 30m to 10m this time. Not as good as last year but the wire is hopeless on 40m (and below) so I am rather wasting my time trying. I am happy with those 6 bands anyway. Of course it is open until the end of February 2025 so there is still plenty of time, especially as I am considering a new family party game for Christmas: "who can get the antenna support highest up the tree" followed by a relay race with 120 foot of wire.

For logging purposes I just use QRZ.com as it does most of the things I need. I have nothing against the various logging packages, it's just that they are all way over the top for my meagure needs. I don't do high pressure stuff or contesting (yet!) so my needs are simple. However, I do maintain a local database primed from the data in QRZ. It is there that I store eQSL information and WAB square information. QRZ does have fields for eQSL but I decided to store it locally. Having all this data to hand made me think of ways to use it. Having reapplied my programming hat I now have a few useful modules. My next aim is to make them into a dashboard sort of display rather than console output as now. One module displays data from pskreporter via the extremely useful pskreporter MQTT feed (see mqtt.pskreporter.info) and stores this in a database along with distance (direction is planned). A web page displays it so I can see where I am being heard (provided that data gets into pskreporter of course). Another module takes UDP data from wsjt-x and tells me which of the stations calling CQ…

Just recently I have been comparing results on 2m FT8 between the Big Wheel and the QFH. I found there is very little diference between them, and although measuring via reported strength via pskreporter is hardly scientific the varying reports between the two - sometimes in favour of the Big Wheel and sometimes the QFH - brought me to rationalise the metalwork currently in the loft. Suffice to say the Big Wheel is no more and I am using the QFH from now on. This not to say that I don't want a nice Yagi and rotator on the chimey but that is a project for another day. Now the next interesting experiment is to see if I can reach FM satellites on the QFH. It should be better suited to those.

Things happen slowly here. Very slowly... I finally got some coax fed out through and air brick and connected the external random wire up that slopes down to the workshop so I cna use it without needing to open the shack window and feed a cable out. Experimenting, the tuner was happy on 6, 10 and 12 but less so on 15 with the rig seeing a SWR close to 3. It would tune 30m too but knocked the GPS signal to the clock off, clearly RF in the shack. I did not try lower because I then realised that, like a twit I forgot to fit the 1:1 unun! With the 1:1 unun installed outside the tuner was happy-ish with 15 but now not 12. Oh well. And it refuses to get below a SWR of 3.0 on 30m and is quite bad on 40m which is annoying, but on the plus side tuning does not knock the GPS clock off! I suspect I have managed to get an awkward length of wire so I will shorten it later on and expreiment further. Surprisingly, it is happy on 80m and it will tune 160m but that did knock the…

I am making a better effort at picking up the SAQ broadcast due on the 1st of December. I now have a VLF mini whip (no idea where it came from now!) up in the loft fed via a bias-tee and connected to a Heros VLF converter which takes 0 to 500kHz and converts it to 4,000 to 4,500kHz. Although the loft is a poor location for this it is a lot better than in the shack. the Heros is connected to an RSPdx on it's BNC port and this is connected to the Linux PC which runs SDRconnect as a server. Reception is via SDRconnect on the Mac. So far, so good, I can see the MSF and DCF77 time signals on 60kHz and 70.5kHz respectively plus a ferw other peaks, at least some of which correspond with known transmitters. Getting the settings right is a fiddle. The above photo has the base set low and the red line is where SAQ should be. But there is quite a rolloff there so hopefully the signal will be sufficiently strong to receive. The antenna is supposed to work down to 5kHz and the Heros is specified as <5 to 500kHz.