Unfortunately, again, all of the tasty dx hears me but I can't hear them. I think the best reciprocal contact (i.e. close to proper QSO) here is Israel.
This is 30m, 5 watts, long wire. More than I normally use with the 817. But there isn't THAT much difference with the an 817 on 2.5W with no preamp, is there? That's 817,2.5W, poor LW, this one is a considerably more expensive Icom 756ProIII, sloghtly better LW and 5W
And a Happy Christmas to All
This is the whole day - from about 9AM until about 9PM 21st December. Operating at 2.5W. Most of the DX heard me, but I didn't hear them (usual poor antenna problems at M0DEV)- but I am perpetually surprised at how well I get out.
I'm running on 30m again today, but this time with 500mW. Clearly, a direct comparison doesn't mean a great deal, but it will be interesting. KK5MR has already spotted me from what appears from his station notes to be a relatively modest setup.
It is not that easy to find, of course! http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-meteor-scatter.htm is quite informative on gear if not frequencies. So, having read and digested that I then went looking for where the skeds are arranged
Every web page points you to pingjockey, but as far as I can see nearly everything, if not everything, is US based. Then there's on4kst's pages. These are used by Europeans. Once logged in you'll find pages with QRGs on.
But in the end, I heard activity using the good old fashioned route of rotating the large knob on the front and listening. 144.370 seems to be used as a calling channel, certainly in Europe. Indeed, activity seems to be so sparse that the two calls I have heard so far have all opted to carry out the QSO on the channel, which certainly makes life easier
Then there's the mode. ISCAT seems to be the flavour used for 6m MS, because the bursts are longer. A slower mode is preferable. However, for 2m, FSK441 seems to be the mode of choice: it gets the entire message in several times in a short space of time.
So, I'm listening using FSK441 on 144.370. Fortunately, it's all recording what it hears and, much to my surprise, I have managed to capture a couple of CQ calls from foreign stations on my collinear.
The best so far is one from EA3AXV, captured at 16:02 on the 16th. Here's what I saw:
I wonder what power and antenna system he was using. he's about 1300km from me, so the capture is a good one
There is, according to the experts, no point in even trying a QSO without substantially more than 100W and a beam. The beam must be a mixed blessing, and I imagine one doesn't want too much directivity.
http://stardate.org/nightsky/meteors is a useful reference for when showers occur. But there is always activity.
JT65 transmissions in the 30m band plotted in three dimensions. To the right is time, to the left is frequency and up is "energy"
I do like representations like this.
Plotted with speclab - which is wonderful. And free.
Five minutes on WSPRnet maps followed by a quick hour on 40m WSPR convinced me that 40m was a band worth trying. Here is the result of an hour or so this morning, on the 817 at 1W to a LW:
So, I get the better rig out, power about 20W, tune to 7.039MHz (I looked it up on http://hflink.com/jt65/ - I don't often try 40m JT65) and set up a JT65 CQ. Twenty minutes later, I have heard absolutely nothing. Eventually, I fetch up the PSKReporter map and discover three monitors on 40m, but they are all on 7.076MHz.
My bandplan says 7.076 is all modes but excludes digimodes.
Confused.
Anyway, I migrate up to 7.076 and, of course, it's knee deep in SSB. I've got one decode, but I can't see anything clear to TX into.
40m is a mess!
Let's talk hypothetically. I see a nice tasty piece of DX pop up on the decode list - let's say it's Hawaii or somewhere quite difficult to get from the UK. I'm running about 10W which, as far as I am concerned is about the reasonable limit (I might occasionally go up to 20W on 160m when it's silent and I know I am not getting out). What almost invariably happens is that a station nearer to the "dx" will call at the same time, and our friend only gets one decode - the stronger one. So I wait till next time. And so on
This makes working pile-ups in JT65 (an odd concept, I know, but it does happen) almost impossible. I've watched one or two and, what happens often is an arms race. The combatants are blissfully unaware of each others existence. All they know is that they are on frequency and the guy isn't responding. So it's a little tweak on the power. After two or three goes the power is quite clearly, shall we say, large, and neither party has got through. Progress is only made when one of the pair gives up.
Compare this with CW, where one can work split, and the callers can (and do...) smear out along a portion of spectrum so that the DX can pick them off one by one.
Now I have a low boredom threshold. I listen to CW pileups and maybe have a halfhearted go, but I don't stand much chance with 50W and a LW. I *can* work DX in JT65, but it's frustrating because there are unscrupulous players with large power knobs.
So, make it your New Year Resolution to support the DX Code of Conduct
And, if you want a sad and slightly different tale, try reading Randy Johnson's piece here
This particular screenshot is 80m.
The other WSPR frustration is that I have no really neat way of logging this.
This is a couple of hours this evening on my usual unsophisticated antenna system ( a bit of wire).
I must get a real mode out on 30m in the evening.
The interesting thing here is that this particular piece of wire runs pretty much east-west. So how does this work?
Eventually, I switch to a rig wit a bit more oomph, and go 10W QRO
Get a QSO first call. Here's the far half of the exchange:
2117 10 -3 -0.1 1401. 0 M0DEV OEXXX (maidenhead)
I admit I should not have sent RRR
I send his report
2119 10 -4 -0.1 1401. 0 M0DEV OEXXX RRR
I send RRR
2121 10 -3 -0.1 1401. 0 50W INV-L 73
I spent an hour this morning re-arranging a long wire antenna - it's now insulated, is not (now) lying on anything, and I connected the other side to an earth stake instead of a flimsy counterpoise ending on the (admittedly metal) washing line post.
The signals I'm seeing on 80m WSPR now are awesome, even though I am still only up about 4m. G8JNJ/A (I assume it was him) came in at +9, and in the last 10 mins of operation I haven't seen a negative dB
TX seems better too - I'm using my usual 500mW, and DK4XI is hearing me.
I'd better re-fettle the "main" LW at M0DEV, methinks. It's got the good earth, but the route runs through trees, in a zig-zag. There must be points where some RF escapes to earth...
Working with cheap wires means what whilst I'm playing with CW on 80 and WSPR on 70cm I can leave the 817 (ex-SOTA, battered...) with the Very Long Wire Across End Of Garden running on 160m.
I had thought that 10m would be interesting today. It looked that way about 09:40z, when the continent had an opening to VK land. That didn't metamorphose over to the UK and, byt he time I got home from work at 1PM, 10m was dead.
160m yielded this this afternoon:
I've been on my usual 500mW, and the two DX contacts are "heard me" and, in the case of OZ7IT, it worked both ways - almost a QSO.
What's really interesting is that I have started to use WSPR to look at propagation. Instead of the International Beacon Project. It looks to me as if 10m prop, for example, is much more granular. The opening to VK this morning was quite a small footprint on the map. And the key thing was, there were enough of the WSPR dummies doing all the legwork to produce the map.
Utterly brilliant. Thanks Joe! And the JT9-1 QSO on 17m with OM5NA was a nice catch. He was buried under QRO RTTY. Didn't stop JT9-1 working.
And today's log contains 6 entries. Content!
I've tried it relatively low power (around 10W) on 160 metres, and have worked my way up to middle europe on it. The QSOs are reliable, it tunes well, and it's acquired some of the enhancements that HT65-HF has - the red and green bars, the click to continue the QSO. And it is MUCH more spectrum frugal than JT65 - and yes, it even gives positive reports sometimes
All good. I look forward to working you :-)
I've run the 817/T1/Un-un in parallel with a TS2000, connected to another LW, run through an SGC Mac-200 tuner, which specifically copes with random wire antennas very well. I've had it for years.
I am running two copies of WSPR. One connected to the 817, one to the TS-2000, both through identical SignalLink interfaces, on the same PC. The windows are side by side. Both are set RX only for this test. One of them is uploading
Both rigs on 3.592.600, both RX. The 817 (without the Un-un) is consistently level or 1 dB down on the TS-2000. They hear practically identically (even though the TS-2000 has the preamp switched in). With the un-un on the 817, between the T1 and the wire, the antenna tunes nicely, but I am 7-8dB down from the RX on the TS-2000
Hmmm.
His frequency is varying.There are three on the plot. The first looks like an abort. The second curls up at the end, and the third is much more U-shaped. All three are quite strong. It looks as if the power could be decreased to help with the frequency stability. WSPR is an incredibly low power mode - it will decode very weak signals. But they do need to be stable, with next to no drift.
But, all said, I am pleased with 40m/5W/LW tonight:
And even 80m has one or two interesting facets:
It's quite clearly THE place to go tune up. Heaven help any QSOs going on down there.
The Elecraft T1 needs no tuning up - it remembers what it did several days ago. Bt my 500mW isn't cutting the ice on 80m
Opera, which looks like a slightly clunkier version of WSPR, sits on my desktop. If tempted to turn it on I seem to end up on 14.065 because that's where everyone else is. So, this time I didn't - 1.836 MHz, 10 watts, and off down the garden for a cup of tea.
I pop back a bit later and there's a 2-way (heard and hearing, which Opera decorates with the label "QSO") with RX3DHR, in KO94ks. That's 2700 km, approximately, which beats my previous DX of just under 2000 km. Bear in mind all my QSOs are low power, if not strictly QRP.
Opera is worth a try if you like this sort of digital mode. It's all a bit low-tech in comparison with WSPR. The WSPR algorithm looks state-of-the-art. Opera's is a twist on QRSS CW so, as I write, the rig is being keyed by the soundcard sending an Opera beacon. Allegedly, the performance is beter than WSPR. I have yet to corroborate that - The consensus of opinion seems to be that it's about the same, but since far fewer souls spend their lives in Opera, WSPR gets far more DX because there are more people playing.
Could do with a few more on some bands though. 2m WSPR beaconing seems to be an inefficient way of warming the shack up...
High power WSPR has caused feedback problems Now turned the wick down to 5 watts. Already been picked up in Germany Lots of noise from switch mode PSUs.
Dear fellow ham,
WSPR stands for Weak Signal Propagation Reporter. It's used with weak signals. With WSPR, you get a long, long way for not very much power. And not very much antenna. String a bit of wire into your garden, set to 500mW and, on say 10 metres at the moment, you will make Australia at the right time of day (morning), and the States in the afternoon.
I hardly ever use more than 1W. I occasionally use 5W because the Long Wire I have won't tune on 160m easily. I use it connected to another rig, which won't go below 5W.
Your Switch mode noise doesn't mean you need to TX with more power. The other end won't see your switch mode PSUs - only theirs. If they're lucky, and they have a low noise floor, then they'll hear your 500mW.
Switch mode noise is a problem for your reception, clearly.
But, serious plea, don't go QRO with WSPR. JT65-HF has, to a certain extent, been spoiled by QRO operators who have discovered that by answering a CQ at high power they can drown out the rest of us. It's disappointing. And it's great to hear the bands when they are quiet and the QRP DX comes back above the noise floor.
Good luck with the noise. And remember, 500mW is plenty.
1714 -20 4.3 3.594105 -1 R56ZDJ HQ72 23
HQ72 is east side of Greenland.
He's using 250mW. And I'm the only person to hear him. 2400km away.
Pirate? Russian vessel?
0316 -19 2.8 3.594102 0 JM9BQV OC99 7
That's in the Southern Oceans, and 7 equates to 5mW :-) WSPR is error correcting. I haven't looked at the code, but I would imagine the probability of an error is virtually zero. And I get two in an afternoon?
The only feasible explanation I can think of is if someone fairly local is constructing a WSPR beacon and hasn't got the data right? But two? and at 03:16 in the morning?
Very odd.
(Click the chart to make it bigger) Each column is a 1000km slice. There are obvious reasons for the steps in it. The second column being bigger than the first is skip. Sub-1000km QSOs are rarer because of skip. The first step at 5000 km is the Eastern seaboard of the United States coming in. To the left of that, there's a gentle fall off as we progress over Europe (bear in mind I've popped all the bands into one pot here).
The second step is as we cross the relatively barren and difficult lands of India and China to Japan, thence to Australia and New Zealand, who lurk off on the right hand end. 20,000 km is about as far as you can do until SETI makes some discoveries.
So, clearly it gets more difficult with increasing distance (no surprises there). But it's also influenced by the difficulty of working DX in certain countries because of the lack of amateur activity there. There are, for example, only an estimated 800 hams in PR China - whereas there are 1.3 million in Japan.
But then, 800 is more than the total number of us involved in WSPR (about 500).
Sources:
900 km at 500mW on 160m is out of this league for M0DEV. Even with JT65, I'm talking watts, not mW on that band.
160m is worth revisiting. But I do want to get my head around whether "watts per km" is sensible. I suspect it's not.
20m appears to have provided me with my best DX(a ZL), so it retains its label as a DX workhorse of the bands. followed by 10m, 15m and then 17m. I'd say 12m was underperforming - probably my antenna. I don't spend much time on 30m. I find 40m crowded. I don't stay on 80 or 160m long enough in the evening to pick up real DX.
What is interesting is that the median distance - half the contacts are above, half below - (indicated by the bold line in the middle) on 20m is way down on the median distance on 17m - I think this is caused by heavy local (i.e. European) QRM drowning out the DX, hence my impression that 17m at M0DEV is more DX-y. If you have a very high presence of european stations, then you won't hear the DX - even though it is there. Indeed, 17m at M0DEV has the highest Median. Of course, I am probably skewing this by going after DX contacts calling CQ, and ignoring the locals. The 20m distribution (and 15m and 40m) is classic positive skew, bunched up at the bottom end. The 17m distribution looks more "interesting".
It would be interesting to take this further, and try to tease out factors which are caused by my equipment, and factors which are really "there".
So what does it all add up to? Very litte!
Exhibit A
You know the answer, of course:
Exhibit A is 17m, 5W, Vertical antenna, TS-2000, proper earth,...
Exhibit B is 10m, 500mW, two bits of wire, one a bit longer and 817
So, why do we need kit?
When I read the received wisdom about "DXing", it tells me that I need to have a Very High Antenna. My RF-oriented friends will tell me that I need to use Power
I know we're on the top of a sunspot cycle, but regular readers will realise that I am deliberately hobbling myself here: my WSPR 10m setup is an 817 running 500 mW, and a bit (I mean a bit) of wire, draped carelessly over a shed end, with a few metres in free space. It gets up about 2.5m at the highest point.
Hence my surprise this morning to discover, after its first TX cycle, that VK2UB is hearing me. I am, well, gobsmacked. VK2UB is on the eastern edge of Australia, 16,800 km from M0DEV.
One of the things WSPR is teaching me is that propagation matters far more than I ever thought before. When a band is "open", there is absolutely no need for Power. QRM apart, the connections just work, like VK2UB above, and a session on 2m with G4VXE a few days ago, when milliwatts did 140km on 2m. When it's closed, it's closed.
I'm almost thinking of "Power" as trying to force something that isn't going to go. It's not really a solution.
I think that's an argument for QRP. Oh, and a nice email from eqsl to tell me that they have enabled JT9 as a mode :-)
I am running a pretty minimal setup here. The 817 is on 500mW, as low as it will go without gadgetry. The "antenna" is a random piece of wire of unknown length I found coiled up in the garage. The only concession I made recently was to lift the wire out of the gutter and position it in the air, with the help of a pole at the far end. I'm running this sophisticated piece of wizardry through an Elecraft T1 automatic ATU. There is no balun. The other half is connected to an earth stake, part of the more sophisticated end of the shack. If you ask any radio-aware friends how good this setup would be for DX, I think they'd probably choke with laughter
So, it's been running since about 8AM this morning. I have heard VE3KYK (5400km), VA3ZLT (5500 km) and UT7GH (2600km). And I'm hearing AG0T at 6300km
But I award myself the DX prize for a two-way WSPR with K5CGM (7100 km, in Jenks, OK). Shame they can't be QSLd....
Completely different ballgame. We had to go up to 20W, and only just completed.
It confirms what we all know, of course: that when bands are open, you need no power. When they're shut, you need lots of power and it's still difficult- these two occasions were more than 22dB different! You can't make that up with a linear. Even a linear AND a beam. The interesting thing is what's different about the two times. I don't think last night's "opening" was forecast by anyone or anything, and the band wasn't crowded with DX chasers.
We followed this up with a short burst of JT9-2. Clearly, JT9-2 wasn't designed for a closed VHF band, but there seemed little point in trying JT9-1, with essentially the same "floor" as JT65. Anyway, it was a spectacular failure, despite being able to see the other trace on screen and, in G4VXE's case, measure it as -22 - well useable.
We put the failure down to version incompatibility - I was on v0.3, he was on 0.2
1208 -29 0.1 7.040155 0 GB0SNB JO01 20
for those who don't WSPR (tch), it's a digital beacon on 7.040.155 MHz from GB0SNB. A special event station running WSPR??!
Time to google. Aha. It's a Permanent Special Event call. Not come across that before. And it's the Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker in, well, Kelvedon Hatch, presumably.
And of course that led me to their website
The "20" at the end of the above is their power in dBm (Milliwatts). It translates to 100mW.
A nice catch.
We started out on 144.165.000 using 10W each, into a collinear at each end. My collinear, just so you get the picture, is screwed to a shed wall. I can touch the bottom of it. The copy was, by HF standards, astoundingly easy - we exchanged -05 (him at my end) and -09. Tim dropped to 1W, and I still had very easy copy at this end, well above the noise floor.
A back of an envelope calculation suggested that we'd hit -24dB at 150mW. This is over 140 km, with "poor" aerials. I can't get that low with any of my kit - pout!
There is a lot of mileage to JT65 and its siblings on VHF. I'd like to try this on 23cm
The tricky bit was finding the agreed frequency. After a bit of searching, 144.489.000 seemed to be the agreed one (WSPR itself told me a dial of 144.488.000....)
Set it up and left it, and was very pleased to see G4VXE pop up, both ways
I will certainly be on 144.489 dial using WSPR again. Will you join me?
I turned WSPR on, on 40 metres, and picked up a couple of stations running 50 mW beacons - DL1FX and EA6FG, both pretty regularly throughout the afternoon.
I often intend to drop power but forget - once one beacon has gone off at 2.5W (my normal power) there's no real point in dropping it. Dropping the 817 to 500mW will have to happen soon, just to see what 500mW and a bit of wire in a gutter can really do!
JT65 on 20 metres was eerily quiet. But through the murk, a Taiwanese station closing with a Thai station, then a BX (mainland China) working someone else. I guess this DX would normally be drowned out by the cacophony of QRO European operations. I didn't manage to work them, but was pleased to see them
On a slightly different tack, I worked someone on JT9-1 last night. The conversation went thus at the start:
CQ M0DEV IO82
Now ok, he's missed acknowledging my report, but he's sent a report. Maybe he just clicked the wrong text to send.
M0DEV G1AAA XX00 (I've changed the callsign)
G1AAA M0DEV -07
M0DEV G1AAA -10
G1AAA M0DEV RRR
What? Sorry?
MY REPORT PSE?
I sent the report several times, and the reply was
REPORT PSE
and finally
RRRRR 73 73
So, I think we're in the bag. An email arrived from him this morning to ask why I never sent a report. He claims I was sending "G1AAA M0DEV"...with no digits on the end.
If you can work out how that happened, I'd love to hear it.
The exchange also underlines the importance of sticking exactly to the agreed protocol when we can't have a proper conversation. If he didn't get my original report, he should have pushed on with
M0DEV G1AAA XX00
until he got it.
It has a minute segment allocated to narrow band modes, in the bandplan, from 1838 to 1840 KHz
So, being a gentleman, one sticks to the bandplan, and I confine my activities to within this segment.
Wiped out tonight by IK5BAF operating QRO SSB LSB on a dial frequency of around 1839.90
Mr Luporini, of VIA PITTINI 7, 51011 BORGO BUGGIANO PT, Italy provides no email address. I don't imagine it's worth writing to him.....
Running 2.5 watts out of the ft-817 to what is probably the world's worst antenna - a piece of wire running along some guttering about 2.5m up. With an earth, admittedly. The Elecraft T1 tunes it easily, but I am astonished at how well the 2.5W has got out. It turns out, i think, to be a better TX than RX antenna - a number of these stations can hear me, and only a few are heard by me but don't hear me.
By far the best DX here is RA0SX, who hears me but I can't hear him.
So why do we use such high power? I think there's an element of beat the competition. And, of course, nearly every mode will be much less efficient than WSPR.
Here's the picture after fifteen minutes of operating at 2.5W on the 817 - so about 2W, by the time it reaches the drainpipe.
My 2.5W has made it to North and South America, Japan and most of Europe.
Completing a QSO was a little more involved - there was a QRO RTTY station right in the middle of the range of 14.076. I remembered that my 817 has a Collins filter for CW in which, fortuitously, works in DIG mode and, fortuitously, is almost exactly the right width for a JT65 signal to fit in it. Pop the NAR button, TX, and RU3VQ, just under 3000km away, completed with me. That, because of domestic issues, is the end of this morning's experiment.
Running about 5W for the moment, the only mistake I made was to forget to set the mode to DIG (Yaesu rigs only take the audio input from the rear connector in this mode - it you're in USB the input comes from the MIC)
Quite pleasing after a few minutes to see a bit of "DX" arriving. The plot above is after about 15 minutes of operation this afternoon. The 10m plot at G4ILO looks distinctly tastier...:-(
The T1 tunes very quickly, quietly and efficiently. It's a lot less trouble than my old ZM3 Z-Match, which worked well, but I was always suspicious of losses, particularly above 18 megs. To tune, one presses a button for a bit, then transmits - there's a visual indication of SWR on the top. Next time round (because I bought the swanky 817 lead) as you change bands a light flashes to say it's restored the last set of settings. It uses no power once it's latched.
I had to get it from qrpproject.de in Germany. I've dealt with them before - no import duty, pretty quick despatch. I couldn't find a UK dealer with them- so the hobby is *that* bad then?
I toyed with making one, but the prospect of winding coils threw me into a fit of buy-it-assembled. The other fear I have is of surface mount stuff. I have done ONE SMT before - the k1el keyer, IIRC. It wasn't that bad, but I remember getting into a sweat beforehand.
LoTW Off Line
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where the login should be.I *think* I have been chased by a QRO++. But I am sure that Jerry wasn't QRO, and for some bizarre reason I can't decode him and vice versa. I suppose this is the inevitable consequence of playing with new protocols.
JT9-1, like all the JT protocols, looks exciting for QRP DX hunters. Minimal bandwidth, and really QRP operation.
But I have nothing in my log to prove it!!
The other really neat thing is that you can see, using pskreporter and to a certain extent, the RB (Reverse Beacon network), how successful you are being, even if no-one is prepared to talk to a lowly, common as muck M0.
So I keep coming back to it. I can work DX using 10W off a low LW hidden in the trees at the side of my garden. I can't do that in CW or PSK as easily.
