Random News and Comments

Last night I took advantage of clear skies and watched the International Space Station fly over. I was in work so no telescope or binoculars but it was quite easily visible to the naked eye and for probably about three minutes. I just so wanted to be up there playing radio. Imagine how many people you could make happy with a quick QSO on 2 metres. I remember in my early teens lying in a field watching Skylab orbiting past every few hours and years later hearing a local amateur make a two way contact with an astronaut.

The Large Hadron Collider is up and running again after 14 months, which must be a big relief for those involved. I find this exciting but a little worried. I think it is unlikely that a black hole will be created and we will all be sucked in to oblivion as some suggest, what worries me is what the final outcome will be. Science only wanted to know what would happen when the atom was split but result was the atomic bomb. “I am become Death destroyer of worlds” said J. Robert Oppenheimer when he saw the result of his handiwork.

Belgium Radio Amateurs now have access to a tiny allocation at 4 metres. Class A holders in Belgium have access to 69.950MHz (+/- 5kHz) with 10W EIRP on a non-interference basis. Those Amateurs that wish to use this frequency must first inform their regulator the BIPT.
While this is nothing to get excited about at least it is a start, hopefully a more extensive allocation will follow sooner or later. UK amateurs will just have to wait or work split frequency with Belguim as their allocation is out of band to us and vice versa.

Martin Lynch & Sons will be holding their annual Open Day on 5 December from 8am to 4pm.

Sunspot activity seems to be increasing steadily of late and HF band conditions seem to be edging out of the doldrums. Activity on 5mHz has been up as a result on the Norweigians on the band during the day and some good night time openings to the US. I almost doubled my worked all state total for 5mHz in one night recently.

With all the rain here recently I keep thinking I should try 10GHz as a rainscatter is useful propagation method on that band. There are some good videos on YouTube of this type of propagation in action but I cannot get on to get the links just now. While you are on YouTube search for Leonids Meteor Shower too.

SOTA – G3CWI spreads the word

Richard G3CWI is the guy who a lot of you may know as the brains behind SOTABeams the manufacturer and supplier of lightweight amateur radio products for portable HF and VHF operation and G3CWI’s Amazing Online Flea Market which allows hams to buy and sell their used equipment.

Richard recently became the first person to activate all the English Hills in the Summits on The Air program by making a minimum of four unique QSOs from each summit. Operating from a total of 178 summits often under difficult weather conditions to achieve his goal. Not that Richard is content to stop there as he has activated from a considerable number of summits in Wales and Scotland as well and has done a lot of hills multiple times on all sorts of bands up on frequencies up in to the microwaves. He has now got some worthwhile publicity for Amateur Radio in his local newspaper the Macclesfield Express, which printed a picture of him on a summit and described his achievement.

Well done Richard and thanks for bringing the hobby to the attention of a wider audience. Now instead of being asked what we are doing on the hills around Macc everyone will ask “Are you that SOTA guy?”

WSPR – Something to shout about?

Screen shot of WSPR

WSPR  (Whisper) stands for ‘Weak Signal Propagation Reporter’ and I seem to have heard a lot of people talking about it recently. I must admit to not having the slightest bit of interest in it, thinking that it was “just another digi-mode” and “why do we need another digi-mode?”, but that was before I read up on it.

Joe Taylor K1JT has released version 2.0 of WSPR and so it is cropping up on blogs and as news items everywhere. It looks like an interesting tool and so I thought to myself  I would download the program and see what all the fuss is about. I have not got it up and running yet so I cannot really comment other than to say follow the links and do some reading.

My plan is to use my Yaesu FT-817 as I already have the data cables, this mode as it only requires minimum power and my 817 is usually sat idle in between SOTA activations and Raynet exercises. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I can let you know how I am getting on.

WSPR 2.0 is available for Ubuntu Linux (versions 8.10 and later), Debian 5.03, and other Debian-based 32-bit Linux distributions as well as Windows and I believe it is possible to download and compile the source code for other operating systems including Mac OS.

WSPR 2.0 can be downloaded from
http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wspr.html

WSPRnet
http://wsprnet.org/

Note: I found the download link extremely slow until I set my browser to text only and it came up instantly. The actual download was no problem.

BPL – Not dead but dying

When I read what follows at Southgate ARC news I just wanted to yell “Hurray!” I am sure the Manassas radio amateurs will want to join me and breath a big sigh of relief.

Manassas VA to pull the plug on BPL

The Manassas City Council is saying goodbye to BPL.

Inside Northern Virginia reports that the council is in the process of deciding whether to abandon its broadband over power line project now, or to let it die at the end of the city’s fiscal year.
BPL was Manassas’ attempt to bring the Internet into the homes of every resident by providing a low-cost broadband service. Subscribers were told that they could access the Internet through the regular electrical outlets, but for a number of reasons it never caught on with the public.

First, the connection proved to be slower than cable or DSL. It was expensive to maintain and caused massive reception interference to those using the spectrum it shared. This included the Manassas ham radio community which was highly vocal in its opposition.

The end result was that the project only garnered about 670 subscribers while costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in ongoing maintenance. It also faced a strong challenge from Comcast cable which claims the potential to serve the entire city, and Verizon which has rapidly been expanding its FIOS service in the Manassas area.

And now like a bad dream it will shortly be fading away.

 

This is what we have been longing to hear and I am hopefully this is the first in a long line of similar stories that will chronicle the death throws of this spawn of Satan that is BPL.

New SOTA Awards

A new award for SOTA chasers has been announced by the Summits on the Air Management Team, called the Mountain Hunter Award. It was announced today by Barry GM4TOE The SOTA Awards Manager on the reflector to complement the award recently announced for Activators (I think I missed that one!).

The ultimate award is to encourage a Chaser to Work All Associations (this does require the use of HF and is not practicable on VHF without moonbounce!) but we also wanted to encourage VHF/UHF operations and so have also introduced an award that requires qualifying contacts on 70MHz and above only. The award is NOT points based like the existing awards but relies on valid contacts between Chasers and Activators on a qualifying number of summits in a number of Associations.

It is feasible at present for a Europe based Chaser to work 24 Associations on VHF with the possibility of 7 more in the offing. We have Associations on 4 continents at present and there is the possibility of Australasia joining in the future.

Both African and Asian Associations have a rarity value so this might encourage activity from them or persuade other countries to join the scheme (Who is up for Activation from the High Atlas?). It is recognised that the VHF award is very Europe biased but it is foreseen that the USA /Canada associations will, very shortly, be able to qualify for the entry level VHF qualification. It should be noted that, although Europe does not have the 1.25m and 33cm bands, this does not prevent those countries with these bands from using them.

The inclusion of the requirement to work some intercontinental associations (for the all bands award) does make this award different from the existing Chaser awards and will run in parallel to the existing Chaser awards; by introducing the requirement (except at the entry level) to work other continents this award should encourage activators in less active associations to operate as there will be demand from chasers for the rarer associations.

a) VHF (70MHz and above) Award

Hunter should contact at least 2 different summits in each of 5 associations using just VHF/UHF any mode.

Endorsement for UHF only qualification (430MHz and above)

Steps of 5 Associations for each award: 10, 15, 20, etc

Level/ No. Associations/ Min. no. of summits
1 /5/ 2 per association
2 /10 /3 per additional association
3 /15 /4 per additional association
4 /20+/ 4 per additional association

b) All bands Award

Hunter should contact at least 2 different summits in each of 5 associations The higher level awards require that at least one association claimed is on a different continent from the claimant’s normal residential QTH. Level 1 can be claimed with contacts only on the claimant’s own continent (1 continent); higher level awards require intercontinental contacts.

Endorsement for all 50MHz qualification

Steps of 5 Associations for each award: 10 (including 2 continents), 15 (including 2 continents), 20 (and 3 continents),

Worked all Associations

Level No./ Associations/ Continents /Minimum no. of summits
1/ 5 /1 /2 per association
2 /10 /2/ 3 per additional association
3 /15 /2 /3 per additional association
4 /20 /3 /4 per additional association
5/ WAA/ 4 or 5 /4 per additional association

The Award will be issued from January 2010 and summits may be claimed retrospectively (you do not have to start over; summits previously chased under the programme will qualify). Each claim must be registered on the SOTA database in the normal way and a new filter will be incorporated onto the database to track progress and allow checking of activators’ claims.

This award will be certificate based as with the Activator award however the MT would like to consider the possibility of producing a trophy for the Worked All Association award. Several suggestions have been made and we will seek input from participants to determine the level of interest in producing a suitable item.

Yesterdays news tomorrow

Bob VA3QV has been questioning how printed matter can keep up with the Internet or if it is approaching the end of its usefulness. Bob points out that the latest issue of The Canadian Amateur Magazine was out of date way before it dropped on the doormat. The TCA shows two Directors (Ontario South and Quebec) being acclaimed to their next terms when in effect they resigned their positions at the end of October in support of the President who also resigned. He goes on to say “No ones fault, just an example of how the print media can no longer keep up.” Bob received his copy on the 12th November and says what was written there was the talk of the amateur community two months ago and he has just three days to send his comments in to make the next issue. Therefore what is discussed is likely to be up to six months too late.

In the UK at least RadCom drops through the door every month, but I find the same problem, that most news is old news, which in a lot of cases has been done to death way before we see it in print. I do not really care for my national societies magazine prefering the style of other amateur radio magazines but as a former printer I have a soft spot for printed matter and would hate to see it disapear. What does the future hold, will we be reading our radio publications on a mobile phone or Kindle or will blogs like CQHQ toll the death nell?

Preparing for Armageddon

On Saturday 14 November 1800-2200 UTC on or near the emergency centre of activity frequencies on the 80, 40, 20, 17 and 15 metre bands more than 200 stations representing IARU member societies and Emergency Communications Groups in 45 countries around the world took part in the latest Global Simulated Emergency Test. GlobalSET provides an opportunity to demonstrate the provision of communications across national borders, test the emergency centre of activity frequencies, create practices for international emergency communications and the relaying of messages.

I was unable to listen or take part in what was going on as I was working but I am sure plenty will be written about the success or otherwise of the event. What I would like to know is what exactly might constitute a global emergency? An asteroid strike, a large volcanic event, an alien invasion, the Cern Large Hadron Collider sucking Switzerland into a black hole or what? I just hope I am not around if any of these things happen, but I am keeping my batteries charged in case, maybe you should do the same.

Mile high antennas

Another station in my log today was G0VBC who was operating portable on 5mHz from a field not far from his home in Wolverhampton using a kite to support an inverted vee antenna. His signals were good to excellent until the wind dropped when he would disappear for a short while. I have always wanted to try a kite to support a vertical but never thought about using it with an inverted vee. I would have thought having two wires and the feeder hanging from the kite along with the flying line would be a recipe for disaster but ‘Mashoo’ seems to have got it sussed, by having a lanyard on the kite he can raise, lower and change antennas without bringing the kite back down to earth. Have a look at Mashoo.org.uk which is interesting but written in a hard to read white on black and in lower case. He says he will update the site shortly based on todays tests. For more information on kite antennas also look at G4VGO’s balloon and kite antenna site here.

Update thanks to Graham GW0HUS for this link to G4ROJ’s kite aerials

Update 2 G0VBC’s details of the antenna including modelling data

Norwegian Radio Heritage

In between SOTA activations there has been lots of Norwegian activity on 60 metres (5mHz) and it was my pleasure to once again work Per LA1TNA but this time he was operating as LA1ASK from a radio museum in the old LKB Bergen Kringkaster, which is the former NRK(Norsk Rikskringkasting) AM(LW/MW) broadcasting station for Bergen. Its QTH is near the village of Erdal on Askoey Island EU-055 north of Bergen, locator JP20OK. The website is well worth a look with lots of photographs of the broadcasting equipment and more. The Telefunken broadcasting transmitter of 20 kW was built in 1935 and is the only remaining Telefunken transmitter (complete) of this type in the world. There is also a 1kW Marconi transmitter from the 30’s and loads of old military and domestic radio gear. It looks like being worth a visit if you are ever in Norway.

SOTA passion and pile ups

Those who read this weblog regularly will know Summits on the Air is my main passion and while I occasionally get the chance to wander in the hills with my radios, I spend far more time running in and out of the shack at home working other activators. Today I was up earlier than I expected after working a twelve-hour night shift and no doubt I will be flagging about 3am as a result. I was up just in time to work Andy MA0FMF/P (5mHz) on a previously un-activated South Scotland summit Meall na Fearna GM/SS-035, which made it all worthwhile. Still on 5mHz I worked Walt G3NYY/P up on Hegdon Hill G/WB-023 in the Welsh Boarders and on 80 metres I got Geoff 2E0BTR/P on Bryn y Fan GW/MW-018 in Mid-Wales and Steve G1INK/P on Hoove G/NP-024 in North Pennines. That was a total of eight chaser points, which for me on a weekend is a poor show, but that was due to my working/sleeping pattern because looking at the spots page there had been 46 spots today and 90 for the weekend. Bearing in mind we are in what might be considered the SOTA doldrums, a period between the good weather and the winter bonus that does not seem too shabby.

 

On Saturday there were stations on from Canadian and US summits and although I never heard anything of them they created quite a stir. My buddy Mike GW0DSP managed to work one of the Canadian stations on 20m CW and was as pleased as punch to get his first VA SOTA. Richard G0IBE/P on Bredon Hill G/CE-003 managed an SSB summit-to-summit contact with K1YMI/P on Crane Mountain W2/GA-044 not bad with both stations running 5w with Richard giving 4/1 and receiving a 5/3 report in return. Lets hope the activity stirs up more interest in the Americas. 

There is a worry that SOTA is becoming a victim of its own success with complaints on the reflector of the animalistic scrambles reminiscent of rare DX expeditions on the CW portion of 40 metres. Yesterday I waited patiently for the pile up to disperse in order to work an Austrian activator on 40 metres SSB, it took 45 minutes before I even bothered calling. If this had been a busy SOTA weekend I might have given up in order to work another station. As an activator I would relish the attention and I love the chance to fill the logbook but for the chaser the nice gentlemanly round of familiar call signs waiting for their turn is turning in to a bit of a melee. What somewhat worries me is that propagation is still poor, so what happens when it eventually comes good? I suspect then SOTA will hit new heights and the pile-ups will see stations closing down with callers still waiting, after all is considered you can only spend so long on a cold windy mountain.