Seasonal Sporadic E

What  I like about operating on VHF is the opportunities it brings for sudden long distance contacts.

The down side of this is that you need to sit around for long periods in between bursts of activity.

This is especially true for what is sometimes called "Christmas Es". I fact it is more like "late December and early January Es", but that does not trip off the tongue so easily.

In fact it is very unpredictable, may not happen at all, and if it does come, it can arrive any time between the beginning of December and mid January. It is usually weak, short lived, but for those reasons, great fun if you happen to find it.

This year there was a sudden opening on "Boxing Day", known in many other places as St Stephen's Day, i.e. 26 December. This is close enough to Christmas to make the title just about accurate.

Most of us had been watching for a while, more in hope than expectation. In my case this involves the usual WSPR study of the 10 metre band. This is where Es springs from for me. If there is Es on 10m I look at 6m, if it is there is Es on 6m I look at 4m, and if it is on 4m I look at 2m, with each step getting less and less likely, but better in outcome if it does occur.

So on 26 December once 10m WSPR started to get very busy into the "near Continent", mostly PAs and DLs to start with, I moved up to 6m JT65.

10m WSPR activity from GM4FVM on 26/12/16. The more distant stations came at the end of the event.

6m JT65 was proving hopeless, with no takers at all. Then I noticed that Gianfranco, IU1DZZ, had posted on the WSPR.net site that 6m was open at his end. GF's posting got me thinking. Perhaps WSPR would work better than JT65 (which would happen if the signals were weak but steady). So I switched to 6m WSPR to find out.

6m WSPR activity from GM4FVM on 26/12/16.

As it became clear that 6m WSPR was well established I turned again to 6m JT65, and eventually to 4m SSB too.

4m and 6m log entry, see map below.

I was a bit surprised that this unseasonal Es lifted the MUF as high as 70MHz.

So this was a classic late Es opening. The good conditions lasted from 11:20 to 15:14 on 10m (around 165 spots), 12:00 to 13:20 on 6m (10 spots and 5 QSOs), and 12:57 to 13:29 on 4m (2 QSOs).

6m JT65 and 4m SSB activity from GM4FVM on 26/12/16

Hardly much to get excited about really, in the sense that nothing new was worked and these events do happen from time to time. But I really enjoyed the opening.

What does excite me is the unexpected nature of it all. Yes, I do get steamed up about these things.

4m was, as so often, very interesting. I worked 9A1Z fairly easily, though strong winds meant that my mast was lowered. Then I could hear GM4JJJ working some stations on CW, including what sounded like an OM or OK station, but I could not hear the other station at all. I called CQ and then, suddenly, SP6RLA popped up, worked me 5/9, and vanished. The event was over on 4m.

Es openings are always best just before they end. To work a station like SP6RLA (JO81, 1368km) out of the blue like that is typical. It combines the joy and pain of VHF working perfectly. I had thought that the 4m opening was over (wrong), but I was still calling CQ just in case. He was very strong. I heard no other SP stations, though I know other stations around me were working other stations in SP. I did not hear him working anyone else.

At times it feels as if VHF propagation provides a unique pipeline between me and the other station. It is so selective, especially as you move up the bands. By the time you reach 2 metres, where Es is fairly rare, you might just hear one station but none of the ones around that station, and nobody but you can hear him. Then the propagation moves on, and you might, or might not, hear another one.

It is this "either you work it right now, or it is gone" aspect of VHF which fascinates me. I suppose 20 metres must have similar attractions but I cannot see them.

So here I am on 27 December, with WSPR again running on 10m. Nothing is happening. In my experience of this type of Es (well, all Es really) the same thing does not often happen on successive days. But it might. You never know.

Why is there often Es activity in the depths of Winter, near the Winter Solstice? I do not know. Could it be ionisation from the Southern Hemisphere spilling over? I have never seen a satisfactory explanation.

Who cares about the explanation, it is fun to work.

73

Jim

GM4FVM

PC crashed, PSU blew, and a core melt-down for me.

It's been a funny old month - and it is not quite over yet.

On Friday (it all happened on Friday!) the PC crashed. Finally, after loading more and more on to it, it just stopped. Nothing fatal of course, it just turned itself off.

My fault really as I have been loading more and more onto it. At one stage in the past I had two computers, one for what would now be the Internet programmes, and the other, faster one, ran the Flex SDR and data modes. This would have been fine had not the best faster one made slight but annoying noise on VHF. My numerous attempt to solve this failed.

Usually noise gets out of the computer via the connecting cables. This is something I am well versed in trying to deal with. I have established that some cables are reliable, and ferrite rings and clips are very effective. But with the fastest one nothing I changed outside the computer seemed to matter, and even the cables inside could not be silenced. It seems as if the noise is coming off the motherboard itself, though how it gets out of the computer case I cannot find.

So, I went over to one quiet computer driving two monitors. One monitor covers the Internet and email, and the other shows the data modes. This looks like two computers but of course all the processing falls on just one. I have worked like this for a couple of years.

Constantly adding work to this computer finally pushed it over the edge. I should have realised, because I was watching the processor load climbing higher, but somehow I kept putting off doing something. I seem to be good at that.

Nothing seems to have been harmed, though of course it might have been. In the past I have broken disc drives in crashes like this.

If all this sounds like I should learn a lesson, here is part 2.
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I have ordered a 5 element 6m PowAbeam yagi from dxshop to replace the Diamond HB9CV. This should be here in a few days.

In the meantime I dug out my old 3ele/4ele 6m/4m dual band yagi. This was stored in the garage for some undefined portable operation at some distant future date. It was a simple matter to make a 3 element 6m beam out of this and it seems to work well. It will do for a few days and it immediately proved to be more effective than the Diamond.

So I have been busy on 6m. The set-up is that the 6m linear shares a 50amp switching power supply with the 2m linear. This does not matter as they are both connected to the same rig and therefore cannot transmit at the same time. The PSU is a MyDel MP50SWIII, but you may recognise it as something else, as it appears under various brands in different markets.

The MP-50 photographed last year in happier times

Having had some success  on 6m for a day, I noticed the PSU making a noise. This was a rattling type noise, which became louder as the current drawn rose. This PSU has been making noises for some time, which did seem odd. I had intended to have a look inside to see if I could work out what was happening. I sat watching the ammeter at 32amps pondering the amplifier efficiency and maybe the rf power meter could be wrong, when the power supply blew.

Current had fallen to 6 amps, the noise stopped and I quickly turned it off. Quickly in my terms, but the damage was done.

I am aware that they can fail with a spike of voltage or current. I disconnected the linears and nothing changed, so it does appear to be the power supply at fault rather than the linears. I hope that the linears are not damaged.

The MP-50 - now in disgrace.

In an attempt to test the linears, I swapped things round and put in an Amperor 25amp supply instead. Both linears seemed to be working up to about the 100W output that was all I would risk.I do not want to blow something else.

I should have had some other 50 amp power supply to back up this one. Yes, I can juggle about my linears and get back to almost full power on all bands, but that is not really the point.  Any of the 25amp PSUs can fail and I have a spare. But if this one fails, 6m and 2m output drops considerably. You might think that the rig runs at 100W for 6m and 50W for 2m and that should surely be enough. Yes, when it comes to SSB that is true.  But for the data modes I use so much, the rigs simply cannot supply that sort of power on a prolonged basis.

I have linears, not so much to raise my power overall, but to provide a buffer to allow the same power to run on the high duty cycles of data modes. I do not run legal maximum on VHF: generally I only send 100 - 200 watts from the linears, from which you need to subtract line losses. On HF, I run a fraction of that.

Hey, I can live with this. Just find a new power supply and then fix this one. Then I will have a spare. In fact, I have a Sharman 23amp one which has died and been fixed twice. But during the downtime things are far from perfect. I think I should have thought that the strange sound coming from the PSU was more important than I did.

Why does a power supply make a strange sound? I had some inkling that this was coming and I did nothing about it.

Erm, a bit like the computer crash.
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I have been very busy with antennas, masts and domestic duties. So, there are only 15 entries in the log book for the month to date (I do not log repeat contacts in GM or G-land). There certainly have been interesting things, but I will leave that for the end of the month.

The new addition to the skyline, the temporary 3 element 6m beam is working well.

Note the 4m element, which is carried over from its previous life as a dual band beam - it was too difficult to take off! Also, lots of spare coax for the yet-to-arrive 5 element.

I was surprised to have a call from Bo, OZ1DJJ, whilst beaming West on 6m meteor scatter. At the same time I was doing all sorts of domestic things and I committed the cardinal sin in amateur radio or replying to the wrong callsign (OZ1DZZ).

Thanks to David GM4JJJ for pointing this out. David saw that Bo was calling me on the KST chat page to tell me I had made a typo. I had indeed made a typo.

I should explain that I am not on KST. Yes, it would have alerted me to using the wrong callsign, but following KST just adds one more layer of complexity to my already crowded life. KST is both a solution to the complexity problem, and a cause of more complexity.

I suddenly realised that I was overdoing it. There were signs that I was trying to absorb too much information, process too many operations at once, and generally, trying to produce too much power from limited resources.

I should have seen the warning signs. I should have closed a few brain programmes and let my central processor cool down. Instead I battled on and got my callsigns mixed up.

Not that I actually mixed the callsigns up, I just did not think about it because I was thinking about something else at the time. Not a deliberate act, a loss of concentration. Trying to do too many things at once.

Is this sounding familiar? Did I ignore the signs, just as I did with the PC and the PSU, that I am overcooking everything? Yes probably.

I am not about to give up radio, but I do need a reminder sometimes that I tend to over-complicate everything, to the point of overload. You will all be surprised to hear that.

The PC crashed and the PSU blew after I lost track of that QSO, but on the same day. So I cannot say that there was some deep spiritual connection between all this, the warnings of which I had ignored. But it all shows that everything has its limit.

This is only a hobby. It can become an all-consuming passion which fills the mind, empties the wallet and causes you to forget what is important in life.

I am off to let my internal fan reduce the temperature of my overheating regulators.

(IRONY WARNING): There must be a lesson in all this, but maybe I will just ignore it. That strategy has worked for me so far.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

More antenna work, introducing MSK144 and streetlights

This mast has turned out to be quite a struggle. It has needed a lot of tinkering, tightening and adjusting. More of that later, no doubt. But I will get there eventually. It may be built down to a price, but I still reckon it is the best solution for me right now.

Actually putting an antenna on it turned into farce, of course. The idea was simple. Just transfer the rotator and 6m antenna which used to be on the temporary mast onto the new one. Then put the Moonraker 6m/2m/70cms vertical on top. Job done. Well, for course it was not like that.

I have written a complete report, but I will spare you the details. Trying to get it done before the RSGB 6m UK Activity Contest was a target of course. An excellent test. Two days work, in freezing conditions, rain, wind. I am not asking for sympathy. You can just be amazed by my pig-headedness.

I should say that the TV rotator can only take a 35mm pole, so everything was organised around that fact.

It took a day to get the previous set-up onto the mast and get a photo of it before I put the mast up.

It is not much of a photo due to the lack of light, but note the frost on the ground. I had just lined the HB9CV with North, by turning rotator and lining it up level with the ground with a small correction for the fact that the house is a few degrees off East-West.

So I put the mast up and the rotator failed.

At first I thought it was the cable, but more work proved it had just given up. TV rotators are not made for a long life. They only fail when you rely on them.

It did not take long to see that I had to give up the plan to use the previous set-up until next Spring, when I planned to put up my Yaesu rotator and a better 6m antenna. So I had to face doing all the work again, but this time with the Yaesu rotator, 6-core cable, and a 50mm pole above the rotator. That should be OK, as the vertical was bought to fit 50mm pole. Plus, all the other kit was in the garage ready, waiting for Spring.

After another day, I was standing in the gathering gloom, with frozen ground under my frozen feet, almost ready with the new set-up. Just time to fit the vertical before it gets dark.

Then I discovered that the vertical does not fit a 50mm pole. Nothing else for it, I had to dig out my Diamond X-30. Half the length of the tri-band vertical, and as it turned out, it works better too. And I fitted it, helped by the torch on my mobile phone.

It looks the same. But everything has been done twice. Two lots of cable pulled through, and one pulled back. Two verticals fitted, one removed, two sets of waterproofing PL259 plugs and sockets done, one pulled apart. Two beams fitted and lined up, one removed again.

Another hour's work in the house got the rotator controller as far as my desk and I was ready for the contest.

This was one of the worst contests I have ever listened to. I only heard two stations, and neither was calling CQ. Total result = NIL.

Well, it is not all bad. After the contest I worked DM2ECM on 6m meteor scatter MSK144. More about MSK144 later. But it is all working now, and I can turn the rotator.

So what is this long tale meant to convey? Well, that I am a determined old toad, ready to get cold and wet. It shows that this hobby can drive normally sensible people to do mad things in the winter, and then do them again the next day.

BUT, it also shows what I can do now without climbing. It was all done from the ground or from a three-step handy folding stool. Hooray! I'll get as cold as I need, so long as I don't have to climb to do it. I am too old to climb.
=====================================
MSK144 is a new mode from the Joe Taylor stable. It is designed to improve upon the performance of FSK441 on meteor scatter. There are new versions of the WSJT-X suite including this new mode.

MSHV has been updated to include the new mode.

There are other new modes for Earth-Moon-Earth and other propagation methods too.

At the moment the latest modes are still in the process of completing development, and new versions are being issued as bugs are identified.

I do not have space here to say more, so I will leave it for later to cover it in more detail. But it is clear now that things we used to think were really difficult, like meteor scatter, have been revolutionised. This revolution continues. Nowadays the average amateur with moderate power and fairly simple antennas can communicate efficiently using the WSJT-X suite, whether it be in HF with JT65, or EME with QRA64.

The days of using tape recorders to speed up morse are long gone, the days of building massive linears and huge antenna arrays are coming to an end. WSJT-X and its clones are remarkable.
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Scottish Borders Council, our municipality, has started a programme of replacing sodium street light elements with LEDs. This has obvious advantages for the council. The new lights have longer lives, need to be maintained less often, produce (almost) white light, and consume a lot less energy for a given light output.

For an amateur, the prospect of have a street full of LEDs outside the shack is a bit scary. That is why I asked the maintenance team about two months ago if we were due to get the new fittings. No, they replied, they are busy elsewhere and it would be a year or more before the change-over happened.

Thus it came as a complete surprise when they fitted the new lights, completing the whole street using the existing lamp standards in a day.

This photo shows the street now looking like daylight. The new lights are VERY effective.

I suspect that they used some of the reduction in power consumption to provide some headroom to raise the light output level too.

I was in fear of the consequences for noise on my radio. I have a very dim view of LEDs in general. We have very few, and those that we do have are either far away from the shack or rarely used at the same time as the radio. So having a street-full outside my control was a worry.

I need not have been concerned. There may be a slight increase in background noise. I cannot measure it, so it must be very low. I can cope with that. There are no terrible consequences on the bands that I use. Or at least none that I have found yet, and I have looked.

Even the sodium lights caused noise, but only for ten or fifteen minutes when they were starting up each night. This actually seemed to be better.

Lets hope that I see a reduction in my local taxes to pass on the savings to me. I am not as troubled by noise as I thought I might be at this stage.

I know that LEDs need not be a problem if they are properly installed. It is good to find some that are.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

New mast up at last.

Firstly thanks to those of you who posted and e-mailed about the listening station featured last time. There may be more news on this in due course, but otherwise feel free to add anything more which strikes you.

Gary, MM0CUG, arrived today and installed my new (second) mast.

Firstly I had better explain the background. After a couple of incidents I decided that the second mast I had mounted on T and K brackets on the gable end of the house was not practical for me any more. I am getting too old to go out there and climb, plus it is in the full blast of the wind and there are few days when I can work in the wind at height.

My main mast is a fine Tennamast, but I cannot add more antennas to it without exceeding the capacity of the rotator, or breaking the space constraints and overhanging next door's garden. Apart from that, I am limited to having antennas which are not visible from the road when the mast is cranked down, and adding more antennas would break that rule. I have broken it briefly from time to time, but really I want to be invisible from the road in front of the houses for most of the time.

Thus the second mast appeared almost as soon as the first one went up, to start with for a 4m vertical and then soon after for the 6m beam. This makes for great flexibility working 4m/6m openings, as I do. The two beams often point in different directions, and the inverse square law resolves most overloading issues (though I do have stub filters too). I am thinking of replacing the stub filters with lumped component filters, but a bit of space between the antennas always helps too.

So I wanted to have a tilt-over mast to replace the second pole. The object of the exercise was not to significantly enlarge the antenna farm, though someday a better 6m antenna than the HB9CV may be on the cards. Rather it is to get access to the antennas from the ground. The ground to the top of the ridge tiles is 5.2 metres. I drew up plans for various systems based on home-brew components. I have some winches, all the poles and so forth, but eventually it looked like a purpose-built solution would be stronger and simpler. Once I added up the cost of the bolts, brackets, hinges, concrete base, etc.,  and then I began to doubt my strength calculations, I moved on to the idea of square section inside square section (just like the Tennamast!). That would have brought the cost of changing everything else as well.

Eventually I settled for a simple aluminium tilt-over, crank-up mast by MM0CUG http://www.mm0cug.co.uk/ . Gary does a range of masts, the smallest (which is square section all along its length) is a 10m mast which is 5m when lowered. This is exactly what I needed as 5m, plus the rotator and poles, brings the HB9CV just over the ridge tiles. I then have the vertical on the top, but even that is not visible from the road. Gary has a 12m mast and various other options, such as steel construction. While steel would add more strength and also cost more, I have modest requirements for the antennas. This is, after all, my second mast. So I settled for 10m and aluminium, basically for cheapness, but really because that is all I need. My main mast is 7.2m fully extended, so this is potentially taller, but as I say, I doubt if I will extend it much, if at all.

I did flirt with the idea of another Tennamast, but that would be over-engineered and more expensive. Gary's mast bolts directly to the wall, needs no concrete base, but I suspect, is not as strong as a steel Tennamast. It is horses for courses, and there is no need to spend more money on a stronger mast when all I am doing is replacing a pole on a couple of wall brackets. Gary said his mast could take my mini-beam, so I have plenty of strength in reserve if I need it.

So anyway, it has taken this long to install partly because it arrived while I was away in Italy. We thought it was best to leave installing it until I was here. Gary delivers and installs his masts throughout the Britain and Ireland during runs at fixed dates, so I had to wait for the next delivery round. No problem there. It went up today in about an hour and a half.

You can see that it is neater than the previous muddle of wires and poles. As expected, it sits at just the right height above the ridge tiles. Surprisingly, once the rotator and the beam are mounted up there, just as before, this will not be visible from the street in front of the house. I am basically keeping the same antennas and only altering the mast which supports them. Of course it can be cranked up to double the height, but that is not my intention.

The fixing arrangements are entirely different from the Tennamast as shown in earlier posts. A length of square section is fixed to the wall using six bolts in the form of a large bracket. The mast itself, also square section with the extending section inside, is hinged to the bracket by a single pin, and retained by a clamp with a removable pin. Remove the clamp pin and the mast tilts, supported by steel wire and one winch. The other winch raises the inner section. Simple really.

It doesn't look quite as elegant as some other masts, but it seems to work.
The winches are very strong for my purposes, and probably standard for larger masts too.

Now that it is in place I can think about getting the HB9CV and the 2m vertical on the top. I may leave that set-up, with the Conrad TV rotator, in place until the Spring when I might be able to get up a better 6m antenna and the Yaesu rotator up instead.

So, lets see how it goes. It looks like it may rattle in the wind, like any extending mast. Having said that, I can see how a couple of wedges would lock it up and prevent that.

All I need to do now is get the antennas and rotator installed, plus the co-ax extended, ...

Happy Radio.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

Galashiels Rally and World War 2 listening stations

I mentioned that I visited the annual Galashiels Rally recently. It has been a few years since I went, and in the intervening period several old regulars can no longer attend. If we do not recruit new members to our ranks the amateur population around here will eventually fall to zero.

Still, there was still a fairly good crowd coming from a wide area. The stalls are always interesting, and I bought a few odds and ends ranging from used re-chargeable batteries to crocodile clips. Where do you go for things like that nowadays?

I will not be going back to the retailer who sold me two Panasonic AAA alkaline industrial cells when I asked for rechargeables. They are perfectly good batteries, and I will use them, but not what I asked for. The old AA rechargeable ones are fine though.

As usual you meet lots of people at such events. In fact, meeting people is the real purpose of going for me. One such was Bruce, GM4BDJ. Bruce gave me a photo, apparently taken by David GM3BFU (SK). It is dated 25 December 1945 and has written on it "H/F D/F", or high frequency direction finding (or Huff-Duff as it was called).

Now Huff-Duff was the cutting edge of technology in the late 1930s, though as World War 2 progressed it was steadily overhauled by VHF and UHF radar. Nevertheless, it has its uses when it came to finding clandestine transmitters or locating shipping traffic. Huff-Duff continued in use up to around the 1970s, before satellites and frequency-hopping rendered it more or less obsolete. Not completely obsolete mind you, but it is a lost art now when it comes to intelligence work.

Here is the photo Bruce kindly gave me, with some notes added by me.

It is not very clear, and I have further affected it by scanning it in, but that is the only way to get it onto this blog.

On the left we can see two HRO receivers. Next to that is a Cathode Ray Tube display, which would have been pretty high tech and expensive at that stage. In the centre is a classic Bakelite telephone, two sets of HRO coils (marked M and W). To the right is a loudspeaker, oddly, as listening stations used headphones. Below the loudspeaker is something difficult to make out but it might be a small domestic radio. Note the blacked-out window and the wall construction (it seems to be a solid wall rendered with plain plaster).

To me, the presence of two HROs makes this look like a WW2 listening station. No amateur of that era would have had such things until they appeared on the surplus market. In any case, although some mysterious German amateur stations remained on the air during the War, in the UK amateur activity was officially forbidden. So I doubt if we are looking at someone's shack. This appears to be official premises. 

 

The CRT display was described by someone as "looking like a home made oscilloscope". I very much doubt that it was home made, but rather an austerity "Supplied for the Public Service" type-model. I also doubt if it is an oscilloscope. Such a thing would have been confined to high-end RF research, not sitting beside a receiver in some out-station. Rather I think it is a display for direction finding (or some rudimentary radar). Early in WW2 "DF" (direction finding) equipment usually had mechanical readouts, but later CRT displays became more common. After all, although the theoretical idea of the CRT was the best part of 40 years old at the start of the War, the practical and widespread introduction of such exotic valves took the impetus of war to push forward (note the huge cost of pre-War television sets!).

So to my eye anyway, the H/F D/F comment on the back of the print looks to be correct. But how dare a serviceman (presumably) take a photo of such advanced equipment? Maybe by 25 December 1945 he thought it was all over. It wasn't over, and he was taking quite a risk with this photo.

Looking a bit more closely, there seems to be a morse key in front of the telephone. A listening station hardly needs a morse key - reception reports travelled out by land line which would surely have been telephone or telex. Huff-Duff stations would not normally have been taking down the content of messages. They would have been getting a bearing as part of a wider effort to get at least three or more bearings and thus triangulate onto the position of the transmitter. So why have a morse key, if that is what it is?

At the time, late in the War, Huff-Duff would still have been useful looking for "spies", survivors of downed aircraft, submarines, ships or any enemy traffic which would allow a location to be pin-pointed. Even intelligence coming from Allied spies and implanted agents had to be subjected to Huff-Duff to check that the station had not been captured by the enemy and moved to more friendly surroundings (from their point of view!).

 

It was apparently possible for good Huff-Duff operators to get a bearing on a signal as short as 10 seconds or less and get the information anyway down the line to HQ within a minute. There is no sign of the paper and writing equipment you would need to copy down the messages, so direction finding seems to be the game for this set-up. If there are headphones which we cannot see, some identification details of any messages would be included if possible, and a paper log kept.

Aside entirely from the mysteries of the display, the key, the role of the equipment, etc., the location seems particularly intriguing. There was a chain of "Y" stations which used Huff-Duff. Often they were in former pre-War GPO listening posts or in remote and hard to spot locations (hiding in plain sight). Often the vertical antennas were mounted in wooden mast, and the stations located in either wooden sheds or tanked underground. They were definitely not conspicuous or large. In the photo though there is a window, which has been blacked out. I doubt if a window would have been added to a purpose built station, just to black it out. Windows in buildings where you are figuring out the enemy's secrets are not common. So was this an existing building into which a listening post was installed?

There has been plenty written about the "Y" stations (you can look them up on Wikipedia). However, the exact methods used are still a mystery to me. I have read out goniometers and phased verticals, but the actual physical set up is still confusing to me. At this stage enter Roger, MI0WWB, who is interested in the former Y station at Gilnahirk. We can perhaps gain a little knowledge from Gilnahirk as it continued to operate into our lifetimes whereas most other stations disappeared after WW2. Roger wrote ...

Gilnahirk, nestled in the Castlereagh Hills overlooking east Belfast, was one of Northern Ireland's best kept secrets.  Opened before WW2 it continued in active service right up to 1978 as a secret listening radio station.  It's work was classified secret and few people were aware of its existence.

A collection of wooden huts originally built by the GPO as part of the Radio Security Service it was quickly militarised being put under the control of MI8; it was quickly transferred to MI6 as part of the Special Communication Unit and later through reorganisation it became part of GCHQ.  During the war its role was to intercept transmissions, record the codes and to relay them to Bletchley Park for decoding.  Other tasks included direction finding to pinpoint the location of transmissions.

Gilnahirk played a significant role in intelligence gathering during the war and well into the Cold War period.  It played a role in the famous operation mincemeat and in helping to locate the German battleship Bismarck.  This work was augmented by Voluntary Interceptors throughout the UK, as many as 1500 radio amateurs, who used their own listening equipment to record data and forwarding it on a weekly basis to HQ.

The Station's importance was demonstrated by a new and enlarged station being built and opened in 1952, with antenna arrays established in the fields around the location.  This is the station I remember as a child, it continued in operation during the cold war right up to 1978 when it closed, becoming obsolete with the development of new technology. 

So, we know there were well established stations like Gilnahirk, and we know that there were Voluntary Interceptors, but yet Bruce's photo looks to me like some intermediate arrangement. No amateur would have had such complex and modern equipment in their shack (as far as I know!). So is it a photo of a Y station? The substantial walls and the window make this look like a converted building, not the low profile look of a Y station. What is the key for? What is the display for?

The fact is we shall probably never know.

But it interests me all the same. I, like many of my generation, were amazed by F. W. Winterbottom's book, "The Ultra Secret" when it appeared in 1975. I went straight to the library and devoured it. The secret surrounded the cracking of the Enigma and other codes during WW2. The book has various flaws, but it opened the door to a secret which had been carefully held by the people involved since 1945. I think some of them might have frowned upon the photo we have seen taken on 25 December 1945. Nevertheless, Huff-Duff is not directly to do with code breaking. Vital in an indirect sense, and in a way we never understood until even more recently.

During the long periods before the high-level German codes were cracked, and during quite long periods whilst the code-breakers had to re-crack the codes, the Enigma and other codes were incomprehensible. All the signal intelligence community had to work on were the Huff-Duff and traffic volume reports. Even without the code, the signal intelligence experts learnt how to deduce lots of important information just from these reports. Of course, it was better when they could read the code, but there is a lot of information hidden inside the direction and traffic volumes.

Many wonder why the enigma secret was so well hidden when the basic technology was outdated at the end of the War. Well, in part it was to continue to hide this other secret. To this day, the modern equivalent of Huff-Duff is a major part of signals intelligence. When we hear from reports of "whistle blowers" that the security services are following billions of emails and phone calls, you can bet that they are not listening in to them all or reading every one. No, their first line of enquiry is, how much of this is there, and where is it coming from? Which is what someone sitting at that listening post was doing during World War 2.

So at this humble station, we know-not-where, the momentary lapse in security which took the photo, our memories of shadowy places like Gilnahirk, raise more questions than they answer. The questions may never be answered as the basic task of signals intelligence in finding out "how much and from where?" remains vital to this day.

Thanks to Bruce and Roger for their input.

We as radio enthusiasts look at the equipment, and we lose sight of the actual task at hand. This is very useful to the spooks. Maybe it is just as well if we never really know the answers.

Luckily, as I do not know how to put the question, the answer may remain shrouded for ever.

73

Jim
GM4FVM
P.S. Was the operator left handed?

The joys of radio. Intercontinental, Es, aurora and just a bit of fun.

Radio horizons, good old fashioned radio, and a timely aurora.
 =================
When I get obsessed about things I do a lot of thinking on my walk. On my walk I noticed that the alpacas have been shorn again.

You would think they might be getting cold at this time of year, though I believe that they can get three fleeces off them, so there must be a late sheering every year. They must be capable of bearing a lot of cold, up in the Andes. Erm, time to think of working South America? You have to admit, my mind works in predictable ways.

Or not as the case may be.

===========================

Meanwhile I have been flapping about my radio horizon.

David, GM4JJJ, helpfully sent along a radio horizon for this QTH from Radio Scout. I still have my physical horizon from the HeyWhatsThat site - if you go to HeyWhatsThat site there are also tools you can your for line of site paths and so forth.

My horizon looks like this:-

The lower line is zero degrees elevation, and the higher one is one degree elevation. What it shows is what we knew, I have a hill in the way to the East and South. David's radio horizon showed me that I need 3.25 degrees elevation to get over the larger parts of it.

Which just confirms what evidence already shows, that I cannot get a tropo enhanced signal to the East and South, but I can get out that way during ducting, sporadic E and meteor scatter. In fact I can get out to distances which the calculations suggest require zero degree elevations, but not on tropo.

So I am sticking my my thesis, that I have done enough for tropo. I feel that raising the antennas or making them longer will tend to improve my shot at the hills, and weaken my shot over the hills, so I am not going to do it. And I am not going to try 70cms either.

All this looking at horizon charts confirms one thing in my mind - if I want to get out to the South and South East, especially during VHF contests, I need to go portable on top of the hills, rather than sitting here expecting the hills to vanish in front of my radio signal. We shall see if that happens or not.
=====================
When I get into a tizz about something like the horizon issue, I often think that just going and working some stations will help.

This has to be the basis of what I do. I still get a thrill from sending out a CQ and sitting waiting to see if anyone comes back. I still like collecting a new square in Guatemala on 12 metres (erm, that doesn't happen often I must say) or just yakking to someone about stuff. Stuff, the great subject for debate in amateur radio. Like why has Yaesu introduced a new microphone at £595?

I did a bit on 40m working WB8JUI and W3BI on 12 October.

I have been noticing that North South paths were good on 10m in the early afternoon, and on 11 October I worked this lot

A bit of DX is good for the soul. Not content with that I came back the next day ...

Now I know that the Solar Flux Index had risen to just over 100 for the first time in ages, and you cannot do that every day, but it shows what you can do if everything works out. Yes, the Solar Cycle is on the way down and likely to stay that way for years to come. But that does not mean that there are not pickings to be had, even on 10m. Into alpaca areas too.
====================
During this period, SolarHam had been predicting the arrival of a coronal mass ejection. "Weak" was how it was described, possibly making "a glancing blow" on the Earth. In due course it did this on 13th October:-

 I know that raised solar activity, as well as causing an Aurora, can cause enhanced Es. So I was ready for some life to arise from a different direction on 10m, which it duly did early 13th ...

Now you can never convince me that Es is not encouraged by solar activity, and that seems to be all the proof I need. But then we DID have an aurora, and associated Es before, and Auroral Es afterwards.

Bundling all the Es and aurora results together I had this outcome on 6m:-

Even lowly old 4 metres got a look in during the aurora:-

I did hear a couple of LAs and an EI on CW, but I was happy with 4 DXCC on SSB (though the GM3UAG QSO was me sending SSB and him replying on CW). All approaches welcome.

Now this is the joy of amateur radio for me. I can get a kick out of stalking Brazil and South Africa stations on 10m F layer, switch to Russia and Ukraine ones on Es, take in some aurora and auroral Es all around me.

I feel cheered up. So what if I am beaming at a hillside? This is the type of contest I want to win. (before you all say, I approve of contests, just not the ones where I am beaming into Ayton Hill).

And joy of joys, most of these people I worked on VHF I have encountered before. GI4DOH on 6m aurora. GM4JJJ also via the aurora. Both well known, but first time on the aurora for both. ON7EQ for yet another QSO on 4m, having now worked him on tropo ducting, meteor scatter and twice on aurora. Jean-Jacques is the proof that what is impossible on tropo can be done lots of other ways. Gerry, GI4OWA, is now a front runner for being the first aurora contact each time and therefore my new beacon in the West. I even managed to see, but not work, IU1DZZ on 10m Es. GD3YEO was a completely new one for me, though I have worked GD from here before, never on aurora until now.

It is a joy. And what a handy and timely relief from my gloom.

If in doubt, turn on the rig and work someone.

Thanks everyone

73

Jim
GM4FVM

Some very nice October Es, plus the "lure of HF DX".

I find it hard to decide how to report Es this year.

Last year I rambled on at great length about how, despite the RSGB Propagation News predictions based on the meanderings of the Jet Stream, it was clear to me that solar activity was the main driver in pushing the Es layer into operation at this time of year. I took readings over one month and there was a very clear correlation between the Es events and what I call "solar activity short of an aurora".

I don't wish to keep going on about it. Let us just say that this past few days have shown it again. Whilst the RSGB predictions said nothing about Es, I noted the imminent arrival of two (positive polarity) coronal holes. Everybody knows by now that if there is no aurora then there is often Es. By this I mean normal Es and not just auroral Es, which is a different phenomenon which sometimes occurs immediately after an aurora.

I think that the Jet Stream stuff is a delusion, at least at this time of year.

Of course it all depends what I mean by "solar activity short of an aurora". Certainly I am not suggesting that this has much predictive value. You can see the general pattern, but cause and effect is hard to prove. Nevertheless, I was expecting Es after this event and it did happen. No doubt, looking back, the RSGB will find some swirl in the Jet Stream which explains all this, but that does not justify their pseudo-scientific predictions in my view.

So, anyway, it has been good for Es. There was several short spells of aurora, including me hearing LA6JO, GM4VVX and GB3NGI via aurora. But no contact from here anyway. The compensation of several days of Es was more than enough to make up for the lack of aurora.

For example, on 1 October I clocked up almost 200 WSPR spots from Europe on 10m. On the same day I worked DL, I, F, DL and OK on 10m Es using JT65, and PA3GEO on 6m. Best DX was IU1DZZ in JN45. On 2 October I worked SP, HB, and DL on 10m and EA5/G3XGS (IM98 1933km) on 6m. I think that Gianfranco IU1DZZ may have called me again, but I was having trouble with the computer at the time.

OK, so these Es openings are not much compared with summertime propagation. But for October they were pretty good. The K number was ranging from 5 to 6 between 30 September and 2 October. As I write it is has gone back down to 3. There may still be some more fun to be had before this is over. As I write 10m WSPR is back in action with 4 different Italian stations coming in and OZ1IT hearing me.

So what is to learn from all this? Well my experience, as far as it goes, is that positive polarity coronal holes can indeed cause a geomagnetic storm, in this case quite a big one. But in radio terms, they rarely seem to produce much of a chance for an aurora. As you might expect as negative polarity storms tend to provoke a greater reaction on Earth, those storms are generally better from our point of view. On the other hand, an autumn or winter Es session after a positive polarity event is very nice and well worth looking out for, especially if it affects 6m and above.
======================
I once had a long conversation with the then current RSGB President about licensing and amateur exams. He said that UK Foundation licensees should have full access to HF because it was the "lure of HF DX" which brought them into the hobby. Hmmm. He was an HF DXer himself. He may be right, but that is not a reason to give Foundation licensees full access to all bands in my book.

Anyway, I think I do know what he means about the "lure of HF DX". Am I lured by the prospect of HF DX?

I mentioned recently about working DX on 40m. I worked AK1P and LU1WI on 26 September. The recent Es openings on 10m allowed me to be around when the band opened into South America. It also means that stations were around there to work in their Spring Es. 1 October brought LU1FNR (FF98 11186km) and PP1WW (GG99 9248). Not bad for a 5/8th wave vertical dipole and a barefoot FT450 at my end.

WSPR filled in the bits I could not cover, with PU3WSF (GG40, 10607km) and FY5KE (GJ35 7177) turning up on 2 October between 17:00 and 20:00.

I may be a VHF operator at heart, but there is still real ham blood running through my veins.  I like a bit of dxing from time to time. It also shows that even in a period when the sunspot number is low, whatever ionisation there is in the F layer is strongest nearer the equator and therefore North-South paths may still be workable. I shall keep my eye out for that.

As for the licence debate - if a Foundation licence holder could work South America on 10m and 40m as I did, I think they would feel well chuffed. That sounds like a reason for NOT giving them access to 20m. Let them work for more privileges, just as I did. I say "Keep 20m access for a higher licence grade". Just my thoughts though ...
=======================
 No picture this time so what about a railway photo from Italy?

This was taken at Bari. Was it only two weeks ago I was in Milano Centrale station? Now there is a place worth a visit for anyone interested in architecture.

=======================
The weather chart shows some signs of increased barometric pressure over the next few days. It will be interesting to see if there is any tropospheric enhancement. This is often a good time of year for ducts to form across the North Sea between here and Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

I will be looking for that, and increased meteor scatter activity as the season progresses.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

FT-2900 G4HFQ programming software plus 70cm dedicated rig - the Baofeng 888.

I guess you might say I "like a bargain". Or I am "a bit tight" might be another way of putting it.

It might appear that as I have a nice rig I must have money to spread around. Yes, I do quite well and I am thankful for that. I do not earn much of it. Instead I avoid spending on things that I think I can manage myself, and save the rest for nice things.

A bit of penny pinching brought the Yaesu FT-2900 into the shack. "Proper Yaesu. None of that Chinese junk" someone said. It says underneath it "Made in China". I hadn't the heart to tell him.

Why should I care which part of the world it comes from, so long as it works? Which it does after a fashion. I do not like it, I just cannot justify spending money on a squalk box which only serves to work three people.

I am not anti-social, there really are only three people who I can regularly work on 2m FM. Regularly means once a month. Hard as I try, three people worked each month is all 2m FM does for me.

Now discontinued, this model was one of those rigs with a huge heatsink built onto the back, in an attempt to avoid the expense of a fan (what, 50p?). "Does not need a fan as it has a large heatsink" the blurb said, but it does need a fan anyway. I should have known: my FT-1900 also used to run hot even though it had a lower maximum power.

I feel guilty that I sold that FT-1900 to someone and it blew up shortly afterwards.

It need not be so. My Anytone 888 has a passive heatsink and no fan but it runs dead cool. But of course it is none of your "Proper Yaesu". It is unashamed of being made in China.

So you can get the idea. I want it to work, and I am not so bothered about where it came from. Let us say that "value for money" has clearly been a big part in my buying decisions for FM rigs.

The biggest bugbear I have with the FT-2900, apart from the heat, is that it is utterly fiendish to progamme channels into it. It takes hours, and you are not very sure if what you have done is correct. And I had to use the "memory bank link scan" to do what I wanted to do and then if the scan stopped in one bank you could not tune to the other bank ... dreadful.

I set my heart on some programming software, but this ran up against my skinflint nature. Spend £50 to a certain company for their product! Shudder. Too much. So I struggled on until I could have no more of it. Well, I used the FT-817 on 2m FM for a while and it taught me that a proper progamming suite (in that case the ancient but free "817commander") was a big plus. I could organise leaving out my local repeater (3km away), install the one I use (30km away), screen out the ones I can hear every day (50 to 60km) and listen to the one I use as a propagation predictor (80km). And I can change them at any time. Simples.

So I bought a lead with a chip and USB plug on one end and a mic plug on the other. Yes, I could have made that myself but at £4.36, post paid, from Shenzen, why bother? Ordered on 25 August, it was due here on 12 September to 6 October. Nice wide range of delivery there then. It arrived, not with a Chinese but with a Netherlands stamp on it, on 10 September.

Next step, the free programming software CHIRP. I have used CHIRP successfully on several handhelds and it is great. It claimed that the latest version worked on the FT-2900. It didn't work, or more accurately I could not get it to work. It wouldn't read the data from the rig and I could not find out why. I chased all over the shop, trying drivers (but the lead seemed to work) fiddled with CHIRP settings, and got nowhere. I now think that I could not understand the way to set up the rig for cloning. But without that information I was lost.

There is also the issue that the well known company appear to be introducing leads which do not work with CHIRP, and software which only works with their leads. I have already bought a cheap lead, and this is amateur radio. We do not mind if somebody finds his own solution to part of the problem. Or we shouldn't mind.

At this stage I might have dipped into my wallet and paid £50 or so to get a nice bit of software and lead in a neat box. £50 because no local shop seemed to stock it and I would have had to order it from USA, from which the postage is half the cost of the kit. But no, I wanted my bargain.

So I decided to give G4HFQ a try. He sells programming software which does everything which CHIRP might do but it has comprehensive instructions and explanations, which seems to be missing from CHIRP.

G4HFQ allows you to download and try his software for 2 weeks in "download only" mode. You can use anybody's lead as he does not supply them. He explains how to build your own lead. Then if it works you can pay him for a full version of the software and he sends you a code to unlock the limitations.

This is more like it. Cheap lead and cheap software? Yes! I downloaded the 2900 software and it worked perfectly with the rig in download mode. After buying the licence it works perfectly in upload too. The instructions are crystal clear and go sequentially as you work through them.

You can find G4HFQ's programming software here: http://g4hfq.co.uk/index.html

On the PC it looks like most of them do, with various screens for different functions, and one large sheet for all the memory options ...

Now that I can see what I am doing I no longer need to use to cumbersome "Memory Bank Link Scan".

The total cost to me was £4.36 for the lead and £14.33 for the software licence. As G4HFQ's site is priced in dollars it would have been cheaper for me before the BREXIT vote. Ah well. Still, £18.69 is a much better price than £50 or so, plus I engaged a bit of brain power to get it to work.

In the hobby you can always get someone to pack things together into a neat bag and by paying them more you get some sort of guarantee that everything will work together. But I have saved enough money to do something else too, and the risk of it not working opens the door to me to do some more fiddling with chips and leads, which I love anyway. In some way buying bits which work together actually spoils the enjoyment of trying to solve the problems I expect to have. I suppose trying to get CHIRP to work with the 2900 did give me a bit of a brain-teaser.
====================
In a dark corner of the FVM shack lies the 70cm FM department. The re-emergence of the single band FT-2900 means that some other rig needs to be used to access our local 70cms repeater GB3BE. Not that anyone ever uses that repeater, but I am ready to pounce if anyone does.

The rig used for 70cms is now another of my cheese-paring specials. It is my trusty Baofeng 888, costing £8 from China on eBay. OK, it has no display, no VFO, and only 16 pre-installed channels. It cannot scan these channels, and it has no tone burst, though it can produce CTCSS tones. It runs about 5 watts on "UHF". I pre-programmed the channels using CHIRP, with the repeater, the 70cms calling frequency and a working channel.

It sits in a bit of a shelf next to a power supply unit, beside the phone and generally out of sight. I use a speaker mike, and I have never yet had a reason to change the channel. Antenna is the 1/2 wave on the FT-2900 which the 888 shares via a duplexer. On 70cms it is "a colinear" - gee, what sophistication.

I needed to use flash to take a picture down there of course, and it shows up the general starkness of the situation. Out of sight and often out of mind. But crucially it works.

If the FT-2900 had been a decent rig it would have 70cms on it. But I was saving cash when I bought it. So the combined cost of the 2900 and the 888 comes nowhere near the cost of a dual band FM mobile. I am a happy camper.

The only drawback of the 888 is that it does not have the 1750hz toneburst needed to open the BE repeater. BE may say it responds to CTCSS, but it doesn't. Not worth building a tone burst as no doubt as soon as I do BE will go over to CTCSS. So I recorded a 1750hz tone which I play through the 888's speaker mic. Tight? Me? Well, that is the secret to me being able to afford all the other stuff I have. And also how I can afford to go to Italy (on the train to keep it cheap of course).

I am ... careful with my money.

I propose a toast to the £8 ham radio. Long may cheapies keep us going. Bravo Chinese sites on eBay.

Hail to everyone who allows me to save on the run of the mill stuff and spend my savings on useful things.

73

Jim

Back again, PW 70MHz contest, and limited activity

Hello again.

I am back in the country again.

I have been in Italy. I travelled by train from Berwick upon Tweed to Bari for four days sightseeing and general diversion, with no radio. There should have been a photo now of me standing in front of a train as far South as it is possible to go by rail in South East Italy (Gagliano Leuca). However, thanks to the staggering inefficiency of the local railway company FSE, we only got as far as Gallipoli (note not Galipoli, which is in Turkey).

So we will have to settle for this one which shows me at Gallipoli. The train in the background is more typical of the FSE company's trains than the one in the foreground

I also made it on a different railway, narrow gauge this time, to Matera, which is famous for troglodytic dwellings. On the journey this rather unsteady photo was taken in the station bar in Altamura by my fellow traveller Norman.

The couple in the background seem to be having a better time than I was. As soon as we sat down, took that photo and started to plan where to go next, the barman shut the bar and threw us out (the closing time for Italian station bars appears to be 13:12). We had tried to take a photo on the platform instead, but the station master told us we needed authorisation to take pictures and threw us out of there too.

The return journey I did as one continuous trip, Bari - Milan - Paris - London - Berwick, using the overnight Thello train between Milan and Paris. In Sporadic E terms that is too far for a single hop anyway, being well over 2000km, though 4 hops were a bit exhausting.

As overnight trains are becoming increasingly rare it was nice to travel on my first "International" night train - or at least that is so provided you regard Scotland and England as one country. As I have heard is always the routine on any International night train, the Border Police arrived into the compartment at 03:25 to check us against our passports. And a warm welcome they received too.

Enough of this, as we are in a radio blog rather than a railway one.
===================
Yesterday, 25 September, was the date of the annual Practical Wireless 70MHz contest. I do read and occasionally contribute to PW. It is a venerable publication and deserves some support. So I usually wade into their 2m and 4m contests. Yesterday was beset with fairly dire conditions. Signals were masked by choppy QSB. I did not stay on for long, and no dramatic DX was worked.

I did hear one other station fairly strongly but I know from experience that if he is strength 5 he will not be able to hear me. He needs to be S8 for him to even copy my callsign. We both use similar power, or at least my power is similar to what he says he runs. Any more would be over the legal limit, so he can hardly be doing that, now can he?
====================
So far in September I have of course been away for quite a while when I would normally have been on the air. There was a good VHF Es opening on 10 September. This brought in a best DX of UX4UA at 2263km, but also nice contacts into DL, F, HB9, YO and HA. I even ventured onto 4m to work HA6ZB a nice 1767km away. This was a good reminder that Es is not just a May to August phenomenon. On 40m (yes, HF!) I worked PY8JL on my wire dipole which has the centre about 5m above ground (if even that). Over 8000km on a thrown together antenna. I must give 40m a bit more of a workout this autumn.
====================
While I was away the new mast for the 6m antenna has arrived. Much to my surprise, the existing lash-up did not blow down while I was away. All we need now is to get the brackets, mast and winches organised and installed.

Geomagnetic conditions are disturbed and two coronal holes are approaching the right position to affect us. They are numbered 19 and 20 on this photo which I have copied from Solarham (Solarham is a great site and you will find a link to it on the sidebar on this site)

There are early signs of aurora. As usual we await developments.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

A good VHF August with added computerised logging.

Data entry and testing.

Data entry and testing.

When I worked for a large government agency in Edinburgh I had to do the accounts and run the personnel section. One group of staff were organising a new computer system which would save our bacon by reducing the staff numbers and save the money we would not have in future years.

All they did was sit in an office in front of screens. Their time sheets just said ...

Data entry and testing.

Every week. I just had to accept that this justified their salaries.

And so, since VQLog arrived at GM4FVM, all that I have been doing is ...

Data entry and testing.

What a boring job this turned out to be. I just hope I get as many efficiency benefits as my former colleagues used to promise.

All my 2m contacts from here are now in the log, apart from some rather tedious contest contacts. Almost no FM QSOs get logged here anyway. All the 4m contacts back to 2 October 2015 (don't ask) are also in plus all the new DXCC entities and squares back to 2009. All the 6m contacts go back to 1 April 2016, with all new countries as they arose, back to 2009. I have not yet formally organised 6m squares. And as for HF, just a few that caught my attention. It is not hard to see where my heart is. Many of the HF ones are interesting, but I have to set some priorities or this would go on forever. Also in are almost all the contacts confirmed by paper QSL cards.

What I really needed to do was get everything that mattered into VQLog, and the paper record will remain for the things I have not transferred in.

So most of August's contacts were entered live and it all went well except for one session.

Let us see what happened in August then.

Before the 14th there was a Sporadic E ("Es") opening from here almost every day, each of which was over 1000km, and on the day when there was no Es opening I worked into OZ on 4 metres meteor scatter. I would have to say that it really was very good stuff.

You can click on the images to enlarge if necessary.

VHF DX Squares Sporadic 1 - 13 August 2016

That includes new 4m squares provided by M0TBS/P and SP3RNZ/8, plus a new 6m country and square with C37MS in Andorra.  There were also some very nice long distance 6m QSOs to US0LW (2637km), SV3BSF (2638) and SV9CVY (3091). All in all a nice period after such a long drought on Es.

Then came 14 August when 6m opened again across the Atlantic. It was a good enough VHF day for me to do a proper map ..

Once again I stuck to JT65 and I lost one in QSB but still worked three

AB1NJ again (VT, FN34 4961km), NK1K (MA, FN42 4993) and WA1NPZ (NH, FN43 4914). The one that got away would have been quite nice DX - K8EB in MI, EN73, 5758km. We both stuck at it for quite a while but it just was not to be.

I was pleased that I was around for a second trans-Atlantic opening on 6m in 2016, and two new stations were worked as well. The repaired 6m linear worked well at 125 watts. I was in touch with AB1NJ who thought this was the best opening of the year from his end, but it was second best from here. Es is very selective.

Not only was 14 August the best opening of the month, but 14 August marked the decline in Es. After that there were 6 days of the month with nothing heard on Es at all. The openings which did occur were shorter and more limited in their scope.

VHF DX Squares Sporadic E 15 to 31 August 2016

Although the second half of the month was very nice, it is immediately apparent that the steam has gone out of Es for now. Not that this means the end of it. As I found out pursuing another question, I have worked more Es in January than in September, but it can happen anytime.

As the Es fades each year I tend to turn to meteor scatter. MS also worked quite well during August, with the Perseids shower doing very well for me. A new country on 4m was provided by the Andorra expedition C37MS, which I had worked earlier on 6m Es.

VHF Squares Meteor Scatter 1 to 31 August 2016

I do not turn to 2 metres too often, but in August I did. The 2m meteor scatter contacts to LY2AO (KO16, 1505km), SF3NR (JP92, 1396) SM1FMT (JO96, 1247)F4ARU (JN03 1398) LA8KV (JP52 1075) were all notable in their own ways, and not bad for 2m by any standard.

EI9E/P (IO44 560) was a new square on 4m even if was rather close. OH2BYJ (KP10, 1571) on 4m was best meteor scatter DX of the month, but I have worked him before.

IZ0MIT is showing up as a meter scatter QSO on 6m, but to be accurate it was really mostly Es with a bit of MS thrown in.

So that is it for the month of August. Sorry that shortage of time has force me to cover the whole month in one page. However, it shows what a difference there was between the first half and the second half of August. August started with Es every day, and ended with it tailing away. Good old reliable meteor scatter filled in the gaps.

The one aspect where I did not get on with VQLog was in the RSGB 4m UKAC contest on 30 August. I only had ten contacts, but keeping track of the serial numbers when I heard stations but did not work them was tricky. I need a good record of who I have worked already. No doubt VQLog can help me, it can certainly do sequential serial numbers, but I am not sure I want that type of help. Maybe contests are just better done on paper, for me anyway. 

Or maybe I just do not love contests, although I see their benefits and I do come on the bands specifically for them.

We shall see as time goes on.

Right, I am off to do some more ...

Data entry and testing.

73

Jim

GM4FVM

Does my spellchecker know something I don't ????

VQ Log, Junk Sale Hi&Low, plus TE 0552 Amp again.

It had to happen.

Someone who built radios at age ten, learned computer coding at 18, has built his own computers for 25 years, computer controls his rotator, runs a radio blog and even sometimes solders things together cannot continue to use a paper log book.

It finally became painfully obvious that things could not carry on last month. A couple of years ago I wrote a database program to keep track of my countries and squares worked. This was fine until I came to extend it to 6 metres. The process involved ploughing through log books, working out which contact was important, and entering details. Then it occurred to me that his was a waste of effort. If I had a system that included all the likely contacts then I would not need to do double entries, and it could work out what was important based on filters I entered myself.

Plus my memory is not what it was. For example, I discovered that I am capable of forgetting entire VHF openings, and for that I blame the fact that there are more and more openings to recall as "Time Marches On". My memory must have some finite limit. And the ultimate issue - this is a hobby. It should be as simple as it can be. Trying to store information on bits of paper and remembering specific openings is not a good use of my organic storage.

I could not ignore another great pointer either. I became self-employed in 1999 when my employer kicked me out on account of my failing health (I suspect their pension scheme did not expect me to be alive and kicking for so long). I took a spreadsheet which I had used to keep track of my non-employment earnings and expended it to cover the increasingly complex ways I earned my keep. Between 1999 and 2016 this grew and grew in complexity. But it was a product of its era. In 1999 I wrote it in Lotus 123. The fact that Lotus 123 still runs on Windows 10 is a bit of a surprise (the associated database stopped working years ago). But I had to admit that 123 no longer meets my needs, or at least the 1999 version doesn't. So, regretfully, I re-wrote it in a more modern format. Last week I did my 2015-2016 tax returns which are the last based on  accounts held in 123. Anyway, now that I am more retired than working my accounts are simpler.

Flags at half mast, end of an era. I just have to accept that MSDOS is dead. If only RTTY would go the same way.

So I have all the proof I need to show I have to move with the times. VQLog seemed the obvious solution as EA6VQ already provides my lifeline with DXMaps. Also, the great and the good of the VHF world already use VQLog. You can find VQLog if you follow the link on the sidebar to DXMaps and click on "Software" and then it appears on a drop down menu. I tried out the sampler version for 6 days before buying the supported version.

Unfortunately VQLog does not seem to do tax returns as well.

There are lots of things you can do with VQLog that I do not need. With five rigs turned on around me I cannot use the software to set or record my working frequency. At the moment it is 28.1261 (or 24.92461), 50.276, 70.230, 70.450 and 145.7625, and I am transmitting on two of those from time to time. Neither can it turn my rotator as I have two rotators. So I can leave those features out. It is the storage, sorting and mapping features I can make use of.

So more of that later but it has taken AGES to capture all the contacts I feel I need into the software.

D'oh. Maybe I should have changed years ago. But would I just have written my own log software in Lotus, or Quicken, or Scribe, or some now entirely defunct package? Probably.

At least now I am able to use logs from WSJT-X and HRD-Log to fill some of the gaps. Also, I can use my existing database information to identify the key contacts I need to enter. There are just too many of them. I am only covering my period at this QTH, about 8 years, as I re-set my logging clock when I moved here from G-land.
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Well that is why I have been fairly silent on the blog lately. I have been too busy pressing keys.

I did find time to visit the Cockenzie and Port Seaton Club "Junk Night".

They really need a better name for it. I have seen it called a "mini-rally" which describes it better.

Anyway, the highs of Cockenzie are always the people you meet there. You always encounter like-minded individuals, people you knew from years ago, and others you just bump into. Then there are long conversations about common interests and radio problems you share. Usually there is a bit of belly-aching from me about the world in general. Actually buying and selling things comes last for most people.

I was surprised to be approached by Jim, GM4DHJ. Surprised because he reads this blog. How he recognised me is a bit of a mystery, but he did. We had a good blether about lots of things and it was great to meet him and his XYL. I did rather take over their stall, but then maybe selling things was not the only purpose they had either.

It says a lot about the spirit of these events that you can go along with nothing particular in mind, then meet people who you can talk to for ages.

Me, Jim GM4DHJ and Jim's XYL

It is a casual get together with some trade stands, a raffle and a very fine array of snacks and filled rolls. It is clear to see that the average age of the amateur in South East Scotland is getting higher. They are also getting heavier. At least the Cockenzie and Port Seaton club takes a sensible approach to training new amateurs of all weights. If only my local club would do the same.

I looked long and hard at two second hand (used) VHF rigs. One was a pretty ancient 2m one, and the other a more modern synthesised one which included 70cms. OK, the old one will be deaf by modern standards but I have a nice pre-amp. It is a pity that dedicated VHF rigs are no longer made by the main producers. I understand the economic arguments that brought this about, but from a technical point of view surely a single band rig must be capable of being better on a specific band than a multi-band one. Which I guess is why so many VHF enthusiasts use transverters. Anyway, I did not buy either of them.

Those were the highs. Now for the lows. What could offend me about this item for sale for £15?

It is a controller for a Yaesu G-600 rotator. The RC version, just the like the broken one I have.

Well, as I went into in some detail earlier in the blog, when my controller packed in I thought it was be impossible to replace. I bought an EA4TX ARS-USB controller, and very fine it is. But the computer controller was over £200. I feel pretty sure that I would have gone for this one had I known it was around. Bah. I could have spent the £185 on any number of things.

Not really a junk sale when it has useful things like this in it. I didn't buy it!

I didn't buy anything. For the first time in years, I left Cockenzie empty handed.
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My TE Systems 0552G 6 metre band linear has been back under the soldering iron.

As was discussed earlier down this blog, I repaired a break in the switching circuits, or rather duplicated the 13.8V line to the switching panel, bypassing a break in some unknown place buried under the circuit board.

This was not quite prefect. The switches were not working correctly - the amplifier switch worked the preamp, the preamp switch did nothing. The whole thing could not be switched off using the switches. I had routed my extra wiring round the side of the board, thinking that the original path under the board might have been to avoid RF pickup.

Sure enough, it was picking up RF. This was not a problem with data modes, but with SSB it was showing a little bit of distortion and making a very odd noise. So I sidelined it.

At this stage I must admit to a habit of not going back into something after I have worked on it. I find it very hard to re-open things and go back over something I have done before. So the 0552G sat in the corner of the shack for several weeks until I found the energy to fix it.

I had two plans. Either, Plan A, I could find a way to insert the 13.8V more directly onto the board and cut out the long wire I had installed before. Then, Plan B was to replace my long bridging wire with screened cable. Plan B was a bit of a shambles but if it worked then it would do. Plan A was the one to go for, and maybe I could find the right track on the circuit board and get the switches working properly.

Once inside, it turned out that a variant on Plan A would work. There is a track on the board taking the 13.8V from the main "amplifier in" switch to the RJ socket in the back. It passes right past the main 13.8V input. So I used just a couple of centimetres of wire to bridge onto that track and, wow, the RF pickup stopped. No need for Plan B, which might not have worked anyway.

I forgot to take a photo and I am not about to open it all up again to take one now.

So my additional wiring is now about 450mm shorter than it was, giving less scope to pick up RF. Maybe that is why the original track was under the board. Anyway, the switches still don't work properly, but the way they work has changed. The preamp switch now works the preamp! Hooray. The "amplifier in" switch also works the pre-amp, but does not turn the whole amp on or off as it is supposed to. That is because I have wired the supply to the "wrong" side of it. But that is better than it was before and I can turn it off entirely by just cutting the DC supply from the power supply.

Speaking of the power supply, it turned out that it was making some of the odd noises I had blamed on the TE Amp. It is a "MyDEL MP-50SWIII", stated spec 50 Amp 13.8v PSU. They are available under many names all over the world. Mine creaks as you draw current from it.

It seems to work perfectly well. The odd thing was that it added noises to the clicking made by the 0552G. So now that the linear is fixed and silent, I can hear the creaks from the PSU.

I'll just ignore them.

These odd noises do not help my paranoia. Maybe the KGB have put a bug in it, so that is why it creaks. They want to know why I have a 70MHz meteor scatter QSO with the same station in Denmark every week.

Come to think about it, that is a odd behaviour.

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I will keep working on the logging and maybe I will be able to review August soon. It has been an interesting "Month On The Air". But if there is an aurora on Monday expect me to be even more delayed.

73

Jim
GM4FVM