Or is the sun getting its hat on?
Posts Tagged ‘Propagation’
Whisper
WSPR = Whisper
Joe Taylor and people like him never cease to amaze me. Without trying to state the obvious he really is a clever bloke. I’ve used WSJT a few times, mostly for receiving but on a couple of occasions I’ve done a small amount of transmitting. I’d seen WSPR on his website and if the truth be told I had too much on my plate to think about using it. Now I’ve got some semblance of normality back and the sporadic E season starts to wane. I was thinking of my long ‘un’established sdr beacon receiver then the idea struck me.
WSPR + Softrock HF Lite + Atom motherboard = WSPR receiver
Why change from Faros. We’ll its no change for the long term but I’ve still not been able to find a way to use the HF lite with Faros for all the IARU HF beacons. Something that it really frustrating. If only I had the ability to write software!
So the possible change in direction needs a bit of thought. Is it worth while? I’m running it for a few days to see what it gives me. Sounds like the project could be something big if enough get involved.
Spots
Posted 20 Jul 2009 — by Alex
Category Radio
Category Radio
Have there been some sunspots or something?
All of a sudden over the last few days the Faros station has started reporting some signals. After being quiet for a number of weeks with little spotting going on something has happened to spurn it into action, Good news anyway. I might have to get the HF vertical out this evening and put the 6m Yagi to bed until next season.
Smoothed Sun Spot Numbers
Posted 22 Apr 2009 — by Alex
Category Radio
Category Radio
W1AW reports through the regular bulletins that the sun spot numbers have changed a bit over the last few months to give an extended low. Something that is all too familiar if you try and listen out for DX at the moment.
Below is a graph of the smoothed numbers that are taken from the recent published numbers. I’ve added a polynomial trend line to show what the smoothed smoothed sun spot numbers look like.
SSN’s still very low
Posted 07 Oct 2008 — by Alex
Category Radio
Category Radio
The suns having a lazy autumn. or spring depending on you hemisphere. The numbers through on the ARRL propagation bulletin make for a fairly low reading with what is reported to be a a bit of a pattern where a sunspot appears for a few days then is quick to disappear. The chart below shows the decline and makes for interesting reading / viewing. As expected there are a number of theories but as yet I’m not sure what it tells us.
