Theres hope for a few QSO’s to South America but only if I stay up very late. Not much chance of that at the moment though. A few more weeks should do the trick nicely!

having had a pretty poor Es season compared to last year I have switched back to HF. This hasn’t really worked either…..There must be some radio gremlins floating about as I’ve hardly even heard a European station for weeks let alone someone from further afield. All I’m getting is a load of old noise.

Good for the XYL as its made me fit the new Freesat cabling ( I don’t do Sky) for our PVR. Tidy up the garden and other uninteresting home type tasks. I even managed to get out and do a 10 mile time trial on my bike last Tuesday. Another first.

Its amazing what else you end up doing when the bands are dead…

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.

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.

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.

Lucky I’m traveling further south for a few days soon so I can at least hopefully have a few QSO’s whilst qrp in the centre of England. Theres always a chance that somewhere in the UK there’ll be a lift.

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Sometimes these lows can be low if you get what I mean

Now the ARRL has reported that there is a virtual ionosphere that can be superimposed onto your very own google earth.

I upgraded my installation through the faithful synaptic and I am really impressed with what you get. the work is done by CAPS (Communication Alert and Prediction System) and the details are here. A screenshot of it displaying the foF2 fro today on my machine is below.

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