Over the last couple of months I’ve been concentrating on 30m using the dipole I installed late last year because I was keen to complete my 30m DXCC before the winter kicks in. Most of my contacts on 30m are using digital modes, either JT65, JT9 (remember them?) or FT8 and I knew that I’d […]
I woke up early this morning, about an hour and a half before sunrise and it occurred to me that if I were to switch the wireless on, I might get some greyline propagation. Sunrise was at 06:03 and first light at 04:44. I got up and fired up 30m FT8 which was pretty dead, […]
As radio amateurs, time is important to us and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), often called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the most important. We log our QSOs in UTC, (ideally) we give net times in UTC and our clocks need to be accurate to the second for data modes such as FT8, FT4, JT65, JT9 […]
I’ve never had a decent aerial for the 30m (10 MHz) band and have struggled to work much on the band either with my old doublet or the inverted L that I’ve had up for the last couple of years. About a month ago, I realised that I could hang a single band 30m dipole […]
At the end of July, I happened to glance up at my aerial and noticed the 15m element hanging down. It was broken. It didn’t look serious though and I was sure that it was just that the connector on the end of the element had snapped off. Around the same time, I was offered […]
This weekend was the ARRL RTTY Roundup contest and for the first time, FT8 was allowed. I spent a couple of hours operating just to give away a few points and get some experience using the new version of WSJT-X in contest mode. I’d been working mainly European stations and all of a sudden, I […]
To start with, I’ll post the basic statistics for the entire year of 2018 and then go into the background. QSOs made: 3789 Unique QSOs made: 2962 Average QSOs per day: 10.4 Days missed: 0 <- This is the most important statistic, it means that QSO365 #2 was a success. DXCC entities worked: 160 New […]
WSJT-X version 2.0.0 has been released and everyone who uses this software for any data modes should update as soon as possible. This new version is NOT compatible with previous versions so everyone is encouraged to upgrade to 2.0.0 as soon as possible. New features in WSJT-X 2.0.0 Compound and nonstandard callsigns are automatically recognized […]
When running data modes such as the very popular FT8, it’s important to keep your computer clock accurate because if it’s more than a couple of seconds out then you won’t be able to decode anyone, they won’t be able to decode you and you won’t make any QSOs. There are a number of utilities […]
A few days ago was the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend and a group of locals under the umbrella of Colchester Radio Amateurs operated a special event station using the callsign GB6NT from the Naze Tower at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex. This location is very close to me and I visited on both Saturday and Sunday. On […]
