160 metres

160 metres isn't really a band I have ever done much operation on. When I was first licensed I suppose I had the space for a decent 160m antenna but wasn't really interested in that band. These days space and local noise are the main problems. Having recently rediscovered WSPR I thought I would try 160 again.
Whilst my Drake MN4C tuner will tune my G5RV antenna OK, an evening on WSPR showed that the antenna was pretty useless on that band with nothing heard and nobody hearing me. In any case reception was all but impossible with S9+ of noise on the WSPR frequency.

Plan B was to insert a ground rod outside the shack (easy enough as my shack is on the ground floor) and strap the two sides of the G5RV together and tuning it against ground. The noise I experience on 160 at the moment is pretty bad, S9+ so receive is difficult. I did however manage to get my 10w WSPR signal out as can be seen below

Additionally I managed to receive two German stations and one Swiss. I will experiment again with WSPR on 160, tonight I closed down just as darkness was closing in, a later session may enable some more distant reports. I would be happier running a maximum of 5 watts on this mode so will reduce power in future.

So it seems it was worth hammering in that ground rod.................now if only I could trace the source of the noise.

Random Ramblings

Radio time this weekend has been a bit limited so yesterday I set up the TS450S and inverted L on WSPR and let it run on 30 metres whilst I was doing other things. In fact I let it run overnight on Saturday and was interested to see that the 30 metre band didn't die at all during the night- previously I was lucky to hear anything after 2200. In the wee small hours my 1watt signal was heard in VK land as well as Stateside and throughout Europe. On Sunday morning I switched over to 10 metres, with no results but moving down to 12 metres heard an EA station.

Interestingly I worked a bit of 40metres SSB this afternoon on my Random wire ("The antenna that shouldn't work") and spoke to a G3 station with an interesting antenna. He was also using a random long wire which started within the integral garage at his home and was actually wound around the garage several times. He told me he didn't use an ATU, he simply adjusted the length until the antenna resonated on 40 metres. The only problem he had with thus setup was that if he removed his car, or any other metal items that were stored in the garage the antenna went off resonance and refused to match! Its amazing at what can be made to work as an antenna on the HF bands!
A random picture accompanying this entry- an EQSL recently received from DL9SUB.

2010 and all that

Well here it is- my first post of the new year!
Happy 2010 to all who read this. I am not a great believer in new years resolutions but I do have one radio -related resolution and that is to start using CW again.

I obtained my first amateur radio licence back in 1984. In those days passing the radio amateurs exam earned you a class B radio licence which allowed you to operate on 144Mhz and above. In order to use the HF bands you had to pass the morse code exam both receiving and sending morse at 12 words per minute. I did this and obtained my existing callsign in 1988.
I learned morse code at my then local radio club. The tutor was a very enthusiastic CW man and made me promise that my first ever contact on HF would be on CW. I kept this promise and for the first couple of years used morse fairly regularly.
Over the years for various reasons my amateur radio activity was a little patchy. When I did get back on the air properly I had lost confidence in my CW skills and switched to operating on SSB and in more recent times the data modes. what I need to do now of course is to set some time aside to re-learn my morse receive skills!
Morse is an interesting mode and it can enable a simple low power station to work much further than an equivalent equipped SSB station.
So that's my intention, watch this space to see if I have any success.
Radio operation here has been limited over the last couple of days. I have been using WSPR, mainly on 80metres and was very pleased to see that my 1watt signal had been heard in the USA. The funny thing is that I haven't ever worked the U.S from here on 80 metres, even with 100 watts. I guess that just shows what an amazing mode WSPR is!

Quick update

Having read on G4ILOs blog yesterday that last night was an activity evening on WSPR on 40metres I duly tuned up the TS830, cranked down the power and set up WSPR on that band at 5 watts. After wondering why nothing was happening, i.e no decodes I realised that I had not Synchronized the PC clock! Once this was done I was up and running.So Last night my 5 watts was heard in the USA, Brazil and Austrailia!! truly amazing. What a superb piece of software. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could dig SSB and AM signals out of the noise the way WSPR does? Maybe in this day and age of SDR receivers, some of which are apparently very impressive we are not so far way from this.
Tonights picture has nothing to to with radio, rather its my excuse as to whay there hasn't been much radio done here this evening as I went along to the local firework display!