#60m Guinea worked

 

This was a tough one. I got a lot of atmospheric and other interference on 60m during the longer daylight days we have now. The QSO almost happened yesterday evening but I didn't get a RR73 and was not in the log. Luckily it happened today. Receiving FT8 with such low signals is only possible with JTDX, I don't think WSJT-X is able to do that. I had SWL mode on with 3 decoding cycles. This helps a lot during such bad conditions.

Morse included on the Dutch amateurradio license?

    I got the message that fellow CWops CW intermediate course participant PA8E Jim has passed his CW exam last weekend. You can read his adventure here: https://pa8e.nl/morse-certificate/

   I never fully understood how to get "CW included" on your license here in my country. Since you can't do any CW exams here in my country. I knew there was a way going to Belgium for the exam. When passed the exam ask for a "CW included" on your license showing your CW certificate to the Dutch authorities. But how? My assumption was always that you needed at least do the CW exam for 12 wpm. But it seems that it is not needed. If you passed the exam with 5 wpm it is enough. However 5 wpm is not really 5 wpm but 5/12 wpm, so it is a little faster. Not expected but I learned that besides the 26 letters/10 numbers you need to know the questionmark, the slash and 6 prosigns. The prosigns are BT, AR, AS, BT, HH (error correction) and SK.I've listened a example soundfile and dicovered that they used a lot of QSO elements in the text. Like QRG, TEMP, CQ, PSE, 73 etc. This makes it easier of course, though you don't know when those words will appear... You also need to write while decoding, I've tried this and found it difficult. I'm used to typing in LCWO and writing while decoding needs another mind setting. Something I should train more often.

With this info in my mind and now written here in my blog I might do the exam some year in the future. The CW exam in Belgium is only held once a year.

160m WSPR last night

 It has been a long time ago that I did some WSPR tests. Since I still got the 160m inverted-L up I wanted to do some range test with 1W WSPR. 

Below the stations that reported me. No DX but not that bad.

Not really satisfied about my reception. Below the stations I reported. The Inverted-L is not really a good receive antenna for 160m. You really need some kind of beverage system or a loop on ground.

I have to dismantle the inverted-L today since the radials are all over the place in the garden. I really need to make a more permanent system. But I don't know yet what. Have been experimenting with a shunt fed tower in 2019. It was a really nice system which did well. I might set it up again.