After a nice weekend on Schiermonnikoog Island we are back home. We had some beautiful weather, almost blue sky and sunny. A great time to be on this island. Radio activity was a little low, just like expected actually. It was a family event and not a radiohobby event. So, I was active with WSPR most of the time since you don't have to be at the radio equipment for this mode. I was lucky to have wireless internet in the house, something you need if you do WSPR and JT modes. The setup consisted of my FT-817 5 Watt output, Ace Aspire One minilaptop and Superantenna MP-1 on the balcony. At sunday our little girl went ill and I offered to be near her, good time to do some radio. I managed to make 4 QSO on 20m. 3 on PSK with OM8AMF, EA7JLK, EA1IFU/P and 1 on JT65 with HA2AL. You would expect a low noisefloor on a small island, but it isn't the case. All of the holiday houses and hotels have various electronics like WiFi, PLC, Plasma TV etc. The noise on 20m was a solid S8 all the time. I did try 40m, but it was even worse there. Luckely our little girl is ok, and we are back home again! Now, a small problem occured. The tiny laptop suddenly didn't start anymore, I was afraid I lost all data. It has a restore function built in and luckely within a hour I got all data back.
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| Superantenna MP-1 on balcony |
WSPR was most succesfull this weekend and I want to analyze all data to print it on a map. More about that and about my visit to the only ham radio operator on the island in the next post.
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| Homemade door/window throughput |
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| Spot the antenna |
WSPR was het meest succesvol dit weekend en ik wil de gegevens nog even analyseren en er een kaartje van maken, dat vergt even wat meer tijd. Meer hierover en over mijn bezoek aan de enige zendamateur op het eiland in een volgend stukje.
7 comments:
Hallo Bas,
Leuk verslag, ik ben ook benieuwd naar de resultaten van WSPR. Ik heb al op WSPR gekeken en er zitten mooie verbindingen bij.
Jullie hebben weer lekker kunnen genieten van het mooie weer, het mooie eiland en haar natuur.
Alleen dat soort dagen vliegen altijd te snel voorbij.
73 Hans, PE1BVQ
Good morning Bas, nice to read that you had a nice restful vacation and also that your daughter is well. It looked like a nice simple setup and with the balcony and MP1 you were in biz with getting on the air. Funny thing with laptops I had mine the other day just fail to start. To me it seemed the hard drive was not working. I just turned the unit off tapped the area where the hard drive is and it started working again. I have just had to do that one other time this week....BUT.....I think there is a final drive problem that simple tapping is not going to fix. Until then I am going to keep using the lap top and see how long it lasts. Oh and very nice under the door coax setup.....what is the green wire??
Mike
Mike
Hallo Bas, jammer dat de kleine ziek werd. Maar ja, dat zijn zo van die dingen die je niet kan voorkomen. Ik heb nog naar je uit geluisterd met digimodes, maar je helaas niet gehoord. Ja, ook op de eilanden zal geleidelijk aan ook meer qrm komen. Alle huisjes worden tegenwoordig voorzien van QRM apps. ;-) 73 Paul
Hi Mike, thanks for you comment. I don't know why this laptop had problems. It's secondhand but only 1 year old. I guess some software problems. To answer your question, the green wire is flatcable. It consists of 3 parallel wires, the inner wire is soldered to the coax core, the other wires to the screen. Works fine and is cheaper as commercial window throughputs. 73, Bas
Het is zo voorbij Hans. Ik ga vanavond aan de slag met de gegevens. 73, Bas
Hallo Paul, ik zat alleen op 20m. Misschien had het op 40m wel gelukt. Maar de QRM was daar heel erg dus ben ik daar maar niet meer bezig geweest. Gelukkig is de kleine weer beter, maar nu voel ik me zelf niet al te best. Zal het wel overgenomen hebben...73, Bas
Thanks Bas for the answer it's a very nice way to run cable under a door or window.
Mike
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