Once in 2 weeks I have a monday off work. It means I work the saturday before. Such a day has the advantage I can bring and get my daughter to/from school. And have time to play radio in the morning for about a hour. A time with totally different propagation possebilities as the usual evening time. I hoped for a contact with VU4KV from Neil Isl. Andaman (Andaman & Nicobar Isl.) a ATNO for me. And yes, first station I heard on 12m was VU4KV who had a strong signal. It took about 15 minutes to get into the log. I moved to 11m & 10m after that and listened out for several Japanese stations. There was some long path propagation to ZL on 11m. But nothing heard from ZL or VK on 10. I encountered special station AU2JCB (op: VU2DSI Datta). Found out JCB stands for Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose. A indian scientist that worked on microwaves already in 1895 and succeeded to transmit a signal before Popov and Marconi did. Very interesting.
Then I had some other chores to do and left my FT-817 on WSPR 10m with my usual 1W and the HB9CV first pointing east and later pointing west. Worldwide propagation as seen on the map, although the map displays both RX as TX reports. I had one faulty spot which was BO... I still hope to get a spot from T5/T61AA, although I spotted him again it is hard to get a report from this station.
Finally in the evening I reached my radioshack finding my computer in a almost jammed state, the FT-817 clicking relays jumping from HF to VHF. I really don't know what happened? I disconnected everything and reset the computer. The FT-817 was another story. Relay kept clicking, on/off didn't help. I had power out so no blown finals or so. I noticed behind the voltage readout the LCD was displaying PRI. Found PRI in the menu and set it off. Problem solved....but how on earth did it get on "PRI". I'll never know...I had some minutes left and saw fellow blogger YO9IRF Razvan spotted on 80m JT65. So, I just tried for some 80m this evening and yes I made it to YO9IRF. Actually it was the first time "twitter" had some use to me having a short chat with Razvan about the QSO.
Hallo Bas, mooie DX met VU4KV. Ik zie volop activiteiten van hun op 24Mhz op het cluster. Op mijn EndFed sloper hoor ik ze hier erg zwak. Voor dat soort banden moet ik eigenlijk een vertical hebben. Toch maar eens serieus er over nadenken want die hoge banden zijn best wel interessant. Ik hoop dat je 817 goed blijft doen, zal wel een kink in de software van WSPR gezeten hebben.
ReplyDelete73 Hans, PE1BVQ
Hallo Hans, normaal hoor ik VU4 ook nooit. Voor mij is in de avond eigenlijk geen DX te werken. Gisterenavond was alles dicht. Zelfs 40m was erg slecht. Ik heb VU4KV op de loop gewerkt, 12m doet het erg goed daar op. De 817 is niks mee aan de hand. Ik heb geen idee wat er gebeurd is maar een aantal programma's waren ook vast gelopen. Ik heb altijd HRD + logbook + WSPR aanstaand, HRD bestuurd dan de set en logbook zorgt voor de melding van freq. naar mijn weblog. 73, Bas
DeleteAlways happy to meet a fellow blogger on the air, I recognised your call right away; maybe next time we'll have a voice QSO, who knows.
DeleteNice find on the JAGADISH CHANDRA BOSE station, I have seen AU2JCB on the air alot during the weekend but I didn't think to go to the QRZ page.
Have a great week,
Razvan.
Hello Razvan, very nice to meet you on air. I'm always looking for fellow bloggers as recognizing the calls is easy. The advantage of digital is that you can listen to music (another hobby) at the same time. Although I prefer a voice QSO actually. 73, Bas
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