Summer is here...

Polygonia C-album, quite unusual in the north.

Well, I do not update the blog much these days. Other things are on my mind, about that later. We have the most beautiful weather of the year at the moment and actually it is way to hot in the shack to be there playing radio.Personally I like this time of the year. There are lots of things around that are worth enjoying. Like our garden in which we have a lot of flowers blooming. It does attract the most beautiful butterflies and it seems my antenna is favorite by dragonflies. There are always 5-6 dragonflies sitting in the sun on the radials in the afternoon.

One of the dragonflies

Selling the remaining equipment from Foppe's PD0FF station consumes some time. I want to sell as fast as possible as all the equipment is in my shack now. Most of it is sold via the dutch internet marketplace. Unfortenately not everything is or was as good as he probabely thought and I decided to actually throw some things in the garbage as it didn't have any value. I think a lot of Foppe lately and feel so sorry for him he didn't have time to do all the things he wanted in life. However, our lives are going on and hopefully we can do the things we want to do.



I'm having some unfortunate interference problem again with our internet connection and therefore it is impossible to transmit full power at the moment at bands lower as 10 MHz. It isn't as worse as it was but still a problem. It limits me in my hobby and I'm searching for a solution. It has something to do with the internet line switching from VDSL to VDSL2 I think a while ago. VDSL2 is a kind of high speed internet line using frequencies till 30MHz but probabely therefore sensitive for HF radio interference nearby. Although my antenna is at least 15-20m away from the modem even a 25W SSB signal knocks down the DSL line sometimes. That means: no internet, no TV and no telephone. I've been experimenting a lot with ferrite clamps it helps but doesn't solve the problem completely. I will write more about this as soon as there is a solution for this problem.





Anyway, in the mean time we enjoy other things. Hopefully the problem will be solved and I can get into the hobby again without having the fear to disturb my family with this when DXing full power. I know there is QRP in the hobby as well. And yes, I do not have this issue with QRP. But I don't want to work QRP forever.