What's going on @ PE4BAS

Well, I might make a lot of postings this month but I've the feeling not much is happening actually. I'm monitoring 20m WSPR the last few days, not with my old Sony worldreceiver but with my FT817 and old laptop first to compare an old version of JTDX with the new WSJT-X on WSPR. So far I see no real difference. I monitored with the new desktop and IC-706MK2G with CW filter on yesterday. I think it can make a difference at least to surpress big signals near the WSPR frequency,

WSPR 20m last week, RX only.

I look at the PE1ITR WSPR challenge to see the result and compare it with others. There is no way I come close to EA8BFK or MW1CFN. Both are on excellent locations. But for the Netherlands I'm doing a fine job I think. I wish I could compare with other dutch stations but you hardly see them in the top 50! Anyone in the Netherlands like to compete? Some stats:

Started 22/12 with JTDX 1.7: RX: 178 place: 37.
23/12 with WSJT-X 2.0: RX: 163 place: 37.
24/12 with JTDX 1.7: RX: 196 place: 14.
The above is with software running on my old XP laptop and the FT-817.

Below the results with WSJT-X 2.0 running on my desktop and the IC-706 with CW filter.
25/12 not count as I changed computers and forgot to click send data box.
26/12 RX: 203 place: 18. (Number one is EA8BFK RX: 276!)

Antenne used: HF5B @14m position west.

I see no other dutch stations in the challenge? So, am I the only one that actually listens on 20m and is the rest only transmitting? Or is the amount of noise in other parts of the Netherlands that high?
I certainly would be curious!

My shack on second christmas day

The Christmas days are over now. I spend a lot of time repairing the tablet computer of my daughter. In her eyes I'm the best technician in the world, I can fix almost everything and certainly fix her tablet. The problem is a weak micro USB connector so charging the tablet is a real pain. I've fixed it before a month ago but now it broke again. You can find all kind of videos on youtube how to fix it but those never tell you what to do if even the almost invisible printboard traces from the double sided printboard are gone. This really became a big challenge. Even with a big magnifier lens it was a hard job to repair. At first I tried to restore every trace with a thin wire. But since I could  hardly see it soldering was impossible, at least for me.

Then, searching the internet, it became clear to me that only the most left and right poles of the connector are used for charging. Since we do not use the USB port to up or download data it would do fine if I managed to solder only those 2 outer poles to the printboard. At first I thought it was a success, but connecting to the charger didn't give the tablet any life again....you can imagine I was shure of my soldering job and of course put everything together again. My daughter was very sad, you can imagine that as well...2nd Christmas day I decided to give it a go again and first of all measured if 5V was supplied on the connector, it was. But not on the printboard. I could not see it, even not with the magnifier but apparently I didn't a good job soldering, touching the pole of the connector with the multimeter probe made the contact and the tablet felt the new current in the batteries. Soldering the + pole over again solved the problem and the tablet could be charged. It is amazing such a small problem actually costs you so many hours in the end!