#wspr #10m today on Sinterklaas

SFI:69 SN:0 A:10 K:1

Another day of WSPR. At first I thought a disaster but again there were surprises!

Suddenly there were spots from SM3ESX and LA9NEA, EA5CYA was spotted as well.

My 1W signal was spotted in Norway

A little late with todays 10m WSPR review since we traditionally have Sinterklaas evening in the Netherlands. Find PA0K Paul's video about this topic so you get the idea. This is a tradition event for children and at 5 december we got the presents in a jute bag delivered by zwarte piet (helper from Sinterklaas), Most of the presents are sweets of course. We get letters made from chocolate and speculaas pietjes from spiced bisquit and the children get too much small presents. You can compare this with Santa Claus and Christmas in other countries. Only Sinterklaas has a horse named Amerigo and no red nose rendeers.



Since PA0O is in my area but has a higher antenna he most of the time receives a bit more compared to me. I already noticed that yesterday when he received a station from South Africa, I did not...
However, I found he didn't receive Spain and Norway today were I did! Though I don't know exactly if Jaap is on 10m all the time?

PA0O RX

PA0O TX

Therefore I strongly believe that the spots to Skandinavia are aircraft scatter. The next two days will be on 10m FT8. Will I have more luck there?

Back on #10m

SFI:67 SN:0 A:10 K:2

With the upcoming 10m ARRL this weekend I decided to check 10m from now on. I really have no idea how 10m is these days. But don't expect too much since we are at the sunspot cycle minimum. I've got a weakness for 10m since I'm actually a gilded CBer. So, this contest is my last one of 2018 and it is actually one of my favourites even without real good propagation. 10m has a surprise element, you don't know what to expect. It went reasonable good last year though I got some comments from stations that listened over the weekend and did only hear noise. I think it is just a difference between QRM in the city and my quiet rural location. Compared to last years multiband vertical the HF5B antenna is much higher and better. But whatever your antenna is....10m is all about propagation. Is it going to be a dramatic year for the 10m ARRL contest? Or will it be reasonable like last year?

For a few years ago WSPR was the mode to check propagation on 10. But these days the FT8 frequency could be a better choice. I left the radio on 10m WSPR today to see if there is any propagation anyway? The antenna is pointed south towards the highest point of the sun at this time of the year. Is it a best choice? It would be better to point the antenna to the sun automatically, but unfortenately I don't have that feature yet...

Results today:

RX, a few bogus reports...
OH5XO was received at night, probabely airplane scatter

TX with 1W, some surprises

#ft8 Round Up review

Screenshot from my setup for FT8 RU.
Notice the fun callsign of the spanish station...
(click for a larger picture)

Event: FT8 Roundup
Section: Single Operator 
Logger: WSJT-X 2.0.0 RC5
Station: Icom IC-706 MK2G 25W
Antenna: Inverted-V (2x20m) apex 12m

The first ever FT8 worldwide contest took place this weekend. And, of course, I participated just for experimental reasons. Does it work? Yes it does although there are some shortcomings. I had only limited time when it was dark outside so I was on 80m most of the time and for a short while on 40m as well. Despite of being able to see many USA/Canadian stations I only made it to 2 stations in the USA on 40. It was a struggle on 40m and I lost some stations signals because their signals were doubled. I had the idea the 40m was just overcrowded, a directional antenna would help but is for most of us much too big! Things went better on 80m and there were times I got 3 stations coming back to me at once. A difficult situation since the software chooses which one to pick first and others have to wait. In that case it would be handy to be able to send more signals at the same time to respond, MSHV is capable to do that for instance but in this case not for this contest. It is just a matter of modifying the software. I'm shure it is only a matter of time to implement such a feature for contests as well. Another shortcoming (should I report it to the development group?) could be my own fault? When a station did not get my RR73 they send a R report again, however the software does not recognize that and will not send a RR73 again. Since you're used to everything automatic you have to reply fast and change the message back to RR73 and push the transmit button again, unfortenately sometimes even fast is too late with FT8. Could it be I have a wrong setting in the configuration or does everyone have this? I made 87 QSOs in the end, less as expected, it was a lack of time. The last shortcoming I noticed is known I guess, the software does not recognize dupes as far as I could see!

Since the frequencies were overpopulated with stations all the time I think FT8 will be a serious contest mode in the future. Though you don't need much operating skills for this mode and with some automated macros you can do a full time automatic participation, contesting even without being in the shack. It would be nice to build a fully automated FT8 contest station as a experiment just to see if it works. Would such a robot station win against a human station? I'm shure SV5DKL has though about this ;-)