10m WSPR 2,4,5 Dec. What are you doing with the spots?

Event: WSPR 10m amateurradio band
Logger: WSPR 2 - R1714
Station: Yaesu FT-817ND, 1W
Antenna: HB9CV pointing south. 
Log converter: DL1HW Adif2Excel2Adif converter, UU0JC logconverter
Log analyzer: HRD V4

Looking back into posts from last year I noticed 1 of my goals for this year was to do some more in WSPR. So I really need to get to it again. PC4T was or has spotted TY/DF8UO recently on 10m. A DXCC I do not have in my list. Besides that I'm still hunting for a spot from T5/T61AA. I ran WSPR at 2,4 and 5 December with my HB9CV pointing south. Both stations I wished for were not active these days and so no new DXCC for my list, still at 75 DXCC. However I did get spots from 6 new band DXCC bringing my 10m total at 49.

TX: 70 unique spots from 24 DXCC

RX: 98 unique spots from 28 DXCC

I was not spotted by 28 stations I received, although this is not exact, there are stations that did copy me and I didn't copy their signal. Still finding people that are using excessive power. 10W on WSPR really is too much! Strange I received some Japanese but they didn't receive me? Checking their power, but they used 1W also. Then I realized the HB9CV was pointing south...

I see a lot of people using WSPR. If you do so and read this, what are you doing with the spotting information?

I know for instance Roger G3XBM is blogging about the results and keeps track on the first and last spot and other interesting things. Bert PA1B is not WSPRing himself too much but analyzes the information for others, he can tell exactly how much power you needed to be actually still heard by a station that logged you.
I use the info to collect all band DXCC with max. power of 1W, similair to the DX hobby. I'm very curious about others? Or are you just looking at the results everyday and then find it amazing that your 5W QRO signal has made it across the pond? Let me know...

CQWW CW 80m QRP

Event: CQWW DX CW ham radio contest
Logger: N1MM+ most updated version
Station: Yaesu FT-817ND, 5W
Antenna: 84m horizontal square loop on 7m AGL.
CW decoder: FLdigi & MRP40




CW is not really my mode. But since it is easy to make a Dutch record I decided that would be a nice goal. Since my 84m horizontal loop is best for 80m I participated on that band only and to make things really difficult I operated QRP 5W. And that was not the only handicap. I'm unable to understand CW code (yet) so I have to decode with the computer. With my IC-706 I have a built in 250Hz CW filter which helps a lot. Unfortenately my FT-817 doesn't have a narrow filter and so decoding is difficult with a lot of stations in the spectrum. This year I used N1MM+ with FLdigi as CW decoder. Sunday morning I decided to use MRP40 as addition to see if it would be really worth 49 euro to register the software. I was only QRV very early in te morning Sat. and Sun. and sundayevening for half a hour. Worked 55 stations in total and managed to work 7 (!) stations from the USA and 1 from Canada. I encountered just one fellow blogger OQ5M Franki.

Dutch QRP records

I didn't spend much time in the contest in total it might be 3 hours. But still it was fun. Especially working the USA with only QRP power. I was really surprised by the signals sometimes 599 real report. I can only remember a signal on SSB like that years ago in the PACC from a Canadian station on 80m. Normally USA/Canada are just audible on SSB on my side. I guess the propagation was good this weekend? At least I reached my goal to set a Dutch record on 80m QRP. I guess real CW contesters are smiling when they look at my score, 55 QSOs is what they do in half a hour :-). But I don't care, at least I had fun.



About MRP40. Well I know it gets good reviews on several sites especially on the MRP40 site. It's a nice piece of software and sometimes it did decode better as FLdigi, sometimes it did not. It shure is not worth 49 euro for me. However it was a nice comparisation test.

More radio fun

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.