#cqww Ham radio hobby public relations

Probabely not really interesting for english language readers so I will write this post also in Dutch. We did some p.r. for the hamradio contest hobby and welcomed regional radio and TV to interview us. Except the radio contacts everything is in dutch. Although it might be interesting to see our contest location.

Dit is voor engelstalige lezers niet zo heel erg interessant. Dus daarom dit stukje ook in het Nederlands. We hebben de lokale radio en TV uitgenodigd op onze contestlocatie voor een stukje promotie van onze radiohobby. Het lijkt ons wel geslaagd.

Hier is het terug te horen en te zien:

Radio Noord: Programma Noord en Ommeland met Hans Waalkens en Derk Bosscher het stukje begint specifiek rond de 41 minuten


TV Noord: Programma Expeditie Grunn begint rond de 7 minuten

#cqww Till now

Local reporter talking to PA4O Peter (left)

Lots of problems encountered when powering the station. Not everyting can be told but we had a power
failure and some problems with a broken computer. Besides that we had a lot of trouble with RFI. But everything solved so far. We use a 6KW petrol power generator now. Since propagation is not that good we decided to connect the amplifier and we will change our section to high power now. Not that I am personally impressed with what can be worked with 400W. The wire antenna we use for the low bands is not working well unfortenately. Only a few multipliers worked so far on those bands. We have a vertical for 15m and 10m that's doing a better job. We also had a visit from a local commercial radio station in the morning so we could promote our hobby here in our province, of course it did cost some time but it is a important aspect for this hobby as well.

#cqww Experimental realtime propagation PE4BAS

Just as experiment I want to make a chart and display the number of WSPR spots for some continents. Just to see what propagation is like on 20m just before the CQWW SSB contest. I tried to make a prediction for our contestlocation but it seems to be difficult if you don't know exactly how propagation will behave next days. This night there was a huge radio black out on the HF bands and so far my 1W signal on 20m has not been spotted anywere at nighttime! Surprisingly I spotted a station from Chile south america this night. Below a chart I will try to update through the day with new info. In 24 hours there will be a complete graph over de day on 20m. Spots are combined spots received and transmitted (1W).




Above the propagation at Thursday 27-October-2016. Well the chart is complete now and I want to continue tommorow with a new one. I think it gives usefull info about when a certain part of the world can be heard and worked. Nothing seen from Asia, Japan or Australasia today. Hopefully propagation is rising a bit we'll have a look at it tomorrow.



Above the chart at 28-October-2016

Although it seems propagation is rising a bit (1 spot from Japan seen, yesterday nothing) it is still very low.

Looking at the sunspot numbers today is only 12 with high A and K values. The red line above is the estimated (forecast) sunspot number. It should be rising! The green dots representing real values measured.