Back on WSPR again...

After a long absence, I am back using the digital mode WSPR again on receive. It's a great tool in that you can just leave the rig on one frequency then come back later and see what you have heard. You have the option of uploading what you hear to the WSPR website and a map like the one above can be generated....(Fri afternoon 29th Apr 2011 on 30m).

It's simple to use now that I have it working but there was a lot of messing about initially....downloading the programme again...and then trying to figure out why wasn't it working!

After adjusting microphone levels, ticking the right boxes, etc...it eventually worked. It was great to see the first spot decoded :o) Now all I have to do is rest the microphone on top of the loudspeaker of the HF rig, tune to the right frequency, run the programme and away it goes.

I also have a small 10 inch Netbook PC that I tried last night. No matter what I did with it, all I could see were corrupted callsigns. Even the receive screen on WSPR looked wrong...too many small lines. I tried the internal mic and an external mic...no joy. I have no idea as to why the desktop PC will work fine but the netbook will not.

Anyway, I now hope to use WSPR on 28 MHz for the Summer Sporadic-E season and see what can be heard.

CQ 2m Counties Contest...kind of

For the first time in about 2 years, I put out a signal on 144 MHz again today. I noticed about a few days ago that the IRTS 2m Counties Contest was on Easter Monday in the afternoon. Despite my best plans, I ended up just putting an old 2m 5/8th mag mount on the roof of the car in the driveway, running out a mains cable for a small power supply and quickly powering up my Yaesu FT290R.....with it's mighty 2.5 watts!

Considering I caught only the last 20 mins of the contest, this is probably not really a fair assessment of the level of activity but it did seem quiet.

A quick initial scan revealed nothing....no 5/9+ signals. Checked the Cork Repeater on R6 (50 kms west)...opened it...RF getting out...aerial must be working in some fashion....back to a careful scan on FM.

Heard EI3GAB in Mallow.....gave him a few calls with my mighty 2.5 watts...no joy. Mallow is about 35kms away and on the other side of the Nagle Mountains (Hills ;o) so the received signal here was pretty weak anyway....about 5/2

Heard EI3FFB up in Co.Tipperary on the other side of the Galtees, maybe around 65 kms or so. Just above the noise on receive so no hope of him hearing me.

I'm pretty sure I heard EI4CF in Co.Galway. I didn't hear any /P at the end so I presume he was at home? If so, that's about 150 kms to the north. While my take off in that direction is very good, I'm still impressed that I heard him on the mag mount.

Down on SSB, I got my only contest contact when I worked Tommy using the club call EI7T from Caher in Co.Tipperary, a distance of roughly 65 kms. Not bad for 2.5 watts!

So that was the contest....20 mins...one contact. Tommy had given me #035 and considering that he may have worked some stations twice (SSB and FM) then I guess that it was quiet enough.

Tried out the Helvick head repeater on R3 (~50 kms) after the contest and met up with Andrew EI3GSB/M and Denis EI8GAB for the first time. With the FT290 on 0.5 watts, I had no problems working that repeater so that's a good sign. I could hear Andrew at times on the input although very weakly driving on the motorway near Caher about 60 kms away...another good sign. So it looks like if I put up any sort of decent aerial for 2m then I should get reasonable coverage.

70 MHz in Cork....
After the repeater contacts, I had a simplex QSO with Denis, EI8GAB on FM. Denis got his call in the time that I was off-air....2009/10. I was interested to hear that he is active on 4m with a converted Taxi PMR radio and there seems to be a few others active in the Cork area as well.

Looking at EI4DIB's blog, there seems to be some activity up in the Louth / North of Dublin area as well so there are at least some small pockets of activity on 70 MHz. Not sure though if anyone from either group has worked the other group yet?

On the local scene, Denis told me that there is a Simplexer in operation. This is like a repeater except that it records your audio and plays it back on the same frequency. It obviously makes for slow contacts but it's better than nothing when you can't hear the other station. It would also seem to be a good way as keeping a bit of activity on the band.

To be investigated!

Project Blue Horizon Transatlantic Balloon...Fri 22nd Apr

Just came across this.....

 Transatlantic Amateur Radio Balloon Launch

(Edit...As of Friday morning, it has launched and is heading WEST! So....not Trans-Atlantic. Press release seems like hype)
The Project Blue Horizon 5 high-altitude transatlantic balloon is scheduled for launch, weather permitting, at 0400 UTC (midnight EDST) Friday, April 22, from Oswego, New York. The weather forecast for launch time calls for clear to partly cloudy conditions.

The Project Blue Horizon team is attempting to break current Amateur Radio high-altitude balloon records for distance (3361.81 miles) and duration (49 hours, 45 minutes). The payload will be carried beneath a 54,000 cubic foot capacity helium-filled balloon cruising between 85,000 and 100,000 feet.

Amateurs worldwide are encouraged to monitor the N2XE CW telemetry beacons at 7.1023 and 10.1466 MHz. The balloon is also equipped with an APRS beacon at 144.39 MHz using the call sign KC2ZJH. Amateurs can send reports via e-mail to PBH15.data@gmail.com.

More information about the program, including the latest projected flight path, is at the Project Blue Horizon website at, http://www.projectbluehorizon.com.

Some info about the 2009 flight on the Soldersmoke blog

Conditions on 28 MHz...23rd March to 6th April 2011

I have checked the 28 MHz band every day from the 24th of March to the 6th of April 2011. Looking back at the logbook from some time in the future, it might be very easy to get an impression that the bands were brilliant. This post sets out exactly what I heard and worked and I can compare it to say a different point in the current solar cycle.

Some points.....
1) For this period, I was using an old vertical half-wave CB type aerial at about 4 metres above ground level....a pretty modest set-up. The transceiver was a TS690 running 80-100 watts.
2) The solar flux was roughly 100-110. The 28 MHz band was open every day. A few of the days could be described as 'good' with S9 signals and strong enough to be worked on SSB. Most of the days, the signals were weak....less than S5....and this is when CW came into it's own.
3) Most of the stations I worked were with CW. If I was restricted to SSB only, my log would have looked very bare indeed.
4) All signals are F2 related unless otherwise stated.

This is what I heard / worked on 28 MHz over this 2 week period...starting NE and working west...

A) I worked XV2RZ (cw) in Vietnam and VR2UW (cw) in Hong Kong....

I heard HS (Thailand), YB (Indonesia) and western Australia. The furthest I heard and the biggest suprise was the VK8VF beacon near Darwin in Northern Australia.

B) In the Middle East, 7Z1HL (cw) in Saudi Arabia.....

...and A45XR (cw) in Oman were worked while the beacons A47RB and A62ER (UAE) were heard. In South Asia, stations from western India were heard. Further north, several stations in the western part of Asiatic Russia were heard as well as a UN station in Kazakhstan.

C) In eastern Europe, I worked several stations in European Russia and the Ukraine, all on cw. When the band did open up in this direction, the one hop F2 signals were strong. This was especially the case on the 2nd of April when I heard YO (Romania) as well.

D) One of the areas with the most consistent signals was the eastern Med. The only stations I worked were 5B/US5IDX (cw) in Cyprus and 4Z5RT (cw) in Israel although I heard plenty of other stations in 4Z (Israel), 5B4 (Cyprus), JY (Jordan), TA (Turkey), SV9 (Crete), SV5 (Rhodes) and SV (Greece).
From this region, the beacons SV5TEN 28.189 MHz (Rhodes...KM46), 5B4CY on 28.220 MHz (Cyprus...KM64) and 4X6TU/B on 28.200 Mhz (Israel..KM72) seemed to be there almost every day.
These are in the region of 2800 to 4200 kms which for one hop F2 signals would suggest an arrival angle of around 0 to 7 degrees above the horizon.

E) When the F2 skip distance got shorter, the SV3AQR/B beacon on 28.183 MHz (sw Greece...KM07) was heard at roughly 2,800 kms and SV2AHT/B (N.Greece...KN10). Several SV stations were also heard. Sometimes the skip distance got even shorter and IT9EJW/B (Sicily....JM77) and IQ8CZ/B (S.Italy...JM88) were heard. These 2 beacons at roughly 2,500 kms was the shortest skip F2 signals that I heard. That kind of distance for F2 would suggest an arrival angle of about 8 degrees above the horizon.

F) Africa......As expected, North-South propagation was the most consistent and was most likely due to F2 and some Trans-Equitorial Propagation (TEP). In the southern part of Africa, the ZS6DN beacon on 28.200 was often heard as well as several ZS stations. Other beacons heard were Z21ANB in Zimbabwe while 3B8MM in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean was worked on cw and 9J2BO in Zambia was heard.
Further north, I worked the following...5N7M (cw) in Nigeria, D4C (cw) in Cape Verde Islands, TJ3AY (ssb) in Cameroon, 5M2TT (cw) in Liberia, EA8/DL2DXA (cw) and EA8OM (cw) in the Canary Islands and ST2AR (cw) in Sudan.

Also heard were 5H3EE in Tanzania, TR8CA in Gabon and the 5Z4B/B beacon in Kenya.

G) South America.....Again, North-South F2/TEP propagation was consistent. Many PY (Brazil) and LU (Argentina) stations were heard as well as the following beacons....PY4MAB/B (GG68) and LU5FB/B (FF97). CX5BW in Uruguay was also heard while VP8LP in the Falkland Islands was worked on ssb.

(H) West Indies/Carrib....In this region, I worked VP5/W5CW (cw) in the Turks & Caicos Islands while FM5AA and FG4NN were heard. It was an area that I didn't hear too often.

(I) North America......There were a few openings to North America but as they are on a more East/West path, the path was more difficult. The most consistent region heard was the south-eastern USA..i.e. Florida area. Beacons heard in that region were....W3HH/B (Florida...EL89), AC4DJ/B (Florida...EL98), KJ4QYB/B (Alabama...EM63), KB4UPI/B (Alabama...EM64) and W4TIY/B (Georgia...EM73).

Slightly further north, the beacon WA4FC/B in Virginia (FM17) was heard while K1ON in Delaware was worked on cw.

In the NE of the USA, the beacon N1ME/B in Maine was heard several times. This beacon is roughly 4,000 kms from me so it was probably one hop F2 propagation whereas the others were all multi-hop.

The most unusual North-American beacons heard were XE1RCS/B in Mexico (EK09) and WA6MHZ/B in California (DM12). (Note that the first dot seemed to be missing from the WA6MHZ/B beacon. Instead of ' .  _ _' , it was ' _ _' i.e. M!! So what I heard was MA6MHZ/B ;o)
Other than the beacons, there was no other indication that the band was open to these areas. Even for the other American beacons, when I could hear them, the level of activity from these areas seemed very low.

(J) Sporadic-E......In this 2 week period, I noticed 2 short Sporadic-E openings into Europe.....one on the 4th of April and one on the 5th. The following beacons were heard....OE3XAC/B in Austria (JN78), OZ7IGY/B in Denmark (JO55), OK0EG/B in the Czech Rep. (JO70), DB0UM/B in Germany (JO73) and SK0CT/B in Sweden (JO89). SP100MSC (Poland) was worked on cw. All were in the 1,400 to 1,800 distance which is typical for Sporadic-E.

Observations & Conclusions....
1) Most of the signals heard and worked were relatively weak, certainly most were less than S5 while many were just above the noise. To get the most out of the band, you have to spend time listening to weak signals and waiting for signals to come out of the noise. In this aspect, it has more in common with say 6 metres (50 MHz) than say the other HF bands like say 20 Metres (14 MHz). I think it would have been very easy for someone to listen on the band for a few minutes and get the impression that there was nothing there.

2) I was suprised to work and hear so much with such a modest antenna, especially VR2UW in Hong Kong, XV2RZ in Vietnam and the beacons in Northern Australia and in California. If I had been using say an indoor antenna like say a loft dipole, I think a lot of the signals would have been too weak to hear or work. Then again, a beam at say 10 metres up would probably have revealed a lot more.

3) No Japanese signals heard. These were common near the peak of the last cycle. So no real NNE Propagation from here. Same with the USA. There were bits but not much in reality. No NW USA....or mid-west...or states like Illinois/Indiana/Ohio, etc.

4) I have a large hill to the South-West of my location yet I was a bit suprised to hear so many of the South-American stations.

5) I often heard those illegal fishing buoys which give out carrier about 10 seconds long followed by a cw ident. I seemed to hear more in the afternoon than morning which might suggest that they are used in the Atlantic? West Africa? Mid ocean? Impossible to tell.

6) Very often, the last signal on the band in the late evening would be coming from EA8 (Canary Islands). It's a pity that there isn't a beacon there on 28 MHz.

7) USA....loads of beacons there...very useful and easy to see what part of the country is open.

8) All of the F2 layer signals were coming in between 0 and 8 degrees above the horizon. The Sporadic-E signals that I heard were between 2 and 5 degrees. As always, if you want to work DX on 10 metres then you need to get your signal down near the horizon.

9) Going on these results, there should be some great conditions on 28 MHz over the next few years as the solar cycle improves.

Greece to South Africa via TEP on 70 MHz...

I came across this today....the first ever contact between Greece and South Africa on 70 MHz!

As far as I can tell, it happened on the 28th of March 2011 when SV2DCD in KN00LI worked ZS6WAB in KG46RC via Trans-Equatorial Propagation. The distance was just over 7,200 kms as they worked on 70.200 MHz SSB.

SV2DCD was running 70w into a 9 el yagi at 10m agl.

It just goes to show the possibilities of this band.

Finding locator / grid squares...

This is one of those websites and utilities that I had forgotten about so when I discovered it again, I thought that I must put up a post about it so I won't lose it again!

F6FVY has an excellent website that uses Google maps and a simple interface to find your locator / grid square. You just use the controls to zoom in to where you live...click on your house...and up pops your locator square. There is also a box at the bottom of the page where you can input the locator details and it will show up on the map. It's simple to use and shows exactly what the size of the square is.

An excellent site for anyone with an interest in VHF..........or 10 metre beacons ;o)

Morserunner...a CW contest simulator

An 18 month absence from the radio hasn't done much for my CW skills. At first, very rusty yet after a few minutes, it starts coming back. I guess it's a bit like learning to ride a bicycle, one you can do it, you never forget.

As well as listening to CW on the various bands, one of the ways to brush up on your CW is to use a contest simulator.

I came across Morserunner a few years back and it's a novel way of listening to morse. It basically simulates operating in a CW contest and you just use the function keys on the PC keyboard to control everything. As it is all off-air, there is no pressure and you can make as many mistakes as you like.

10 metres...Thurs 24th March 2011

After the good conditions on 28 MHz yesterday, I tried listening again the next day on the 24th of March. The band was a lot quieter though. No SE Europe or Middle East.

The first signal heard was Z22JE in Zimbabwe at around 11:00 followed soon after by the Z21ANB beacon on 28250.2 MHz.

The band was pretty quiet though. Then I came across WA4FC/B in central Virginia on 28231.1 MHz running 5 watts to a vertical. Other than that beacon, there was no indication that the band was open to North America so I put this spot up on the Dx-Cluster. While the Dx-Cluster gets a fair bit of abuse with lots of rubbish spots, it's invaluable for the likes of 10 metres where a unusual path can open up.

Also heard was ZS6TQ and then VP8LP in the Falkland Islands. The VP8 station seemed nice and loud so out came the microphone from the drawer...plugged it in...and gave him a call......and....no joy :o(
There were just too many stations calling him. So, I just the radio on in the background and about 10 minutes later, his signal seemed to peak and I tried again....and success! :o)

My first contact since July 2009. I have worked Falkland Island before on 10 metres but it was still nice to see that my signal was heard way down in the South Atlantic....even if it was only a 5/3 ;o)

Also heard were ZR1ADI (South Africa) and LU5FC....but the level of activity was still well down on yesterday.

....and finally, I heard 5N7M on cw. Really weak. He was 219 and peaking 319. There was no point in calling since I wouldn't be sure if I would hear my own call coming back.

So again, I left the radio on that frequency.........and about 15 minutes later, the signals got strong enough to try. After a few attempts, 5N7M was in the log....Nigeria on 10m cw :o)

Back on the radio & conditions on 28 Mhz...

Turned on the radio again today after a long absence. Looking at my logbook, my last contact was in July 2009! Back then, the talk was of solar minimums and how poor conditions were.

Today, the Solar Flux Index is at 100 and the 28 MHz band was in fine shape. There was plenty of genuine F2 propagation about with signals coming in from SE Europe / Middle East / Africa / South America / SE USA.

Considering I was only listening with an old simple half-wave CB vertical antenna, I was suprised at how strong some of the signals were...especially the beacons running only a few watts.

This is a list of what I heard on 28 Mhz today...
South East Europe...SV3AQR/B (Greece 4w vert), SV5TEN/B (Rhodes), IQ8CZ/B ,  IT9EJW/B (Sicily 3w), 5B4CY/B (Cyprus) , SV0XCC/9 (Crete), SV2AHT/B
Mid-East...HZ1DG (Saudi Arabia), TA4AU
Africa...EA8CTF , ZS1AX , TJ3FC (Cameroon) , D44AC (Cape Verde Is) , TR8CA (Gabon) 
South America...PU2TGK , PU2UEO , LW4EU , YV5DTJ , ZP5DBC
Caribbean...FM4NB (Martinique)
USA...W4TIY/B (Georgia) , KB4UPI/B (Alabama 5w) , KJ4QYB/B (Alabama), W3HH/B (Florida 12w)


Other unusual signals heard were...
1) G0IVZ in Cornwall...just about audible....either weak tropo or F2 back-scatter?
2) Illegal Fishing Buoys.....or at least that's what I think they were as suggested by this IARU piece.
The ones that I noticed were in the 10m beacon band. They transmitted a carrier for a few seconds and then gave a CW id. The ones I noted were...
28191.4 cw ident was 'CT' with a very bad chirp
28225.0 cw ident was 'EI'
28255.0 cw ident was 'DK'
....as for their location???

Climbing Towers...

This clip has been doing the rounds on YouTube recently.

Not for the faint of heart ;o)

More WSPR spots on 28 MHz...

An unusual spot this morning.......I heard G8JNJ on WSPR on 28 MHz.

Timestamp	Call	MHz	SNR	Drift	Grid	Pwr	Reporter	RGrid	km	az
2010-04-09 08:06	G8JNJ	28.126037	-18	0	IO90hx	10	EI7GL	IO51tu	495	284

At the time, there doesn't seem to be any other reports.

G8JNJ was running 10 watts and the distance was 495 kms.

Mode of propogation....?

Tropo......10 watts over 500 kms! Very unlikely. Tropo propagation on 10 metres is very poor.

Sporadic-E......guess it's possible, you can't really rule it out.

Meteor Scatter.......my guess is that it was probably meteor scatter. Even though you need a transmission 2 minutes long for WSPR, I have often heard very long bursts on 10 metre beacons. Even checking the trace a few hours later, I can see traces of some signal on exactly the frequency that G8JNJ is supposed to be on.

WSPR & V51 Namibia on 10m

Back messing about with the radio again. Tried out listening with WSPR on 30m & 60m over the last few days. It's so easy.......just run the software, put the mic from the pc next to the loudspeaker of the HF rig and away you go.

Spotted a few German stations this morning so there was some Sp-E about. Start of the Sporadic-E season!

Around 14:00, I heard V53ARC in Namibia which was a big suprise! So much for a dead band!

I would say the most likely reason was a single F2 hop from V53 to southern Europe and then via a single Sporadic-E hop from there to the UK and Ireland.

WSPR spots below for V53ARC

Timestamp	Call	MHz	SNR	Drift	Grid	Pwr	Reporter	RGrid	km	az
2010-04-08 14:30	V53ARC	28.126160	-22	-1	JG87	1	IW2DZX	JN45kp	7624	354
2010-04-08 14:14	V53ARC	28.126148	-19	0	JG87	1	G3JKV	IO91uf	8373	349
2010-04-08 14:14	V53ARC	28.126147	-2	0	JG87	1	EI7GL	IO51tu	8630	344
2010-04-08 13:56	V53ARC	28.126173	-23	0	JG87	1	IW2DZX	JN45kp	7624	354
2010-04-08 13:40	V53ARC	28.126151	-22	0	JG87	1	G3JKV	IO91uf	8373	349
2010-04-08 13:24	V53ARC	28.126142	-27	0	JG87	1	G3JKV	IO91uf	8373	349

WA1ZMS...the 2m trans-Atlantic beacon???

This item appeared on the IRTS news last Sunday...

Will this be the year? The 2m WA1ZMS trans-Atlantic beacon The WA1ZMS beacon on 144.285000 MHz is now running a 500 watt transmitter giving 7 kW ERP The beacon is GPS locked and the antenna comprises two 5-element stacked yagis beaming at 60 degrees from IARU locator FM07fm.

I'm sure most people accepted it at face value and assummed that it was a beacon on the Eastern side of the Atlantic beaming accross (60 deg) on 144 MHz to Europe.

However, when you look at the location of it, some serious issues arise...

The distance between the nearest point in Europe (Ireland) and the nearest point in North America (Newfoundland) is generally considered to be around 3,000 kms. The WA1ZMS beacon is in locator square FM07fm which is in the state of Virginia, some 5,480 kms from Ireland. In fact, it's so far away that it's one Sporadic-E hop from Newfoundland alone. To put that into a European context, it's the same as putting a trans-Atlantic beacon in Romania (YO) and asking someone in Newfoundland to listen for it!

Now, I'm sure that it's an excellent beacon and it is very valuable fas a propogation indicator along the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada. And I guess, there is always the possibility that it might bridge the gap accross to the Azores (72 deg...12 deg off beam heading of 60 deg)....especially when the Azore High Pressure system moves around when it expands in the Summer/Autumn month. Even at that though, the distance is still about 4,500 kms.

To suggest that it might make it all of the way accross to Europe proper would take a big leap of faith.

Long distance Sporadic-E on 144 MHz...

This is something I meant to post a while back but never got around to it unil now.

Back on the 3rd of July, there was some excellent Sporadic-E propogation over Europe with some very impressive distances. One of those contacts was between Tom, EI4DQ (IO51wu) and SV9CVY (KM25ka) on the island of Crete, a distance of about 3,213 kms. Anyone that knows about Sporadic-E will know that the usual maximum distance for 1 hop is around 2,300 kms so the above distance is unusual. (On the map above, 2300 kms would be roughly from EI4DQ to roughly the heel of Italy).

Now, there are probably 3 possible explanations for this type of contact...

1) Double hop Sporadic-E as shown above...using clouds #2 and #3

2) Chordal hop where the Sporadic-E clouds may be slightly tilted and the signal goes from cloud to cloud rather than bouncing off the ground in the middle.......i.e. the signal goes directly from cloud #2 to cloud #3.

3) There was an extension at either end or both ends due to tropospheric propogation.

Considering that the MUF does not reach as high as 144 MHz that often, it's remarkable that it should happen in 2 spots at once. Hence, that's why these type of contacts are pretty rare.

Now for a bit of fun ;o)......what happens if we take that 3,213 km contact and plot it from EI4DQ's location in the opposite direction...

In fact, if EI4DQ managed to get a signal to travel that far to the west, it would end up in Newfoundland! To date, no-one has managed to make a contact accross the Atlantic on 144 MHz and it remains the 'holy grail' of VHF propogation. In fact, the IRTS have a special trophy called the Brendan Trophies for the first 2 stations to achieve this special contact.

Now, there's a big difference between the path from EI to SV9 compared to the path from EI to VO (Newfoundland). For one thing, EI to VO is a lot further North and Newfoundland is a lot closer to the magnetic North pole, all factors which seem to reduce the chances of there being suitable Sporadic-E.

It does however raise the question of whether it is possible? Europe to North America direct on 144 MHz.......can it be done???

WSPR after 3 weeks...

I have been listening on the low power weak signal mode WSPR for about 3 weeks now. For a lot of that time, I have left the receiver on overnight on 30 metres to see what signals I could hear.

A typical morning might show plenty of signals logged from Europe and the East coast of the USA. But there's nearly always one or two signals from the West coast that I have heard and more often than not, I am the only one or one of a few in Europe to have heard their signal. An typical example looks like the one above from K7LG in southern California. As you can see, I am the only European station that heard him that night/morning.

Looking at the great circle path, it becomes obvious that Ireland and Britain are closer than most of the mainland Europe for propogation to the west coast of the USA. As well as 30m, I have seen the same results on 40m and I presume it is the same for 20m.

So, if you are an EI/GI/GM station and are on the air after midnight or in the early hours of the morning, have a listen for those west coast stations.

AMSAT-UK announce a new satellite project...FUNcube

I came accross this a few days ago. It looks like an interesting satellite with a linear transponder as well (2m/70cms). Here are some details...

"AMSAT-UK has announced a new amateur satellite project – FUNcube – that features a 435 to 145 MHz Linear Transponder for SSB/CW operation.

FUNcube is an educational single cubesat project with the goal of enthusing and educating young people about radio, space, physics and electronics.

The target audience consists of primary and secondary school pupils and FUNcube will feature a 145 MHz telemetry beacon that will provide a strong signal for the pupils to receive.

It is planned to develop a simple receiver board that can be connected to the USB port of a laptop to display telemetry in an interesting way.

The satellite will contain a materials science experiment, from which the school students can receive telemetry data which they can compare to the results they obtained from similar reference experiments in the classroom.

FUNcube is the first cubesat designed to benefit this group and is expected to be the first UK cubesat to reach space.

It is anticipated FUNcube will be launched into a Sun Synchronous Low Earth Orbit about 600-700km above the earth using one of the many launch opportunities that exist for Cubesat missions. In such an orbit the satellite passes over Europe approximately 3 times in the morning, and 3 in the evening, every day, perhaps allowing the morning passes to be used for educational purposes and the evening passes for Amateur Radio communications.

FUNcube will carry a UHF to VHF linear transponder that will have up to 1 watt and which can be used by Radio Amateurs worldwide for SSB and CW communications.
Measuring just 10 * 10 * 10 cm, and with a mass of less than 1kg, it will be the smallest ever satellite to carry a linear transponder and the choice of frequencies will enable Radio Amateurs to use their existing VO-52 or DO-64 station.

A key feature of the satellite is the absence of an On-Board Computer. For reliability and maximum power efficiency, the design has been kept as straight-forward as possible with satellite control being achieved using simple commands. "

ZL on WSPR on 30 Metres...

Left the rig on overnight on the 18th/19th of July. One of the ususual signals this time was ZL2FT in New Zealand.

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az

2009-07-19 06:34 ZL2FT 10.140222 -22 0 RF70mb 5 EI7GL IO51tu 18664 10

2009-07-19 06:26 ZL2FT 10.140223 -22 0 RF70mb 5 EI7GL IO51tu 18664 10

2009-07-19 06:16 ZL2FT 10.140223 -21 0 RF70mb 5 EI7GL IO51tu 18664 10

2009-07-19 06:12 ZL2FT 10.140224 -22 0 RF70mb 5 EI7GL IO51tu 18664 10

Looking at the map on the WSPR website, I was the only European station to hear him that morning. Why??

I assume it was a short-path signal over the artic? If so, my take-off in that direction is excellent with the ground to the north here falling away rapidly. Is that the reason? Is it just because I am in the North-West of Europe? Combination of both?

I'm just suprised that I should be the only one in Europe to hear the ZL station when my horizontal antenna is only 4-5 metres above ground, hardly a 'DX' set-up.

18th July...another opening on 50 MHz

18th July......The summer Sporadic-E season seems to be on the wane a bit with more days on 50 MHz with no openings. The 18th of July was an exception as the band seemed to be open to somewhere most of the day with brief surges in activity.

I worked 20 stations in 15 locator squares over 4 seperate activity periods. Much of the activity seemed to be from Scandanavia and I even managed to pick up 2 new locator squares up there....something that is unusual considering that I have been on 50 MHz for about 18 years ;o)

The most unusual contact was when W3UR in Maryland called me! I had to ask him to repeat his call as I was sure I had made a mistake...but no, it was W3UR in FM19. It's kind of funny to think that W3UR would end up calling someone in Europe on 50 MHz with home made 2 element wire beam in the attic of their house pointing the wrong direction!

It makes me wonder what could I work if I had an antenna for 50 MHz outdoors?? Maybe next year...

WSPR...40m Activity Period - 15th July 2009

The majority of stations using WSPR seem to mainly use 30 metres. In an attempt to encourage more use of other bands, special activity days are organised every week. For this one, I opted to listen on 40 metres and left the rig on receive from early on the 15th to around 08:00 on the 16th.
Using my very low doublet antenna (~5m agl), several European stations running around 1 to 5 watts were heard, nothing special. One notable exception was DL6NL who was running only 50 mW and was heard for the whole day, even at local noon which is probably a sign that the MUF was pretty low.

The following DX was logged...

VE3ODZ (5w)

WB4KLJ (2w)

KE7A (5w) in Texas...consistent signal for ~4-5 hours both mornings.

PY8ELO (20w)

VK6POP (10w)...heard several times on the evening of the 15th. First heard 16:00...several hours before local sunset & several hours before sunrise in VK.

KE0CO (5w) & W7RDP (5w) in Washington state in the NW USA.

2009-07-16 04:34 KE0CO 7.040085 -26 0 CN87tl 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7317 kms

2009-07-16 04:56 W7RDP 7.040073 -23 0 CN87xo 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7291

2009-07-16 04:34 W7RDP 7.040073 -22 0 CN87xo 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7291

Both stations (3 spots in total) were only heard at my local sunrise which was at 04:33. I was suprised to see that I was the only station in Europe to hear them that morning!

The following morning I noticed something similiar on 30 metres where only 2 European stations heard AC7SM in Las Vegas, Nebraska running 5 watts. GM4YJB had one spot at 03:30 and these were my spots...

2009-07-17 05:26 AC7SM 10.140218 -27 0 DM26ie 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7937 39

2009-07-17 03:22 AC7SM 10.140219 -27 0 DM26ie 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7937 39

2009-07-17 03:12 AC7SM 10.140219 -30 0 DM26ie 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7937 39

This time, the 'sunrise' effect was not so obvious....perhaps it is more pronounced on the lower bands like 40 & 80m?

I would have thought that other European stations with better antenna systems would have heard these US stations as well? These initial results would suggest that location is just as important. I must check again on another few mornings to see if something similiar happens again.

Listening on WSPR...

I spent the weekend trying out WSPR......'Weak Signal Propogation Reporter'. It's a new type of mode which was only developed in April 2008 and allows users to detect very weak signals with the soundcard on their PC's. I saw this mentioned on the Soldersmoke Blog recently so I downloaded the software.

It basically works as follows.....

1) You tune to a specific frequency on each band. On 30 metres, the most popular band for these kind of signals, you set your rig to 10.138700 MHz on USB.

2) The software listens to the received audio from 1.4 to 1.6 khz. This equates to 10.140100 to 10.140200, a 200 Hz wide section of spectrum.

3) For a basic receive set-up, just put the microphone from your PC next to the loudspeaker of your rig and run the software.

There are a few issues that still need to be resolved. You need to set the time on your PC so that it is accurate to within 1 sec. You also need to find out where 10.138700 MHz is! You can't assume that your rig is accurate. I found that on my rig, I had to set it to 10.138778 MHz.

There is a nice short explanation of WSPR on the G4ILO website.

The main website for WSPR reports is WSPR Net which lists all the WSPR spots and can also display them on a map.

The picture above is a screenshot of the WSPR screen. The horizontal waterfall displayat the top shows the signals heard in the 200 Hz band split up into 1 minute segments. In the data section below it, the 2nd column is how far below the noise floor the signal is. The last 3 columns on the right are callsigns heard, their locator square and their power in dBm (20 dBm=0.1 watts, 27dBm=0.5w, 30dBm=1w, 33dBm=2w, 37dBm=5w, 40dBm=10w).

Most stations seem to be running around 1 to 5 watts and over the space of a day, I was hearing signals from both sides of the Atlantic. The activity level seems a little low so perhaps it is still a mode that is only growing? Still, I was suprised at what was heard with the WSPR software digging out signals buried in the noise. Here is a map of what was heard in 30 minutes on a Sunday afternoon in July. Note that the antenna in use was a low doublet antenna only about 4-5 metres above ground level.

As a mode, WSPR has a lot of potential. Some of the advantages might be....

1) You can automatically see if various propogation paths are open although a lack of global receiving stations might make this difficult?

2) Within minutes of sending out a signal, you can see what type of signal you have at various receiving stations.

3) By using very low power, you should be able to see roughly how you are getting out. Then if you make any major antenna changes, you should be able to get instant feedback on your signal strenght?

For anyone interested in very low power operation, this mode has obvious attractions. I tried messing about with QRSS (slow speed CW.....a dot = 3 seconds!) and I found it difficult to find let alone read the signals. WSPR seems to have a lot more potential.

I can feel myself at the edge of a slippery slope with this one ;o)