RSGB Financial Accounts - going backwards?

An interesting thing came to my attention whilst looking at page 10 of the April 2019 edition of RadCom this month: the audited accounts will now vanish from the pages of the society's magazine.

Whilst it's probably true that few read the annual accounts in great detail, publishing them in the magazine at least gives every member the chance to scrutinise the final financial position, and the number of members, for example.  After all, the opportunity for people outside management and board of directors to know about the organisation is what the audited accounts are for.

Not publishing them in the magazine must surely be a highly retrograde step, and one that is difficult to justify in terms of the commercial interests of RadCom, because it isn't actually sold anywhere.  Three pages not printed once a year about the accounts is not three pages particularly detrimental to the magazine.

The Board of Directors has decided, seemingly with no consultation with society members, to instead only publish the accounts online.  They may claim this increases transparency, making it readily available to all, whenever they want (which is exactly what they then did claim - see RSGB's response, below).

But, as a result, I think it is inevitable that from now on, far fewer people will chance upon the accounts whilst flicking through an old or current copy.  Thus, the doors to transparency might well close, rather then open, a little further.

Rightly or wrongly, it has not been uncommon to find comments online and amongst members in the street, that the RSGB has not historically been very strong on openness.  The term 'bunker mentality' has appeared on more than one occasion.

Only eight years ago, that kind of belief that people 'on the outside' would never really get to know about misdeeds led to the RSGB's era of the 'Great Fiasco'.  Then, we saw a Luso Tower bought for £31,000 (please read that amount again, it is staggering), only to be (quite rightly) refused planning permission for its erection at Bletchley Park, and thus forcing its offering for sale for a 56% reduction in value.

We also had allegations that the then General Manager, Peter Kirby, had somehow (the details were never aired fully in public) run up a 'debt to the Society' of some £41,000 on an RSGB credit card.  With legal action in the offing, Kirby left the RSGB's employment, paying all the money, plus the RSGB's legal costs, back.  The 'debt' was run up, despite the then auditors signing off the accounts as being in order.  Maybe more eyes on the numbers would have helped?

I really hope that the society reconsiders its decision to withdraw the accounts from RadCom, because it could be perceived by members as too much like a patronising decision that readers don't really want to look at them.

For those who, justifiably, feel that, as members who pay for the RSGB's very existence and thus have every right to hold the society to account, you can find the audited financial statement from here from April 01, 2019.

The RSGB's current General Manager gave the following response:

"It is not a legal requirement, nor is it in our Memorandum & Articles of Association that we publish our accounts however the RSGB Directors have always produced these in the true spirit of openness.

It is common practice for organisations such as ours to make their financial statements available online, i.e. RSPB and National Trust, the RSGB is delighted to now be able to offer this method of sharing it’s Director’s and Financial Reports for the year.  

We certainly don’t see this as a retrograde step but as progress where as your say, every member has an opportunity to view these Reports at any time without having to find their copy of RadCom first.  

Online is of course not the only way you can view these accounts and their associated reports; they were available, for members to request from the General Manager, available at the AGM and of course they can be downloaded from the Companies House website."

Does the RSGB have ears? And more FT8 moaning.

Well, it's early morning after storm Hannah thundered past.  We were lucky in that the worst winds of over 140km/h passed slightly south of us.  We saw 'only' 100km/h or so.

With an early rise to get all antennas back up in the air at dawn this morning, I had an idle look at the Facebook page for the RSGB.

I don't think the RSGB is getting it.  It has a ream of photos at the moment of silvery shields and cups being handed over from an ageing RSGB president (I prefer the use of lower case 'p'), to equally or even more ageing recipients.  I'm sure the recipients have done something worthwhile, but not something that the general (or even the radio) population have any interest in.

Indeed, so lost in the Glorious Past of British Empire is the RSGB that it doesn't see much wrong with the presentation of 'The Calcutta Key', this year presented to Nick Henwood (you might recognise him as a past RSGB President).  'Calcutta' was the anglicised version of the city properly known as 'Kolkata' (which was reinstated in 2001). 

Whilst this is probably just an embarrassing oversight, the English in general are never remotely willing to try respecting and pronouncing 'Johnny Foreigner' names, whether in India, Wales, or anywhere else.  It's all part of the rejection of local values and, thus, domination over them.

Current ageing RSGB President (right) gives ageing past RSGB President, Nick Henwood, his award.

Worse than this unending 'old men's care home' feel of the RSGB is the fact that it doesn't seem able to critically assess its social media performance.  For a society with some 20,000 members, having only one person 'like' most Facebook posts means you are getting something really wrong.  But the society just keeps serving up this rubbish simply, it seems, because it has little else to offer.  The story is much the same over on Twitter.

So there's no need to rush to join the RSGB to see if it's changed its old-man committee style by now.  It really hasn't - and now has only one woman on its Board of Directors of eleven people.

Meanwhile, on other Facebook pages dedicated to digital modes we, rather inexplicably, find people complaining bitterly about how 'FT8 is just computers interfacing via RF', and how only an SSB QSO is really worth having.

Well, hobbies, especially those dominated by older men, are always full of grumpy arguments as to why one person is right, and the rest of the world is, apparently, just dumb.  But the argument against digimodes is really short-sighted, and represents a failure of retired folk to appreciate their existence is not shared by everyone.

In my household, at least over the past several years, young children have been in bed by 8pm.  A good night's sleep goes some way to explaining their success in education.  It would be nice to have a SSB QSO after 8pm, or even 2am.  But it wouldn't be fair to everyone else in the home to be shouting '3 and 0.  THREE AND ZEEEEROO, OK?' down a microphone to some far flung DX station. This problem simply doesn't occur with digimodes.  You can operate any time of day or night without disturbing even the lightest sleeper.

So, next time you find yourself absolutely sure about your point of view on digimodes, stop and have a think as to whether you really considered all the different aspects of their use.

Listening to KE7A

Quite interesting to see the variations in 14MHz WSPR (5W) signal from KE7A as the greyline advanced and receded last evening:

The daytime propagation is pretty poor, well into the -20s dB.  The largest peak occurs at 22:12UT, when evening twilight is ending in Wales.    The  signal then takes a dive, and then briefly livens up again at 22:54UT  KE7A then drops back into the -20s, recovers slightly, then vanishes just before 00:00UT (confirmed as transmitting thereafter).

I'm not sure, but I think the second peak is down to the sunset grey line period reaching a point exactly half way between me and KE7A, presumably allowing low angle radiation to reach an enhanced strength.  At this time of year, the twilight boundary has hardly changed between the times of the two peaks.
 .

Situation at peak signal strength, 22:12UT.  Image: DX Atlas, with permission.

Situation at 22:54UT, at the time of the second peak.

Just when we thought it was summer...

...here comes Storm Hannah, carrying 140km/h gusts, prompting the Irish weather service to issue a 'Red Warning' - the highest category of risk.

Hannah reaches Ireland.  In five hours, it will hit Wales.

As previously noted, the increasing 'waviness' of the wind flows is now bringing periods of very warm weather as hot air floods in from the south, followed some days later by cold weather flooding from the Arctic.  This is all a well-predicted consequence of the reduced difference in temperature between the Arctic and more southerly latitudes.

I'm afraid that, in coastal Wales, we are very much now feeling the impacts of climate change.  All antennas down, and there will be little sleep tonight.

Summer propagation gets going in earnest.

Yesterday was a great day for the upper HF bands!

Sporadic E, quite possibly brought about by energetic thunderstorms over central/northern France - and quite a few strikes over the central UK - gave life to 12, 10 and 6m.  Propagation continued strongly on all these bands well after sunset in the UK.

Even better, the solar cycle seems to be showing definite signs of an upwards swing from the minimum.  At worst, the cycle minimum can have no longer than a couple of months left now.

Here's the past 24 hours on-and-off activity on 6m with my 2-ele quad.  Though most signals were fairly weak, notice the typical 'enchanted tube' effect with the northern Italian station, at +7dB when most others were in firm negative territory:

Aviation Radio

My weekend diversionary post today is a little journey into radio as used in General Aviation.  First of all, you may be surprised to learn that, for non-commercial aviation, and apart from certain Radio Mandatory Zones, there is no general legal requirement to carry a radio in an aircraft!

Here's how the panel of the aircraft I normally fly - a Piper 28-161 Warrior II - looks:

The radio stuff is all on the far right.

'A' is the audio control panel, which simply switches various sounds from different sources on and off in my headset.  You can choose to listen, for example, to people inside your cabin (or switch them off!), or hear the Morse code identifiers of radio navigation beacons, to make sure you are using the expected one.

Audio selection and GPS consoles (units 'A' and 'B' in the first image).

'B' is not really radio, but a GPS-based flight navigation system.  These are becoming ever-more sophisticated, but also rather outdated and expensive.  Normal tablets are now commonly used instead, as they are much cheaper, updated daily, and more informative.

Family day out on Saturday.

'C' is the main radio stack, which operates on between 10-25W AM, with 8.33kHz spacing (it was 25kHz spacing until very recently).  This example is rather old, but still commonly found in aircraft. The top two orange windows are where the frequencies are displayed.  The left window contains the active frequency, the right window the 'standby', or 'next radio station to be called' frequency.  A simple button swaps the two frequencies around.

Range of the radio is supposed to be about 1.3x square root of the aircraft height but, like ham VHF, can be greater or less than this, according to atmospheric conditions.

A very calm, warm, but hazy day for flying.

The second set of orange windows on the radio stack at 'C' are for receiving navigation beacons.  These feed the two circular direction instruments immediately to the left of the radio stack.  The top one is for ILS instrument approaches to an airfield, the bottom one is for VOR (en-route) navigation.

VOR transmitting antenna in Belgium.  Image: Wikicommons.

Unit 'D' is a transponder, which sends out a four-digit, pilot selected code on secondary radar, so that controllers can identify your aircraft on their screen.  Transponders can variously be off, on with no altitude reporting ('Mode Alpha'), on with altitude reporting ('Mode Charlie'), or on with altitude and aircraft-specific information (type, callsign, etc) - 'Mode Sierra'.  Some Mode 'S' transponders are linked to automatic collision avoidance.

A typical modern transponder unit.

And that's pretty much it!  To use the comms radio, the PTT switch is on the yoke, sometimes with a standby 'fist mike' stowed in the front.  Aviation headsets are about half the price of amateur radio headsets!  Oh, and in case you were wondering, in the UK, it's illegal to transmit with amateur radio sets from any aircraft, so no chance of a /AM QSO, I'm afraid (though others seem to break this law, anyway).

A little 6m work.

Well, it's not much, but it works fine enough.  The wire length was 1.37m per side for a SWR of just under 1.2:1.  Not that there was much to work - only Ireland and the Isle of Man today, with one PA station heard in rapidly changing, brief Es.

A multi-element beam and mast is on the list...

This is the HFTA gain prediction for the simple dipole, together with the terrain profile to the east.  Note the deleterious effect of the higher ground between me and the sea on low angle radiation:

At 4m above very good ground, the pattern, which is almost entirely horizontal radiation (blue), as you'd expect, is plotted below. MMANA-GAL reaches much the same conclusion about peak gain as the HFTA model does.  More height is needed, but it's fine for casual working, not least because 6m propagation is often binary: it's either strong or dead!

An hour at the shack.

Well, having spent the morning doing some very tiring work on the house, I decided some relaxing transmissions from the countryside shack were in order this afternoon.

As the higher bands were not very active, I settled on my elevated 1/4 wave vertical for 14MHz, and tried to find a clear slot on the exceptionally busy Good Friday waterfall.

Reception reports of my 25W from the 1/4 wave vertical today.

I was especially pleased to be called up by HL3EHK, with whom I successfully completed a QSO at 25W.  It just goes to show yet again that simple wire antennas used in the right places really work.  No need for a £4000 rig, and no need for a tower and beam.  Ham radio has moved on, mostly for the better.

Surprise call!  Screenshot from my Raspberry Pi's display.

Recommending the absurd.

Yes, it's that time of the month when RadCom, the RSGB's not-for-sale-anywhere monthly magazine, comes through the letterbox.

I should point out I have only ever been a member of the RSGB for about 18 months, and the current magazine comes as part of a free membership package for my daughter.  I'd be very surprised if she actually started to pay for RSGB membership in the future.

As usual, RadCom has little of any real interest, unless you want to buy expensive equipment every month.  But there is an article about delta loop antennas, which caught my eye.

Overall, the article is fine and informative enough.  But it does then tend towards the kind of utterly impractical ideas for antennas that most of us, living in properties with tiny gardens, let alone gardens that will legally allow the erection of a large antenna, actually live in.

The typical UK property is not a place for large delta loop arrays - or even any HF antenna, for that matter. 

In the UK, the average garden is only about 15m long, and quite a lot narrower.  New houses tend to have a lot less even that this.  Hardly anybody has a 20m tall oak tree or three from which to support large wire antennas.

So why then, do you think, the delta loop article author implies that a two-loop beam, which "can be steered" as propagation changes, is remotely possible or practical for most of us?  As you can see, he advises the use of "spare parts" for building a quad loop, and - the UK old man's favourite suggestion - maybe the use of "bamboo canes".

Well, I wouldn't recommend it.

Here's the reality, borne of years of experience with loops in an exceptionally windy place: a two loop beam for HF is not possible for most, and impractical for many.  Keeping a two-loop array aloft in wind-battered Britain is a serious undertaking, and one that will lead to a lot of worry and lost sleep.  This will be even more so if built with that 'Y' arm arrangement.

And notice the other favourite British trick - heavy coax feed lines that magically support themselves several metres above ground.  No mention of the need for independent, steerable supports for those.

Here's another reality check: bamboo canes rot in no time.  They are ugly, of very variable quality and dimensions, and are not suited to permanent outdoor installation.

This kind of living in some of garden utopia is very common in British amateur radio texts.  Partly, that happens because of the endless reproduction of texts from the 1980s and a lack of fresh, modern texts.

I really do wish authors would stop living in the middle class 1920s, when gardens were big, everybody had money, and installing a HF antenna was simply a case of putting it up, no questions (or Councils) asked.  And when you did so, you didn't then find that the neighbours' solar PV arrays, SMPSUs and internet boxes had rendered the HF spectrum practically unusable.

Doing what little I can.

Like very many across the world, I was really saddened to see the catastrophe at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris this week. 

I decided that I would do what very little I could by simply acquiring a special event callsign - GB8ND (800 years, Notre-Dame) and directing people to the official donations page that will help rebuild this outstanding building.

It's very true that no building is necessary in order to have faith.  But few who walk into any cathedral would come out thinking that they are worthless and not deserving of preservation.

In case you missed it, this is the official donations page:

https://don.fondation-patrimoine.org/SauvonsNotreDame/~mon-don

The higher HF bands: they're ALIVE! ALIVE!

A higher HF band operator is taken by surprise...

Well, it remains very cold outside, but this weekend's HF bands, up to at least 50MHz, were alive and kicking in a moderately-strong sporadic E event.

Here's how 12m looked in terms of where my 15W FT8 was being heard (3-ele LFA Yagi):

24MHz reception reports, FT8.

The fun continued on 10m (vertical delta loop on 1st harmonic):

And a 2 element quad saw some 6m activity, too:

Field operations resume!

A few spare hours today saw a clear-out and check-out of the 'countryside shack' after the winter break.

The good old TS-480 worked without a hitch, as did the Raspberry Pi and its screen.

The loaded dipole, showing top disc end load.  Matches all bands 20-6m.

I generally now use the end-loaded vertical dipole, which is very useful in this period of variable and often unpredictable propagation.  Power is from a standard 70Ah car battery, which is fed by a 60W mono solar panel.

Though simple, the dipole gets out well.  Here are a few plots, starting with 20m, of FT8 stations hearing my 15W over an hour or so this afternoon.  I even managed a few reports on 12m (not shown)! 

Reception reports of FT8, 14MHz.

18MHz.

21MHz.

About 10 minutes' worth of 1W WSPRing, 14MHz.

Cow-proof antenna mount.

Well, spring has arrived in good fashion in Wales.  Although it's still cold, there's a lot of sunshine now, and trees are about a month ahead of their usual flowering time, thanks to several days of warm weather at the start of March.

Looks like a good year for Damsons!

Attention now turns to the 'countryside shack', which hasn't seen much use over the winter, except for some, ultimately unsuccessful, experiments with a Vee beam.

Most antenna work at the site has been with easy-to-deploy 1/4 wave verticals.  These work very well, but do tend to pick up a little of the RFI that my Raspberry Pi generates, although with some care, the effects can be reduced to negligible levels, even for WSPR.

Countryside shack.  Looks rubbish, works great!

But the main problem is the base mount for the variety of fibreglass pole-based antennas.  For a year, I've just used a semi-permanent fence post with a PVC tube attached to it.  I simply slip the pole into that, with no need for additional fixings.

The trouble is: cows!  They are very big, very heavy, and love rubbing and pushing anything they can find.  After months of this treatment, the fence post fell over.

The other trouble is dry weather.  The ground that is a muddy marsh in winter becomes rock hard as it dries out in summer.  This lets the fence post become loose, and also makes it impossible to drive the post further, or a new one into the ground.

My veterinary daughter, with the problematic animal type in the background!

So, how to provide a base mount that can easily be fixed and removed in any ground state, and that is also resistant to breakage by ruminants?

Well, I thought the best solution was to buy a good quality telescopic aluminium pole from Spiderbeam and attach a horizontal antenna of some sort permanently to it, putting the whole thing well above cow height.  But, the price!  About £400 for the 12 metre version!  For now, that kind of money just isn't justifiable. 

So, I came up with a simple solution to continuing with my 1/4 wave verticals and vertical dipoles: a £20 piece of 90-degree steel, 2m long, with a sharp tip cut into it.  This will go into any ground, as it can take some hammering if necessary without damage.  But to reduce hammering, I'm going to weld two foot rests, so that I can stamp it into the ground.  The antenna pole simply rests in the 'V' of the 90 degree angle, held in place with releasable cable ties or just bungee cord or string.

The image below is the kind of tip I will cut, but my mount is just one long piece of angle iron against which the antenna pole rests, rather than a base socket.

The mount could also be made of thinner, lighter 'Dexion' (shelving type) galvanised steel, or aluminium, if it's thick enough. Either way, this won't be damaged if I leave it in place and a cow pushes it over and stands on it. It can also be easily removed and replaced as a temporary mount.

24MHz Improves

The 12m band has not been very frequently open in the past few weeks. The last QSO I had before yesterday on 12m was back in February, when 12m was opening more reliably.

Yesterday, there were good openings to Brazil and southern Europe, though herd mentality means there weren't so many stations to work.

This afternoon, I was very happy to work transatlantic, and deep into the heart of Texas, when KI5BLU appeared at very good signal strength here.  Remarkably, the KI5 was using a simple fan dipole.  No other US stations picked up on the propagation.

14MHz Transmissions to Iceland

Overnight, quite disturbed geomagnetic conditions, taking the Kp to ~5:

The only stations hearing my 1W AT 14MHz overnight were four stations in Iceland, EA8BFK, and G0LUJ (ground wave).  The ground wave signal, which can sometimes also show geomagnetic effects, was seemingly unaffected overnight:

It's always interesting to follow what happens with TF stations, as the path is about one skip long, and takes the signal straight into the auroral oval.  Here are the locations of the stations:

In general, as last night, the locations of TF4M and TF3GZ are sufficiently far north of the other two stations to put them on or near to the inner edge of the auroral oval:

Here's how TF1A heard me, showing peaks at 01:34 and 02:24UT, coincident with a rapid fluctuation in the Z field component.  For clarity of the variations, I've chosen to draw lines between data points, which artificially 'fills in' the absences of reports at times.  Your brain can easily work around this!

Meanwhile, at TF1VHF, the same peaks were seen, but with a +12 minute shift from those seen at TF1A (peaks at 01:46 and 02:36UT).  Curiously, the brief dip in signal strength at both TF1A and TF1VHF arises at the same time of 02:10UT.

These two contrast with the reception at TF4M, where the first peak at TF1A is not seen (TF4M confirmed as being active for hours before this time).  Indeed, unlike the other two TF stations, TF4M only starts to hear me at 01:02UT, 32 minutes before the first peak at the other two stations.  Strangely, the second peak at TF4M comes at the same time as at TF1A (01:34UT):

At TF3GZ, the first peak arises at 01:46UT, the same as TF1VHF, as does the second peak of 02:24UT for both those stations.  The dip in signal also occurs at the same time of 02:10UT:

Because TF3GZ is very close to TF4M (47km, or roughly 1 degree east), it's difficult to explain the 12 minute difference in peak signals between them.  If it were a longitude effect, the expected timing difference would be only 4 minutes.

UPDATED 09/04: What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

I think it is.  Perhaps one of the largest sunspots we've seen in years, just coming into view:

STEREO Ahead image shows a lot of magnetic activity:

There has also, in the past couple of days, been a rare NOAA solar cycle prediction update.

Grey line WSPR from LA6

Very slowly, propagation at 14MHz is moving into spring conditions.

This morning, a rare WSPR appearance came from LA6GH (0.1W), giving a beautiful example of propagation normal to the terminator:

Note the huge spike in received signal strength - roughly 11dB.

Greyline and northwards Z deviation

Interesting to note the ~20dB increase in 14MHz WSPR (2W) signal strength from K4COD last evening, as the greyline passed in tandem with the restoration to quiet conditions from a fairly strong deviation in the geomagnetic field:

Image: Tromso Geophysical Observatory

K4COD's signal variation at 14MHz.

Here's how K4COD's signal looks on the following day: