More /MM

 

Track as shown by 14MHz WSPR between 15:54UT and 08:42UT 2020 Decemeber 30-31.

 

RV Polarstern (DP0POL/MM) continues her voyage to the Antarctic.  She is at the moment well south of Cape Verde.   Good WSPR reception throughout the night at 14MHz (longer horizontal lines indicate periods of non-reception):

The RX signal from DP0POL shows a very nice response to a sharp and strong (Kp~5) geomagnetic field deviation commencing about 22:00UT:

Vesselfinder.com AIS map confirms position, but the WSPR position is much more current!

Polarstern steams south (UPDATED)

Image: NASA.

 

Whenever anyone asks me "what's the point of amateur radio?", I always answer: "it's mainly about putting your mind somewhere your body can't be".  That's what I have always thought about radio, since being a child.  Most people seem pleasantly surprised and satisfied with this unexpected answer.

So for those who say WSPR is the 'most boring thing in radio' they can think of, I beg to disagree.  It's great to follow, at 14MHz (5W output) the German research ship, RV Polarstern ('Pole Star') as she makes her way from the Canary islands towards Antarctica over the past week.  After all, Antarctica is a place most of us have no hope of ever visiting.

Heading south...

UPDATE:

In overnight 14MHz WSPR reception, Polarstern was heard throughout the winter night.  Regular station, 9Z4FV, also made the crossing to Wales through most of the night.  These two stations, the only real DX that was received, show that the path to the south and into the Atlantic is quite reliably open under modest geomagnetic field disturbances (Kp overnight ~3 at peak).

Reception of 14MHz, 5W WSPR from RV Polarstern (DP0POL), 2020 December 29-30.

Reception of 14MHz, 20W WSPR from 9Z4FV, 2020 December 29-30.

More PMWE

More strong PWME today.  About five days so far in December 2020 have had modest PWME apparitions.  There was good 10m propagation yesterday, and lots of strong EU, with weaker transatlantic propagation at 12m both days.  Any relationship is speculative at this point.

 

Mystery of K6MCS continues.

The overnight Kp rose to a modest and brief ~3 value, which was enough to bring a very large number of European stations to be received throughout the night at 14MHz.  At this time of year, under quiet field conditons, this band should be quite dead overnight.

Two DX stations were heard: the now quite typical 9Z4FV, and the mysterious K6MCS (5W output, hexbeam beaming 030 degrees into Europe), who has long been noted to have some kind of special path to Wales. 

Even accounting for the ~6dBi gain (source: G3TXQ) of the hexbeam at 14MHz, which produced a -21dB SNR at last reception, others with the, much more common, omnidrectional antennas for WSPR ought to have come through; there is, after all, a gulf of 13 dB before we reach the detection limits.

It's best to highlight the unusual nature of K6MCS by presenting a plot of received distances against time.  You can clearly identify K6MCS as the ~8000km spikes that occur regularly in the post-22:00UT period, against a firm background of Europe-only (other than 9Z4FV) receptions:

14MHz WSPR reception distances, 2020 December 28-29

East Greenland magnetometry (H component).

Overnight 14MHz WSPR report

Sustained, mildly disturbed geomagnetic conditions (Kp~4) allowed a large number of European stations to be received until 02:10UT, then going dead until 03:38UT, when the very early advancing sunlit ionosphere began to have its daily hold.

 

Two received stations show the typical response overnight:

DK1BL (2W) showing response to field disturbances.  Horizontal lines indicate non-reception periods.

 

OZ5ACI (5W)

Happy Christmas! WSPRnet's dead.

In yet another example of how all our WSPR eggs are in one, very fragile basket, the WSPRnet site, never really a smoothly-working service, has collapsed unde the strain.

Whilst we appear to have alternatives, in fact, all of these obtain their data from the same, WSPRnet database.

This is what WSPRD reports this morning:

I've long been a critic of this reliance on one database, and highlighted repeatedly the inevitability of this kind of failure.  A few, with the necessary resources and skills, have vowed to correct the situation.  None have actually done so.

And if you are not a WSPR user, don't forget that it's the only propagation and antenna testing system that is freely available to everyone and easy to use.  In addition, there is now a good industry built around WSPR hardware.  

So it's not a trivial matter, and does underscore the short-sightedness of those running the show.

14MHz WSPR report.

 

RX spots of 9Z4FY, 2020 December 23-24.

RX spots of VK3QN (long path Europe beam 130 degrees), 2020 December 24

K6MCS does it again!

Intrigue continued with the 5W, 14MHz signal from K6MCS overnight.  WSPRD output below plots stations hearing K6MCS in 12 hour period priot to ~09:30UT when the database was interrogated:

The 14MHz band was dead to all signals except K6MCS at the time in Wales:

Field conditions as follows:

The closest component alignment with the TF4AH deviations seems to be the D (declination) component, as potentially indictated by the Greenland (east) magnetometer:

2021

Well, 2020, as we all tend to agree, is a year to quickly forget.  2021 is not going to be very much easier, given it will take many months, if not most of the year, to get a good fraction of the population vaccinated.  Against this, we must hope for no major mutations or new viruses.

So, with some hope still left, I think that, come springtime, I will take a long hard look at how people are getting on with the new IC-705.  By then, any problems should have become apparent.

I was glad to see that OH8STN has conducted a reasonably long WSPR test at HF, and found the IC-705 to have the kind of frequency stability we should now all expect and demand from any HF rig.  If my ageing FT450 can produce zero drift, year in, year out, then I fail to see why we should put up with anything less.

So the first test is passed nicely.  

I think the features and layout are all fine, so far as the various reviews show.  It's not an environmentally-sealed rig, and so this is, to an extent, a fail.  But there are sure to be after-market covers and so on, and any rucksack, properietary or generic, will keep it protected enough from the elements.  

Still, it's surprising and very disappointing that ICOM didn't think a portable rig should have portable ruggedness.  I often think the cultural differences between Japan and the West seem to result in not-quite-right products; the rather embarrassing, 1980s-style 3DSS spectrum display on the new Yaesu FTDX10 is a classic recent example of this.

I'd much prefer, for its sheer simplicity and fine engineering, to get a Lab599 TX-500.  But nobody seems to be getting one these days, with a small rise in online reviews seen a couple of months ago now going completely quiet.  For the moment, the TX-500 is completely out of the running for lack of UK outlets and the attendant legal protections that are not available if I bought it from abroad.

But there is still time for others to persuade me of the Xiegu rigs, for example.  Their frequency stability remains something of a mystery; nobody seems to think about this important aspect when doing video reviews.  Opening a box isn't very informative; real operating and attention to detail is.

What will you be getting?

Season's Greetings, and here's to a much better, less restrictive 2021!

 

N2WJ Anomaly in G3 (updated)

A fairly sustained (and entirely unpredicted) period of G3 storm conditions occurred overnight, bringing a single, anomalous mid-winter nighttime 14MHz spot from N2WJ at 01:44UT (0.2W, -28dB).  

Explaining quite why only one station, running 0.2W, was heard on the dark side of the planet, when there were plenty of other US WSPR transmitters operational, is tough.  But we have seen it many times before.

I reproduce, with permission, an e-mail kindly received from N2WJ today:

"Thank you so much for letting me know about the blog post.  It’s amazing to me that .2W can propagate so well even during good conditions…. The WSPRD screen indicates what my usual .2W pattern is from my QTH in west central Florida.  I’m using a fan dipole at about 10 meters elevation.  One leg of the dipole runs east to west and the other leg is NW to SE at about a 45 degree angle.  It gets out very well to Europe.  Enclosed is a photo of my WSPR ZachTek Xmitter.  I use the tuner only for 80 meters.

You may share this email on your blog post if you wish to.

My best to you and yours,  Steven N2WJ"

 

The receiver plots above show a distinct, limited path for the spots.  TF and EA8 (and the southernmost UK) spots can be discounted, as they occurred much earlier than the others on the dark side.

This anomalous spot again occurred as the field restored to quieter conditions, after a period of earlier, significant disturbance.

Overight WSPR report.

Even though the 14MHz band now dies soon after dark here in Wales, interesting spots continue into the late hours.

Again overnight, my 1W output was heard only by a couple of HB, one OE and a couple of D stations.  These correlate with minor disturbances to the geomgnetic field.  On my RX, there were similarly only a small number, often just one or two spots, from R4, I, D and HB.

Geomagnetic Z component deviations, east to west, 2020 December 20-21.

The main stations hearing my 1W 14MHz WSPR TX overnight.

K6MCS: more curiosity.

K6MCS is a station that has caught my attention in the past, when this bizarre state of affairs happened.

Last night at 14MHz, though not quite as dramatic, K6MCS again became a spot for just a handful of RX stations on the dark side of the planet.  At the time I received him, everybody except TF stations had lost the signal. 

The path to the far west US/Canada was also briefly revealed by one spot at 21:42UT from VA7MC, one spot from AF7NX at 22:04UT, and two spots from VE7ENP (21:36 and 21:56UT).  14MHz was othwerwise, except for the Caribbean stations that are quite regularly heard much later than anyone else, closed from around 21UT onwards.

14MHz WSPR spots of K6MCS (5W), 2020 December 18.

Russian surprise.

That depth of midwinter has arrived when 14MHz becomes an interesting hunting ground for unusual, transient propagation during the long hours of darkness.

Last evening, with only a very minor field disturbance, I received WSPR from R4ADW, based in Volgograd, running 0.2W.  This is an extremely rare winter overnight spot, and one I don't think I've ever seen previously.  

A cursory look at  Z (vertical) component field puslations suggests there may be a link, notably as the pulsations weaken and almost vanish in the post 01:15UT period.

14MHz reception of WSPR from R4ADW 2020 December 17-18.

Polska!

NOTE: Due to maintenance issues, the FT8SP website may be temporarily offline for extended periods these days. 

=========================================================================

 

If you've received an uninvited email about the FT8SP award programme recently, don't reject it, as I initially did, as spam.

 

In fact, it's a rather nice new award program for making contact with Polish regions that is worth looking at if you like that sort of thing.

Well, we Poles are known for our completely ludicrous levels of patriotism, so of course, I am going to suggest you upload a log to the site and see what you get!  

Just download all QSOs since January 01, 2020 using 'download report' from LoTW, and upload the whole thing - no need to filter for only SP QSOs - to the FT8SP site, and all will be done for you!

Promotion

OK, I know everyone has to put food on the table somehow.  But when it comes to promoting amateur radio stuff, things get a bit sticky.

I think OH8STN is a good man.  He puts together nice videos, even though I am not quite so much a 'prepper' as his video channels tend to portray him.  After all, it's a good thing that someone is making radio work, out in the frozen wastelands of Finland.  We can all learn something from that.

But the problem for me is that the channels are often not explicit about the promotion of certain products.  For a while, Julian has been 'mentioning' the Powerfilm Lightsaver rollable PV panel and integrated battery in his videos.  It's not very difficult to detect that he's being at least encouraged to promote this product, alongside some others that have appeared in videos past.  But it's never quite spelled out explicitly.

So when I saw the YouTube post depicted above online this morning, advertising a discount code for the Powerfilm, I have to admit I felt a bid bad for Julian, because, even if he isn't receiving any financial incentive to promote the product, we can only react by suspecting he is.  Whether or not this suspicion is reasonable, and that his reviews and opinions remain impartial nevertheless, is something only Julian can answer.  

For myself, I haven't really been taking any notice of Julian's opinions for a while now, not least because there's always a cheaper homebrew version of these commercial products that can be put together, and that can more easily be repaired when they break.

Bonjour, New Caledonia!

Well, we keep saying, don't we, that it's best to stop complaining and start transmitting.

And so it was this morning, at around 08UT, still fairly dark outside here, when a speculative 'CQ' on 14MHz FT4 yielded a very strong response (-04dB) from Eric, FK8HM.  He gave me a -05dB from ~35W to a vertical delta.

Great start to the day!  Terminator correct at time of QSO, but the path was almost certainly long, not short as depicted.

 

If you haven't tried FT4 very much, it's certainly worth a try.  It's especially useful, with very short cycles, for portable work, where you can get through loads of stations and make use of brief propagation openings very efficiently.  

That said, FT8 later, at 09:10UT, gave me VK6APK on 24MHz with a 3-ele beam, which was quite lucky, as the propagation was very transient.

I might visit FK-land one day...

Ready to work portable?

 

Ever worked portable with your radio, out amongst the public?

Here are the top situations I face on a regular basis when out at the coast:

(1) "Have you caught anything?" 

This is never asked as a joke, but with the belief I am actually fishing with a fully vertical fishing pole and a feeder wire connected to it.

 

(2) "Are you a spy?"

If I was, do they think I would tell them?

 

(3) "Excuse me, can I ask what you're doing?" 

Usually, I'm enthusiastic to explain.  But sometimes, I am not.  Often, explaining just brings blank faces.

 

(4) "Is what you're doing legal?"

Where does the idea come from that anybody doing something unfamiliar is somehow breaking the law?

 

(5) It's ship-to-shore, is it?

Quite why anybody thinks ships communicate with shore by having a man in a bobble hat stand on a nearby coast is, well, a mystery.

 

(6) Child, pointing at antenna: "Mummy, can I play with it?"

The mother smiles at me nervously, whilst moving swiftly away...

 

(7) Dog: appears from nowhere, runs along madly, tripping (and confusing) itself on the radials.

Owner: MEG!  Come HERE Meg!  Meg looks crazily and runs away in opposite direction.

(8) The 'don't look, don't ask' couple.

Convinced it's illegal, immoral, spying and something to do with fishing, they turn their eyes away as soon as I try to cast a friendly eye towards them.  They walk briskly on...

 

(9) Can I just talk?

Someone who has been in lockdown for weeks finally finds someone to talk to.  Nobody cares whether they might be carrying the virus or not, and a good, long conversation is enjoyed at close quarters.  Nobody falls ill in the following days.

 

(10) That's ham radio, isn't it?

Finally!  An hour-long conversation about radio, the days of old, and how bad the RSGB is...

The questions might be annoying, but the views make up for it.  Working 10m (yes, 10m!) during early summer 2020.  Happy Xmas!

Long path quite dead.

Overnight geomagnetic conditions were quiet, with only a very minor disturbance.

14MHz signals from VK3QN, beaming long path to Europe, were entirely absent from my receptions, and did not appear at all in the UK until about 09:30UT (when I had by then ceased listening).   This is very much in stark contrast to the reference quiet field conditions recorded only a month or so ago, as plotted again below:

Reference 14MHz quiet geomagnetic field reception of VK3QN at MW1CFN, 2020 November 19-20.

The only interesting propagation at 14MHz was from F1JSC, who would not be expected to be heard here under entirely quiet conditions, but came in throughout the night, responding to fluctuations in the geomagnetic field quite nicely, notably a marked enhancement just before 02UT as the field - you guessed it - rebounded to quieter conditions.

F1JSC received at MW1CFN, 2020 December 14-15.

Overnight 14MHz WSPR report

A modest disturbance, with onset just before 21:00UT, led to no DX, but an interesting set of spots of my 1W signal by OE9GHV and ON5KQ, being the only stations, other than two transient spots from G8LCO (01:30UT, -26dB and 03:10UT, -23dB), heard overnight:

Reception of my 1W 14MHz WSPR 2020 December 11-12.  The enormous peak at OE9GHV around 23UT correlates with a restoration of the field from a sudden disturbance about an hour earlier, which is a common finding.

Too obsessive for me...

So, the Geminids peak is here again. I've been trying out 144MHz meteor scatter for the first time over the past few days, which has taken me to interesting and sometimes not so nice places.

Using WSJT-X, I was getting a reasonable number of decodes, but also missing a lot, even with DF opened out to 200Hz.  As the first evening progressed, I was getting fewer decodes.

Always reluctant to use new software and the potential for driver and other conflicts that can arise, I anyway chose to try MSHV, to see what it could achieve.

 

Well, initially MSHV was also not decoding many pings.  But this software allows the DF to be opened out to 400Hz.  At about 300Hz, it was decoding practically every tiny peak that appeared.  

Inevitably, reporting my success with MSHV on the 144MHz Europe FB page resulted in a few rabid disagreements with my finding that it was better than WSJT-X.  But those were seriously outnumbered by those agreeing with my experience.

As you will (perhaps critically) note, I was using a 15s cycle at the time.  Most people seem to use 30s, but this is also the topic of rabid debates online.  I tend to agree strongly with the more progressive opinion that 15s cycles are more efficient in many cases.  In the end, there is no law being broken, whichever cycle one uses, and there are clearly hypocrites around who argue for one thing online, but do something entirely different when a grid they want suddenly appears on the screen and they feel an immediate respose, regardless of cycle period or duration, is what is needed to 'put him in the log'.

I called a lot of CQ, and was clearly being heard strongly across Europe.  But I found waiting for a response, or that decoded station to ever appear again on the waterfall, highly frustrating and, for me at least, a real waste of time.  I'm not a band-and-grid-collecting obsessive, so other than the pure beauty of making a QSO by MS, there is no real aim or motivation for me.  Taking an hour to complete a QSO by random reflections isn't something I really want to understand, to be honest.  6m is a much better option for the simple joy of MS.

Still, an interesting introduction to 2m MS and a new software.  Always something new to learn, though I won't ever be a MS fanatic, I think!

Cosmic Rays

A minor departure from things entirely radio today, into the fascinating world of fundamental particles and cosmic rays.  It could be your next practical activity, too!

 

Some years ago, I began running an American cosmic ray detector on my mobile phone.  It never seemed to work for long without trouble, and the academics supporting it were extremely poor and almost disinterested.

Then came along the fabulous CRAYFIS cosmic ray detector app for smartphones.  Well, being a Polish programme, I would say that!  This ran fairly well on my then ageing Android phone.  But eventually, it didn't run at all.  

The latest version of CRAYFIS seems to be faultless, and runs daily on my newer, but still quite basic Samsung phone.  

My muon detector starts to run yesterday afternoon.  It now lives under a wardrobe!

 

Then, earlier this year, I came across MuonPi.  This is based around a slab of plastic, which catches muons as they decelerate in the material, giving off tiny amounts of light in the process.  This is fed into a HAT circuit attached to any Raspberry Pi computer from model 2 onward.  A 3B+ is probably a good minimum-performance model to choose if you don't already have one.

The HAT takes time signals for extremely accurate synchronisation of data with other detectors from an attached GPS antenna.  I'm happy to say my system often has the best time of all detectors, currently at 22ns accuracy.  It also generally has the highest muon count rates, and best GPS position accuracy (as good as +/- 0.3m).

Hardware and software installation is relatively straightforward.  The detector, once assembled, can simply be shoved under your bed, or placed in a cupboard, etc; muons aren't stopped by everyday materials.  But in a bedroom, the many, very bright lights on the HAT will need some attenuation with a sock or other cover!

Active muon detectors yesterday evening, including mine!

The hardware is not free, but the small price only really covers the costs of Giessen University in making and sending out the kit to you.  In my case, it was about £87, including the postage.  The support provided is outstanding, and even includes online conferencing if you really get stuck.  Data for all stations is freely available via the Grafana page for the project.

Victor Hess, ca. 1912, about to take to the skies in a balloon.  He thus determined that strange radiation on the ground was reaching us from space, earning him a share of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics.  In 1938, with his Jewish wife, Hess fled his native Austria to America, in order to escape Nazi persecution.

 

If you need any motivation to take part, just remember that muons only get to the surface of Earth because their relativistic speeds (~0.9993c) result in their time, relative to ours, running much slower - about 27 times slower in fact.  Without accounting for special relativity, muons would only make it 660 metres down through the atmosphere before decay, and we would have taken a lot longer to know they existed.  With special relativity factored in, the muons travel over 17km before decay, far enough to reach the surface, and a little beyond.  A good text on this is found by scrolling down to 'Hall of Fame' on this site.

So you can see Einstein's special relativity in action, in your own home.  That's pretty amazing, as is the fact that most of the primary cosmic rays generating the muons possess energies way beyond what machines like the LHC can generate.