Getting into ham radio

Well, at the start of the last solar cycle, when I was becoming a lot more active in radio, someone in the US, quite rightly, said to me: 'it's a great time to come into the hobby!'

And if you are arriving at this blog, curious as to whether amateur radio is for you, we're at that improving phase of the solar cycle yet again.

Today's sun.  More sunspots means more fun on the ham radio bands!  Image: NASA/SDO.

 

Ham radio can appear to be limited to shouting down a microphone and having a really boring conversation with someone you've never met, and isn't interested in what you are.  And, sometimes, it is like that!

But there are an almost limitless set of possibilities and interest avenues to follow, once you decide to get involved.  I really encourage you to do so!  Computing and digital communications are now all the rage, and of particular interest to younger age groups.  They offer the daily-realised potential of global communications at low power, and with less-than-perfect antennas.

And remember: those adverts in magazines, which give you the impression you need a mortgage to come into the hobby, are to be ignored!  I started the hobby by spending about £350 on a good, second-hand transceiver, £100 on a matching unit, and some wire. You can almost certainly do even better than that.

Back in early 2011. I started with a copper-tube 28MHz dipole, and a very low multiband wire dipole beneath it.  Very far from ideal, though the environment was very good, and I had a lot of fun with it!

Here's what you can do with just a triangular piece of wire (a 'delta loop' antenna), strung up on your house at the moment, up at the upper reaches of HF, at 28MH.  You can of course do the same, or better, with a copper tube dipole, just like I had all those years ago!

 

 

Blog prompts IARU engagement

Following my recent post concerning IARU's aspirations for the future, I was interested to receive contact from a IARU R1 representative by e-mail.

If, as it seems, someone was trying to cause trouble between myself and IARU by advising them of my blogpost, then they didn't have the required effect - at all.

 

Instead, I've been pleased to find that, at least in the person who contacted me, an open and transparent approach that accepted some of the criticism that I levelled at IARU.  They've even gone as far as to say that they want to take some of my, admittedly pretty simple ideas forward for further development.

A few key things have come out of the so-far brief but positive discussion, which I'll try to summarise.

IARU's aspirations of how it wants amateur radio to be were written in a present tense in its recent report.

So the aspiration 'we want ham radio to be inclusive', for example, was written as though this is already true: 'ham radio is inclusive'.

As IARU have written it, it can be seen as a form of denial of the problems we face in radio, even though, as I've accepted, that was not the intention.  

I've suggested that IARU should clear-up the confusion and, moreover, show it is up to the task of looking at ourselves squarely in the mirror by accepting the problems we have. Most of these are a real threat to the future of amateur radio, if not addressed.

I thought it would be a good idea to re-write the aspirations in the following manner: 'Amateur radio has a number of problems: a lack of inclusivity amongst gender, age and ethnic backgrounds.  IARU wants to help change this, quickly'.

I think that, written in this way, the IARU statements gain a much greater degree of honesty, which can only assist it get to where it - and the ham radio community - wants to be, because the problem is properly defined from the outset.

I've also suggested that IARU is not very well understood by a typical amateur radio operator, and that a key aim of IARU should be to address this. 

I'm persuaded that IARU has an important role to play, and should work a lot harder to make us all aware of what this role, in practice, is.  If it doesn't do this, it could lead to a lax approach to accountability and, ultimately, a loss of relevance.  Neither of these things are of benefit to our hobby.

In coming months, I hope to be hearing a lot more from IARU, what it has been doing and, especially, how it is going to achieve those aspirations for the future of our hobby. But this is not a love-in; I've already told IARU that I don't warm to any attempts, should they be made, to control the narrative. In that respect, I'm keeping to tradition, as this blog post from 2018 demonstrates.

IARU: more crap

IARU Region 1 seems to have been busy of late with what it describes as taking control of the future of amateur radio, rather than being controlled by the future.

This is a very good idea. But I'm not sure IARU has carried it off.  Indeed, the outcome of this exercise, which involved a large number of member societies, seems to end-up repeating the same old rubbish that we've heard coming from the mouths of rich, retired white people for decades.

Consider, for example, this sentence:

"Amateur radio is seen to be providing social, economic, educational, and other benefits to
society"

Well, at an individual level, I suppose there are certainly social and educational benefits.  But to society as a whole?  I'm not so sure.  And who does IARU believe 'sees' radio to be like this?  Certainly not the general public. Using the words 'other benefits' is nebulous, and weak.

If you ask a person in the street, or they come across you whilst out portable, amongst the public, then I can very confidently say that about 95% of them could not tell you a single thing about amateur radio.  Most, feeling pressed to say anything at all, will tend to blurt-out the words 'CB, is it?'  

And there, I think, is the main battlefront for amateur radio: its sheer unknown-ness to the general public.

That's not to say the public aren't interested; I think they very much are.  A lot of retired-age people who come to talk to me when they see me out on the coast will say how much their young grandchildren would enjoy having a go at radio.  They go on to say it would be a lot better than staring at a mobile phone.  Of course, they're absolutely right!

If you don't slap CB down when the public mention it as something they remember from the dim past about radio, then they are much more likely to take longer to talk to you about it.  I often say 'I started off after a period with CB.'  And that was true for very many of us older than about 50 years today.

It's also true that a fair number of people seeing an antenna will try to see what's going on, but won't engage and won't come to ask.  They mumble with one another that it's probably something illegal, or wonder whether the operator has permission to put an antenna up in such a beautiful spot.

This is almost certainly stoked by the idea amongst the public that amateur radio operators are socially withdrawn, 'anorak' types who lock themselves away in man-sheds.  And let's be honest, a lot of us are like that.  We may not be unfriendly, but we can certainly appear to be.  

In the UK, certainly, amateur radio was widely held for decades by participants to set them apart from - and above - the rest of society.  The need to pass a fairly involved, 90 minute, largely electronics-based examination, plus the mystique of knowing Morse code, essential until very recently to get onto the HF bands, made these people, they imagined, 'special'.  

A large fraction of the radio community back then were well-paid career electronics workers who could afford and/or build their ham equipment.  This just reinforced their separation from the general population. These attitudes were quite effective in isolating amateur radio from the general public, who were even seen as unwelcome threats to the hobby when they came to it via the CB route.

IARU goes on, inevitably, to claim that:

"Amateur radio is seen as a welcoming and accessible activity for people of all ages, backgrounds, genders, and ethnicities, providing fun, social community and personal development" 

Well, I had to laugh at that!  Considering that 50% of humanity is female, there are essentially no women in amateur radio.  Ethnic minorities are seriously under-represented in countries like the UK and the US, especially when it comes to positions in radio societies.  I don't think that women and ethnic minorities find amateur radio welcoming at all.  If they did, they would be participating. 

I also found the following rather odd, to the point of surely being wholly false:

"Amateur radio has an extensive media presence from its accessibility to new entrants to its high value technical and scientific contribution".

Does it?  I can only recall one mainstream media article about amateur radio in the past several years.  Even then, where the BBC tried to present a positive image for us, it was entitled 'The very particular world of amateur radio'.  You can still watch it here, and I'll let you sit back, imagine you're a non-amateur radio person, and think: 'is this really painting a good picture of us, or just lightheartedly reinforcing what the public think of us already?'  Or, maybe more usefully: 'will this encourage more people to rush out and join up?'

I'm not at all persuaded that IARU has a strategy that will work for the future. Reading through their list of 'Strategic Objectives', you find that they are not so much aims for the future, but simply statements of how some contributors to the exercise see amateur radio today - or, actually, how it was, a long time ago.  This feeling is only made worse when you look at the flowchart under 'What happens now?', which seems like a recipe for more committees or something.

For my money, I would make these suggestions to IARU:

(1) Recognise that the management of radio societies are typically highly skewed in terms of ethnicity, age, gender and socio-economic security.  They are highly unrepresentative of society as a whole, and unlikely to understand why people not like them are not joining the hobby.  Indeed, they are unlikely to perceive, or reject the case, that there is any problem at all.  The problems begin here.

(2) The perception of amateur radio that matters isn't found from within the existing amateur radio population itself.  Rather, to ensure the future of amateur radio, and to break down the clear, existing barriers to participation, we need to ask the general public what they think of us.  Only then can we find out where the negative impressions of our hobby lie (although many of us can readily tell you this!)

(3) Stop claiming things about amateur radio that have little foundation in reality.  More especially, stop claiming that a reasonable justification for amateur radio's value is found in 'emergency communications'.  Of couse, radio can provide some relief in emergencies.  It's just that, in practice, almost nobody involved in the hobby will ever use radio in this way. I doubt most people who may be interested in joining would want to do so to pretend being some kind of emergency responder in a yellow jacket, anyway.

(4) The claim that amateur radio provides skilled people to industry is almost certainly false inasmuch as it is in any way a good reason to support radio.  We all know that radio is overwhelmingly a hobby of the ageing male population.  Those aren't working-age people of value to industry, although they are by no means without value in terms of teaching others, for example.

(5) Be honest about where we stand.  We're seen as rather odd, highly-technical and anti-social people who hide away in sheds, surrounded by incomprehensible electronic stuff.  We won't appeal to a new generation of enthusiasts unless we tackle these images first.  

There are plenty of other things to tackle, too.  The UK regulator, OFCOM, for example, has next-to-no interest in the amateur service.  A year ago, it imposed complex and wholly needless EM safety regulations in response to panic amongst the ignorant public about 5G internet.  When asked, absolutely nobody, including OFCOM, were able to provide scientific evidence that provided a basis for their imposition of these ridiculous rules.  

There is no point having a strategy for amateur radio when regulators just stamp their feet at random, with no basis for their actions, and seemingly nobody being able to challenge them.

RSGB - the fight not taken

I had my regular, but very infrequent look around the RSGB's affairs on the Companies House (private company information) web site this morning.

It's always interesting to see how things are going at the RSGB, and I was pleased to see the membership grew quite healthily in the past year or two, although that was almost entirely down to the boredom brought on by the lockdowns.  Overall, the society has a lot of work to do to make sure this blip in the system doesn't just remain as one, once we drag ourselves out of Covid-19.

The RSGB mentions its ongoing relations and meetings with OFCOM, the UK regulator.  But it remains loathe to tell us about the content of those contacts.  

So, once again, I've had to make a Freedom of Information Act request to OFCOM for records of these meetings.  

In the past, FoIA has been useful, notably in relation to the 'K' for Cornwall regional secondary locator debacle; information released by OFCOM showed the RSGB had not been supportive of the idea since the very beginning, but had tended to suggest otherwise to those who were promoting it as a permanent RSL.

It remains to be seen what will come out of the FoIA request this time.  

Wisely, the RSGB chose some time ago not to pursue a legal challenge to the failure of OFCOM to enforce RFI laws in respect of VDSL, which has caused a lot of trouble across the UK.  But options were available - and remain so - to it.

Where the RSGB has failed, in my opinion, is in adapting to the RFI situation in the UK, which is worsening significantly and to the point where hardly anyone living outside of the countryside will not find operating significantly affected by avoidable noise.

For example, The Good Law Project, which successfully challenges government on matters of policy and procedure regularly, show us how things can be done.  GLP may not necessarily be interested in fighting our niche radio corner, perhaps, but they are only one outfit using crowd funding to progress legal challenges that otherwise would not be affordable.

So I would certainly suggest that OFCOM's refusal to tackle what seems an obvious and clear breach of RFI control measures should be revisited.  

If one in ten of the ~21,500 members of the RSGB paid £5 each, then a legal challenge fund would be worth nearly £11,000 - enough to at least get a couple of good legal opinions on the merits of any potential case.  If everyone paid only £1 each (or that the RSGB hypothecated funds for legal action in the same way from subscriptions), then there would be enough money in one year alone to bring, for example, a Judicial Review of OFCOM's decision not to enforce the rules.

This isn't as novel and ridiculous an idea as it might seem to some.  The RSGB already has specific funds ring-fenced for purposes such as 'spectrum defence' (currently worth £9,000, but without expenditure for some time), and prizes based on donations.

The RSGB's accounts seem to be fairly healthy, but are very likely to see a sudden slip as we ease out of the pandemic.  Lockdowns are now politically seen as undesirable and to be avoided in the UK.  The days where we saw a lockdown as a novel 'holiday', shrugged our shoulders and decided to learn something new are over; everyone now wants to be out as much as possible, not locked-up indoors, as they were, for so long.

But I wish the RSGB well, of course.  It is nowhere near persuading me that it is worth joining, however!

 

 

 

An hour at the coast.

Well, the clouds were splitting the sky into a half of blue, and a half of grey today.  I was stuck at the unmoving boundary of the two, with little warmth this lunchtime.

All the same, it proved a great outing with just 4W from the FT-818.  WSPR signals at 1W were hitting +14dB SNR to FY5KE, showing the sheer efficiency of Es propagation.

Station grounding.

 

There's an interesting piece, partly about station earthing, over on PE4BAS' blog at the moment.

Whilst I commented on the dangers of misunderstanding earthing, which is widespread, it doesn't seem to have appeared. Bas later said he didn't see the comment.

Well, these things happen.  Given Bas' response, I think it's important to underscore the dangers even more than I had already, so I've updated this blog a little as a result.

What I will place here is a clear warning to anyone who is thinking of attaching (or already has) wires to the earth system of a house.  

UPDATE: this post unexpectedly became even more relevant, as the ARRL merrily published (21/12/2021) a graphic on their FB page that shows a grounding system that would not be acceptable or legal where PME systems exist.  They should know better, not least as PME is used in some parts of the US, and widely outside of the US.  ARRL publications are widely sold outside the US, which only highlights the failure of the ARRL to consider the potential consequences.

Firstly, there are laws about modifying the electrical supply systems, including the earth, in most countries.  These can carry criminal punishments if you don't adhere to them.  Having a radio licence does not make you qualified, nor does it give you consent to start fiddling with the electrical supply, even in your own house.  You may resent being told that, but that doesn't make it any less true.

One, very good reason why these rules exist is because, if you do get things wrong, that error might well appear on the lines outside, putting people working on them in danger.  

Secondly, an RF earth is not the same thing as an electrical safety earth - although under certain fail conditions, they can become the same thing - and run the very real risk of starting a fire. 

In PME systems, for example, the earth is connected at the input to your house at the neutral; one wire serves two functions.  If the neutral breaks, say, in a storm, then you could find your entire neighbourhood's circuit trying to complete to earth via your radio equipment.  It won't take it, by a very long margin, and will catch fire.  Neutral breaks are not exactly rare.  You might be lucky and find there's a drop to ground from the line outside which happens to be in the right place to stop this situation from arising.  But you can never know where any break will be, so you can't sensibly take a gamble on the PME arrangement outside.

A PME system, as widely found in the UK.  If you install RF earths, it is a legal requirement - and, strictly, requires a qualified installer - to connect every one with its own 10sq mm minimum cable back to the 'incoming' earth (which would be at the chocolate block connector in practical terms here).  No advice is given - seek a qualified installer and talk to your network. A point of weakness may remain, even then, because the earth cable that runs from the input fuse to the distribution box is often not of a high enough cross-sectional area.  You can't change this wire (at least, not legally), and so a network engineer will need to do it.

Your electrical supply may be very different in nature, especially in relation to the earthing system, to the person writing about what they've done in the shack.  It's as well to remember this. 

This is a typical 'recommended' earthing system for radio shacks you can find online, often originating in the USA.  In a large part of the UK, this WOULD NOT conform to regulations, and represents a SERIOUS FIRE RISK - which includes burning your house down. A heavy-duty earth cable from the rod, directly back to the supply input earth/neutral is required in common PME systems.  Screw-type connections to the rod should be avoided - they tend to corrode and make bad connections.

Just remember that your house may well burn down if you connect things up wrongly and contrary to electrical rules.  If that happens, an insurance company is almost certain to refuse - quite rightly - to pay out.  That is a very serious and ruinous outcome.  If Bas, or anyone else, is qualified to do such work, then all well and good; my post wasn't aimed at such people, rather obviously, and they shouldn't be offended.  But others should be very careful indeed.

I urge anyone who is thinking about station grounding to consult their network supplier, and seek such information and consent as may be required.  Connecting wires up to copper rods is easy.  Recovering from an uninsured, burned-down house is not.

Reflecting on modes (updated)

After my incredible journey underground with the FT-818 this past weekend, I'm planning another trip, this time with a dipole cut for 40m, and a matching unit that will almost certainly be needed, given the configuration underground.

A problem that I mentioned in my write-up was that of time-keeping, which I had fully allowed for in my first trip underground. Thanks to the good timekeeping of my mobile phone's internal (non-internet connected) clock, the Raspberry Pi could be kept within about 1.5-2 seconds of the correct time underground, and provided a time update for the Pi if it had to be rebooted (for every second that passes when it's not running, the Pi loses that much time).

40m signals get deep underground, but GPS and mobile internet, and the time services they provide, don't, making FT8 etc difficult, but not impossible, to use.

 

Whilst we have a lot of modes that don't need time synchronisation - PSK-31 and OLIVIA are obvious examples - it struck me that, under the domination of Joe Taylor's software and modes, we have as a hobby gone down a bit of a funnel towards a potentially problemtic dead end: that of needing accurate time synchronisation for all of them.

Receiving FT8, with a ~1.7s time error, deep underground.

 

Undergrounding is, of course, so niche as not ever going to be a motivator to move away from time-dependant digital modes.  GPS dongles allow us to maintain even better time in the absence of mobile internet signals, but are an added, if small complexity, and for Pi use, means we need more USB ports than are available in a portable radio set-up.  GPS is not, of course, available underground, anyway.

UPDATE: Thanks to a heads-up from M5MAT, the solution to the time sync problem lies at this page by KK5JY.  It works!  Download both parts of the software, and follow instructions under the 'Build the software' heading.

MW1CFN/u

About 20 years ago, I was quite keen on exploring the extensive underground slate mines of North Wales.  It's an interest that I've taken up again, this time with my son and daughter, in the past few months.

Before I go any further, if you go down any mine, it's a firm unwritten rule that you never - ever - damage or remove anything from there.  It's our collective heritage for all to see, enjoy and respect.  The best - and safest - way to explore our mines, is by booking a trip with Go Below.

As I refamiliarised myself with the sheer maze that is Cwmorthin slate mine, near Blaenau Ffestiniog, I came to thinking: I could try radio down here!

The whole of the inside of this mountain, above and below lake level, is quarried-out.

 

Quarry plan. Much of the blue bits, above lake level, collapsed in the 1880s.  It's very difficult to use such a map, not least at it represents multiple levels, and isn't very accurate.  Instead, you have to memorise it from walking it all!

Well, this morning, I took the chance to go underground on my own - my son and daughter were too busy - but with my trusty FT818, and a 80m dipole.

The selection of 80m was due to the expectation that longer wavelengths get through rock better than shorter ones.  But a 40m-long wire is about the limit of what is practical to deploy in a mine with wet, cold hands, and where the occasional paying groups travel past; I had the pleasure of explaining HF radio to two such groups, who were a bit bemused to find me down there!

About to go in to Cwmorthin slate quarry.  It was very cold and windy outside, much nicer inside!

 

I'd heard some people in Yorkshire had received amateur HF WSPR signals underground, but I can't recall reading any details of which band they used.  In any case, their hills are mainly limestone, which is a very different proposition to the multiple granite-slate sandwiched layers of North Wales.

Aerial view of Cwmorthin ('Cwm' means valley in Welsh). The radio position was directly under the ridge on the top left, where the snow runs out (you can see the slate spoil tips below that).

The only previous experience I'd had with slate was of the high attenuation my old house's roof caused at 14MHz - I could never get a decent signal to or from an attic dipole.  So my hopes of receiving through ~180m of rock horizontally, and ~225m vertically (estimated from maps), were not very high.  

Vertical section, showing how the miners chased the slate veins.

So, using some old iron pegs to support the insulators, I strung the dipole just above the floor within the connecting tunnels between chambers, which are often a hundred or more metres long.  One leg was within one tunnel, the other turned 90 degrees into another tunnel.  Somehow, I miraculously found a new piece of wood to support the other end of the dipole wire!

An amazing fungus spreads its way over an old timber pit prop (~50cm long)

 

I was restricted to RX-only, as I didn't have the space to carry a matching box, and the antenna was never going to be a naturally good match in the way it was mounted! 

The big problem with many digimodes is their need for fairly accurate time-keeping on the computer.  This is an essentially insurmountable problem underground!  I overcame it to a degree by switching on the Pi on the surface, where there was a mobile phone signal, and then leaving it on as I went underground.  Any reboot underground quickly saw the Pi lose good timing.  It would therefore be much easier to use PSK-31, OLIVIA or such modes, which have good sensitivity (very good, in the case of OLIVIA's slower rates), but without the need for any time synchronisation.

A piece of new wood props up one end of the dipole in a side tunnel.

Tuning to the 80m FT8 frequency - no hint of a signal, but quite a bit of RFI from the Raspberry Pi, not helped by being very close to the antenna.

Well, I wasn't expecting much, so I switched up to 60m.  Again, nothing.  But 60m is often a bit dead in the daytime, so I went up yet again, to 40m.

Bingo!

The 40m waterfall had loads of FT8 signals on it.  I couldn't quite believe it, but here's the proof (you may have to click on the 'view in YouTube' link if it doesn't play in Blogger):

 

At 30m, I could only detect a couple of weak FT8 signals, although they were at reasonable distances.  By 20m, there was no more to be detected, not even using WSPR.

I also had a listen to 40m SSB.  Yep, there were signals there, too!  Both of the ones I heard were from France, of which this was the best - no call sign given, sadly.  Quite appropriate, given that the lower levels of this mine were flooded for 30 years, and eventually drained by drilling a hole from below - an extremely skilled and dangerous task - by the Isler company, founded by Camillo Isler, born in France.  In characteristic Welsh fashion, the level was immediately named 'lefal Ffrench' (the French level)!

 

My listening location was not only deep inside the mountain, but also beyond five blind corners with long tunnels between each.  So there was no realistic prospect of leakage from the outside world via the adit opening.  I'll test that idea next time, by going down a level, maybe more. 

I'm intrigued that slate is so transparent to 40m signals at this depth. I'll have to do some research and think about what is going on.  

UPDATE: I visited again briefly 15/12/2021 to see if I would lose the signal deeper into the mountain by about 60m horizontally.  Other than one fairly weak 40m signal that I couldn't decode due to time sync issues (I await a real-time clock unit for the Pi to resolve this), everything had vanished.  It's not yet clear whether it's leakage from outside via the tunnels (unlikely), or a changing depth, or nature of rock, above me that allows signals to get in so deep into the mine. The addition of one more granite bed by beeing a level deeper, for example, could make all the difference between reasonable and no reception.  I'm also going to run tests in a different, nearby mine.  It will all take time, though.

As always, we must remember the men who lived exceptionally hard lives within these mines, and the many who died, for very little reward in the end, in order to roof the world.  Cwmorthin, indeed, was and remains known locally as 'y lladd-dy' - the slaughterhouse - due to the very high number of injuries and deaths here, which prompted some of the earliest UK workplace safety investigations.

You can find some lovely images of Cwmorthin here.

Radio, and slate.

Aerial view of Llanberis slate quarry under snow.  (C) MW1CFN

 

Recently, the slate quarrying landscape of Wales was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status.  It's not before time, because it's not much of an exaggeration to say that, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these Welsh quarries roofed the world.

Half a mountain removed by the slate quarrying industry.  Llanberis, North Wales.

I had some Christmas shopping to do in the afternoon, but once that was done, I couldn't resist heading for the mountains of Snowdonia, and the Llanberis slate quarry, covered in a light dusting of snow on a sunny day.

470 metres up, looking NW over Anglesey.

 

A small parking spot at 470m up has a great view out over Anglesey and the Irish Sea beyond.  It turned out to be a pretty good place for radio, even though the clear horizon is not very wide.

Although I could hear weak signals on 10m, there wasn't much chance of having a QSO, even with FT8.  If people used JT65 and JT9, of course, it probably would be possible.  But they don't do that these days.

Old slate house.

 

You can clearly see the joints in the slate.  The splitting direction is perpendicular to the pressure that made the slate; all information about the original sedimentation direction of the clay was lost during the metamorphism.

I worked my way down to 15m, which wasn't all that brilliant either.  But there were a few American SSB operators there, and I got across to W4UW quite easily at 55, with some QSB.  George was averaging about 57, peaking 59 with me.

I then did some 17m WSPR, to give some numbers to the quality of my location.  And what quality it had!  All other G stations reaching EA8BFK were achieving, on a 1W normalised basis, a median of -6dB (best was +0dB), whilst my Ampro stick was achieving +13dB!

Over across with WA9WTK, the best from other G stations, of which there were only three, was achieving -20dB, whilst I was getting +5dB!

A blast hut, where men would shelter during explosive breaking of the slate.  They knew that a round shape resisted the pressure waves much better than a square one.  Old narrow-gauge railway track over the top for some reason.

 TI4JWC reported a best signal for me of -7dB, whilst the only other G station getting there was reported at -29dB!

KD6RF only heard me from the UK at the time, at a median -24.5dB.

Incline, down which slate trucks used to carry the product to a railway line much lower down.  The incline is now repurposed for carrying electrical cable related to the modern hydroelectric plant.

Iron reduction spots in slate. 

Remember PSK31?

A very cold, windy day yesterday, with heavy hail showers drifting in from the north.  

 

Having done some FT8 and FT4 on 17 and 20m, where results were not very good, I decided to return to an old friend - PSK31.  Remember that?

 

DJ6QC coming in nicely on PSK31 yesterday afternoon.

I recently installed FLDIGI on my Raspberry Pi 4B, and all went smoothly with that.  Although FLDIGI is a very nice package, it doesn't decode messages across the waterfall like DigiPan does, so you have to go chasing the lines on the screen. 

It's nowhere near as busy on 14.070MHz, the PSK frequency on 20m, as it used to be.  But there are a few stalwarts keeping the dream alive.

I had three nice, fairly long QSOs, including some live, keyboard-to-keyboard stuff.  I have to say I really enjoyed doing something other than the FT modes, and will have to do some more PSK in future outings.

10m time lapse.

Though the conditions were not great yesterday, this time lapse of 28MHz RX here at least shows the very luck-of-the-draw, brief DX openings that occur at higher HF:

15m timelapse.

Here's most of the day today on 15m, as it progressed:

 

OFCOM - we won!

Despite the government's insistence that they install a 'safe pair of hands' to run OFCOM, the UK regulator, Paul Dacre has pulled out of the running.

Out of the running.  Paul Dacre won't head OFCOM.

 

It seems the government backed down when the legal pressure group, The Good Law Project, issued a pre-action letter to the government, announcing that, unless proper and lawful appointments processes were adhered to, an application for judicial review would be made to the courts.

So, whilst we are rid of Dacre's danger, we now wait to see who next might be thrust forward to run this, the most unfit-for-purpose government agency.

Capturing the action

As my followers will know, I am very interested in propagation and how it changes according to various factors.

Thanks to sites like WSPRnet and PSKreporter, which have automatic updates every few minutes, it's potentially possible to capture a timelapse of the day (or days), allowing us to visualise how bands open and close.  

Whilst this sounds a bit cliche, anybody who's new to amateur radio, and even those who are not, can learn a lot about the bands by watching such time lapses.  After all, any traditional text about the hobby will always tend to have a section about the bands and their propagation effects.

But I had a lot of difficulty finding a suitable piece of software to make timelapses.  With renewed effort, I found Debut by NCH Software, which does a very good job and costs a very modest £25-£29 for a licence.  I have no affiliation whatsoever with this software company and have not been prompted or paid to promote it.

With PSKreporter updating every 5 minutes or so, quite rapid changes in propagation are clearly revealed (provided you take a capture at least this often!)

My first, brief test of reception here today at 21MHz produced the result below.  Over a much longer period, it will produce some very interesting results. 
 

Ferrite!

I've got ferrites on a lot of cables, especially those connected to the Raspberry Pi.  But today, I found a spare ferrite and decided to clip this on to the rig end of the USB connection to the soundcard; I already have one at the Pi end.

 

I was quite amazed to see how effective this was at 28MHz. The ferrite is a TDK ZCAT 2032-0930, 9mm inner diameter.  With single board computers, which don't have room for good RFI control, liberal use of these ferrites is much advised.

Raspberry Pi 5

 

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Raspberry Pi single board computers.  They are not the only SBC available - there are now many - but they are still the most versatile and popular by a country mile.

The current latest edition - the 4B model - has only been on the market since 2019, but already, a new, model 5, is on the way.

The question is: will you want to upgrade?  Well, if you're operating portable in any fashion, the answer is almost certainly going to be 'no'.  

 

I wrote at the time I got my first Pi 4B that I thought it was not much of a performance improvement for things like WSJT-X and JTDX.  The Pi 3B is perfectly adequate for that function, and has good power consumption figures - a critical aspect of all portable working.

The Pi 4B is almost required for things like SDR software with things like SDRplay units and the like.  The signal processing load is quite high, and audio stuttering can happen on the 3B, unless the sampling rate is reduced dramatically.  It will work, and work well, but the 4B handles it much easier.

The 4B does use somewhat more power, but it's never proven to be any issue at all in my extensive experience - now daily - of working /P.

The Pi 5 will likely use more power again, given it is rumoured to have a 2GHz processor.  Fine for home use, not so great for portable - though we will have to wait for a real Pi 5 to see if this will be an issue in practice.

The expected use of full-sized HDMI ports, if realised, would be a good thing; the micro-HDMI sockets used in the 4B are too small and prone to damage.  The 16GB memory option will also be a big increase in capability, although the price for that version may well make it less popular.

No mention of USB connections for peripherals.  For radio use, you need at least three, and often all four of the sockets on the 4B.  Dropping these would be a real mistake, so it's fingers crossed on that one!  Then again, production of older Pi units continues for a long time - the Model A, released in 2013 - and all subsequent models are still in production.  So it's not like Microsoft or Apple forcing you to buy only the very latest models.

In the meantime, here's the latest gossip on the Pi 5.

10m, West Coast/p

A fairly nice day today, although a little dull.  Not very active on 10m from this latitude, which is always a good time to see how much the coast helps get a signal to interesting places.

Southerly view from today's 10m portable site, IO73se.  Next land in the direction of the antenna is South America!

 

On WSPR, I received nobody at all, except for one fairly good signal that was already mid-sequence as I switched on the receiver.

Transmit was another story altogether.  EI4GEB was my main competitor today (no information on antenna yet).  In the only same time-slot comparison, I was 9dB stronger to EA8BFK.  Due to large Es variations with time, there is no point looking at other, non-identical time slot spots nor, for that matter, at other stations more than a handful of km away, such is the 'hit and miss' nature of Es propagation. 

 

I was epecially happy to get across to HP1COO (what a great callsign!), and at a reasonable strength when nobody at all from this side of the Atlantic was making it.  I had a clear, all-sea path to him, which makes all the difference:

 

 

Over on FT8, although I was hitting the Azores at +7dB with just 3W, and making it across the Atlantic quite convincingly, I wasn't getting any responses to CQs.  After PSKreporter had had some time to digest things, and on interrogating it after getting home, I was very pleased to have got across (-19db)  to Tierra Del Fuego, LU7XZ, at 13247km - remember, from just 3W with a wide bandwidth digimode!  Again, apart from a brief clipping of Brazil, this is another all-sea path.

3W to the world!

And to complete the record, polar mesospheric echoes, which are often good proxies for 28MHz conditions, were next-to-absent today:

G0 and G2 compared

 A very useful set of geomagnetic conditions over the past 48 hours, where we generally saw G0 on 14-15/11/2021, and about G2 on 15-16/11/2021.

This allowed a direct comparison of how the 10MHz WSPR (1W) signal to DP0GVN from Wales varied.  The difference in geomagnetic activity was slight, but the effects are still clear, notably in the couple of hours or so after 00UT, where under G0, there were no spots, but under G2, there were many. 

My signal was propagated at a weaker strength after midnight in the second day, at a minimum of around -19dB, whereas it was a weakest of -15dB on day 1 - a power difference of 2.5 times.  So the change wasn't simply down to difference in timing between the geomagnetic disturbances.

I've placed two days' worth of magnetometry plots above the WSPR data, which is NOT to the same timescale as the WSPR plot.  It is there simply for you to see the difference in the two days.

DP0GVN receiving my 1W, 10MHz WSPR signal.

Meanwhile, EA8BFK first saw an enhancement in my signal, also at 10MHz, and then a significant dip at aroun 00:30UT, quickly restoring by 01:00-01:30UT, and then undergoing actually quite interesting, periodic changes in strength.

EA8BFK receiving my 10MHz 1W WSPR signal (15-16/11/2021).

Eh?

A bit of a strange video from OH8STN today.  He has turned in favour of a Microsoft Surface tablet, as opposed to a Raspberry Pi.

Well, he's entitled to his opinion, and it's his channel.  But I think anyone watching this video should be aware of a couple of, shall we say 'misconceptions' thrown around by OH8STN. 

I know Julian is fed-up of people who say 'no' because he says 'yes'.  That's fair enough, but not when it might make newcomers think they are better off with a product he is either promoting for money, or else just choosing to use from his own standpoint - and I don't know which of those two applies in this latest video.

The Pi is not difficult to configure or operate.  It is literally the same to use as a Windows UI.  Compared to a mid-range laptop, the Pi runs a lot more smoothly.  It will never hang when using data modes and browsing the internet at the same time, for example.  A basic or even mid-range Windows machine often will, or run slowly, trying to do the same.

Whilst some micro-SD cards can be unreliable, choosing a make such as Sandisk or Kingston eliminates this issue.  If SD cards were so unreliable, we wouldn't tolerate them in our billions of smartphones; when did yours last crash?  I've had one terminal SD card failure in maybe 7 years of using a Pi.  And all you have to do to be 'prepared', as OH8STN likes to be, is carry a spare OS disk in the rucksack; they only cost about £5 each, and the Pi will work the minute you switch it on again.

And the major thing for people using a Pi is that they are not using a Windows machine.  Windows is bloaty, updates endlessly and without the option to stop them (which also slows down datamode use during an update). And in the end, you are left with having to buy a new version of Windows, or a new machine altogether - simply because this makes money for MS. Raspberry Pi OS updates are free and adaptable. 

And as for cost, I don't get Julian's claim that it could end up costing the same as a Surface.  The cheapest, rather underwhelmingly-specified Surface Go 3 is £369 in the UK.  The next one up (Pro 7+) is £799!  The Surface has a single USB 'C' connection to the outside world - fine for a IC-705 rig, if you can afford or want one - not so fine if you don't; you may not be able to easily, or at all, connect other rigs to it.  Admittedly, more rigs are now becoming single-USB connection types, but they are still much in the minority.

A Pi system would cost £55 for the board, a 7" screen is now as cheap as £43, a keyboard and mouse about £10.  A USB battery is also needed - about £20 for a decent capacity unit.  Total cost: £128.  If you use a mobile phone for timekeeping (usually the case if you want the internet for spots uploading, etc), then you don't need to get a USB GNSS (GPS) unit - or £7 if you are really out in the non-networked field.  And the Pi sports no less than four full-sized USB sockets.

And the added benefit of the Pi system is that, if the board fails, you can easily reuse the screen by simply connecting it to another one, as you can the keyboard.  So the future replacement cost is then reduced to just the board itself - or £55 instead of £369 at today's prices.  Not that I've ever had a single Pi, from Model A to the latest Model 4B, fail on me, and I've had them permanently in rucksacks, cars, and dusty garages (many runnning 24/7/365 on science projects).

You don't get any of this endless, consumer-based updates nonsense with Raspberry Pi OS.

Heat?  Well, I have a passive aluminium shell for my Pi 4B.  It plods along at about 40 degrees C indoors, and cooler outdoors, even when running datamodes.  So Julian's concerns about heatsinks are certainly non-issues for normal amateur radio use - especially if, like Julian, you are often in a very cold ambient temperature!

So, I'm sorry Julian, I just don't accept your reasons for turning against Raspberry Pi, and I certainly won't be returning to MS products.  You may believe you can more trust your life to a Windows machine, but I, for one, would much rather take my chances with a Pi!

 

 

 

QRZ.com - just not getting it.

Back in June 2020, as some of you will recall only too well, QRZ.com banned my special event callsign page for GB9BLM.  Under immediate and very effective pressure from users, at least one of whom was a (black) lawyer, QRZ.com's owner resinstated my page, issuing all sorts of incoherent and contradictory excuses for his actions. 

I finished coverage of that episode with this post.

Fred at QRZ.com then said that he didn't at all like being labelled a racist.  He had, he said, coloured relatives.

So if we accept Fred at face value, then the extract of QRZ.com's home page, captured 09/11/2021, can't be racism, but just sheer stupidty and insensitivity.  The term 'Indian' (i.e. 'Red Indian') was coined at the time of what was a merciless European colonisation of the Americas, and as such, has long been held by Native Americans to be derogatory and racist.  

I couldn't quite believe my eyes on seeing this.

 

I can't imagine any web site or other respectable outlet in Europe using an anachronistic, derogatory term like this without considerable and entirely justified outrage and condemnation.  

Of course, the image does remind us, if accidentally, that there are still products being sold today that carry the names of Native American tribes.  And there are still, seemingly white-dominated clubs (hardly unusual for this hobby) also using tribal names.  

Not all of America is like this, of course, but far too much of it - including QRZ.com - is.

But to turn this item into something more positive and, indeed, amazing, here's the story of a Scottish lady who recently featured on a TV genealogy programme, and discovered her biological parents were Native American.  It's quite an emotional story.

 

OFCOM. No, it really can get worse!

The sorry state of UK politics - and, potentially, OFCOM, the UK comms regulator - is being painfully revealed again recently by the Johnson government's unwillingness to take 'no' for an answer when it comes to appointing former Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, to Chair of OFCOM.

Trouble brewing...

OFCOM is no stranger to controversy within or without amateur radio.  Last year, it caved-in to what were utterly irrational and baseless public concerns about 5G roll-out, dragging amateur radio into the 'must assess RF safety' camp.  The radio press has been full of complaints and criciticsms since.  It's as likely that anyone will bother with doing the assessments for safety - noting OFCOM could not produce any scientific evidence of harm from HF emissions when asked - as anyone from OFCOM will turn up to check that you have.  So what was the point of it all?

Paul Dacre is hugely controversial, publishing a front page that has since become emblematic of all that is wrong in 'culture wars', fascist Britain. The judges upheld the law.  Paul Dacre embarked on encouraging public support for undermining them.

The kind of dangerous rubbish that Paul Dacre was resonsible for.

Now, things are getting ugly.  Dacre has been rejected once for the Chair of OFCOM, because he was "unappointable due to his anti-BBC stance".  The Johnson government, however, is hell-bent on appointing him.  It has already stopped the appointments process and started another, so that it gets the answer - and appointment of Dacre - that it wants.  Part of this to to dismantle the BBC, which the government doesn't like.

So it's now looking like it will go, ironically, to the courts.  Public legal pressure group, The Good Law Project, is taking the issue on.  GLP enjoys enormous financial support from the UK public and is widely seen as the real opposition to the government where the political opposition has failed miserably.

Quite what it would mean for amateur radio were this madman be given control of OFCOM is anybody's guess.  But it probably wouldn't be good.

Extract from Good Law Project's web site, announcing it is commencing legal proceedings.

The Twitterati don't like Dacre at all.  A non-scientific poll yesterday by Good Law Project returned a complete rejection of him: