Vale!

Well, it has come time to say 'goodbye' to the Copper Mountain station.  Or, at least, as a home operating location.

Having been here since August 2008, and with life progressing in new directions, it's time to move on from this excellent, if extraordinarily windy radio location.

I didn't move here for radio.  It took me three years to think about using the licence I'd held - but had not used - since 1997.  But when I strung-out that first random sloping wire (no counterpoise, so lots of RF burns!), I realised the location was pretty special.  I was encouraged enough to build a copper pipe dipole for 10m!

Early days: copper pipe dipole, 28MHz, plus a 40m dipole hanging beneath it(!)  January 14, 2012.

Excellent, super-mineralised ground, coupled to an elevated position with partial sea views, and essentially absent electrical noise, meant that even simple wires could 'get out' (and pull in) far better than models and others' experiences asserted would be the case. 

I say there was no RFI, but in 2017, an adjoining small farm set about installing kilometres of electric fencing to contain horses.  The tapes ran, at closest, within ~8 metres of my antennas, and were of course badly installed and even more poorly maintained, such that S9 pulses would occur every second, or even clusters of pulses every second from multiple circuits.  

Incompetently-installed and maintained electric fences, 2017.  Noise blanking, mercifully, meant it had no impact on radio.

Whilst this was initially very upsetting, the FT-450 (and the TS480) noise blanker completely suppressed the spark impulses in all but the very strongest signal reception conditions - in which case it remained a non-problem.  Not even the most sensitive WSPR reception was affected, once the NB was on.  Someone eventually seems to have had an argument with someone else about the horses, in the way people in small farms tend to do and, by 2020, they and the electric fences were gone!

In 2013, I drove a round-trip of about 900 miles in a day to collect a tower for a 12m Yagi.  It proved to be excellent value for money.  It could easily be lowered and luffed for hurricane days.  The Yagi went up in March 2014.  I didn't think it would be long before someone went to complain about it, to be honest.

After a lot of digging, I had a 1.5m deep hole for the concrete base of the tower!

Base pouring. I had 1 tonne excess at the end, which I had to hurrily shovel by hand to make some rough garden paths, in extremely hot weather, before it set!  09/07/2013.

But, for four years, to become a lawful structure under UK planning law, the tower, Yagi, and its 30 year old rotator would have to fly through everything the Irish Sea coast could throw at it.  I don't like bureaucracy, and I particularly don't like our local council, which was once described in a national magazine - correctly in most people's minds - as 'a basketcase council'.  So I didn't apply for permission, but used the immunity from enforcement that having something up for so long that no reasonable complaint can then be made brings.  

Tower, 12m LFA and various wires.  A typical scene here, as a strong October storm clears.

The four years were a challenge. At least twice, we saw peak gusts at 135km/h (see video, below).  Even typical winter winds, which might last days without much change, would be around 85km/h.  But it all survived, and nobody did in fact run to the council to complain - or if they did they were not interested!  By March 2018, the whole thing was lawful, as though I had been granted consent in the first place!  As evidence, I had taken photos of my kids, the concrete base pouring, and a smartphone photo every day for at least two of those years.  

12m proved to be more interesting than I had imagined.  I reached every continent at 24MHz, even Antarctica (DP0GVN, 08/09/2014), using the then very popular and extremely capable JT65A mode.  I am really saddened that this mode has now all but vanished in everyday operations.

Simple wires, in the form of vertical deltas and half slopers, kept me busy from 80-10m.  A 2-ele quad provided fun on 6m, including several aurora-scatter QSOs with Scotland and the Faroes.  

First edition of the 14MHz vertical delta, then fed with a 4:1 at the corner.

 

14MHz delta, with reflector, beaming USA.  03/04/2013.  Quite effective, if it isn't windy!

This location also provided fantastic longer-range 2m and 70cm FM operation, especially out over the sea to the Isle of Man - easily visible from here - and Ireland.  Repeaters were fun, but I have to confess, the CB nature, and often idiotic conversations held on VHF FM, was not to my liking, and I eventually gave up there.

Isle of Man (~60km) under moderate supperrefraction conditions - great for low power 2m FM!

 

2m got a revival here in 2019, when I took to SSB, mostly digital operation.  Within a few weeks of getting a suitable rig, I had managed Cape Verde with a 3-ele and 50W only!  Something that many people had waited a lifetime to achieve.  I had just been lucky, thanks to an exceptional tropo duct that formed in late December and early January, 2019/20.  An 8-element took over from then on, but no exceptional propagation was seen since.  Frequent attempts to cross the Atlantic came to naught.

All it took to cross to Cape Verde on 2m (FT8), January 01, 2020!

 I never set out to spend a lot on radio; indeed, I made a point of enjoying it as much as possible, for as little outlay as possible.  But after I acquired the tower, I realised that if, one day, someone installed a solar PV system nearby, or a proposed large solar PV farm was actually built, then one could wake up, turn on the radio, and find the bands badly afflicted by RFI. Sadly, one comes across such distressing situations quite often on the internet and letters pages in magazines, often elderly people who have operated without trouble for decades.  One feels very sorry for them, not least as radio may, for some, be their only contact with the outside world.

In view of all that, I always spent considerable time developing the /M and /P side of the hobby.  Yes, it takes a bit more more effort, but the results from good locations far outstrip what I could ever achieve from home, even though home has a good environment. 

Not quite as comfortable as a home station, but the results are much better!

 

From now on, whilst I may have a stealthy delta or magnetic loop, operations at home will not be on the same level as they have been.  Most operation, I imagine, will be making use of all those /P and /M developments.  Luckily, the coast is only ever a few minutes away, and I still have a shack in a remote field that could sport a hexbeam or similar, one day.

As for the blog, well, things may change there, too.  I don't imagine I will have so much to write about from now on.  That may come as a blessing to many of you!  The blog will remain available, but I think I'll post updates on /P work at my Facebook page, 'Seaside Portable HF Radio', even though FB is perhaps a platform that is slowly dying, now.  Heck!  I may even have a go at a subscription service like Substack.  We'll see.  It will take time to readjust.

The future radio scene, perhaps for a lot more than just me.

 

So, for now, thanks for putting up with my long WSPR reports.  For tolerating my over-excited accounts of some special QSO.  Or casting your eyes skyward at some political outrage related to the RSGB or QRZ.com on occasion. 

Most of all, thanks for your support on Blogger, good luck to your own efforts, and please stay in touch!

Professional RFI-hunting.

This week is the Royal Astronomical Society's annual National Astronomy Meeting.

 

A typical small teaching radio telescope.  Image courtesy MIT.

Interesting to see, amongst the poster presentations, a SDRPlay unit being used to assess RFI in England, in order to assess site suitability for a teaching radio telescope.

 

Run the press!

Delighted that Practical Wireless magazine is shortly to run a fairly lengthy article based on work I've done, and often reported here, using WSPR.

Despite its univeral usefulness to operators, WSPR is often treated with contempt.  It seems a lot of people would prefer to go back to operators guessing where their uncalibrated signal strength meter reaches after having had six shots of rum.  All a bit odd!

 

Obviously, you will have to buy the magazine for the full text! 

So, the forthcoming article will cover such lovely past findings as two 14MHz US stations, just 13km apart, reaching me - but nobody else at all in the dark hemisphere - one winter night.

Compared to the 'competition', Practical Wireless is a much more hands-on publication, and doesn't suffer from the stuffy, England-centric, 'London Wireless Club' mentality often seen.

14MHz is good!

Whilst daylight 14MHz is largely limited to fairly local contacts at the moment, letting things run into the night time yields very good results.

Overnight 14MHz WSPR spots, including a nice trans-polar spot of 10mW from a VE3KCL balloon at 5347km, out over the Bering Sea - a new spot region for me:

Great coverage, if you can stay awake!

Crossing hemispheres at 6m.

Last Sunday (11/07/2021), there was a long-haul DX opening on 6m, bringing multiple QSOs between Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  EI7GL, as always, has the best take on events here.

These events are by no means unprecedented.  But they remain interesting, not least in terms of the propagation mechanism involved.

Sporadic E would appear to be the most obvious candidate mechanism in conveying these signals across vast, inter-hemisphere distances.  But it poses the problem of how many Es 'clouds' ('hops') are needed, and how they might align so well that it occurs at all.  

One idea might lie in the timing.  It seems to me - admittedly as a non-6m specialist - that many of these events, if not all, occur close to midsummer.  From a station based in Britain's viewpoint, that means long-haul DX on 6m in June/July, and perhaps also in December (when it is midsummer in the southern hemisphere).

A notable event happened at 12 and 10m - I'm not sure if it affected 6m - on December 01, 2019.  This coincided with the first ever confirmed sighting of noctilucent clouds - which occur at much the same height and are forced by much the same mechanisms as Es - from New Zealand. 

Now, in 2014, using data from the AIM satellite, which has now been working without much fault for some 14 years (and there is no planned replacement), an entirely new 'teleconnection' was discovered.  Teleconnections are most simply understood as large-scale atmospheric flows between well-separated regions of the Earth's atmosphere - in this case, hemispheres.  Video below explains:

 

The particles around which NLC form - and which also are key to Es formation - are extremely small (nanometere scale), smoke-like remains of meteor burn-ups.  Every day, several tens to a few hundred tonnes of material enters Earth's atmosphere.  So there is plenty of it, and it is very easily transported by the atmosphere, and shaped by wind shear, amongst other mechanisms.

Indeed, as the noctilcuent cloud season moves past midsummer, into July, the appearance of displays tends to change into long streaks that appear to flow from north to south, against a general backdrop of E-W motion.  This is often an effect of perspective.  But it can also be considered, at least in order to help visualise what's going on - a visible signature of meteoric debris - coated in reflective ice and making up a highly charged surface - flowing between the poles.   

NLC display in Sweden (11/07/2014), showing what can appear to be N-S flows of air at 82km up.  Image: Gofororbit/Wikimedia Commons.

The question I wondered about early on after that 2014 discovery was: does this transport of charged meteor dust between hemispheres explain, or at least contribute to, the propagation seen at upper HF/lower VHF?

Yesterday, years later, I got around to asking an expert about the atmospheric part (only).

Distinguished Professor Cora Randell is as much of an expert on things atmospheric as you are likely to find on this planet.  I came into contact with Cora some years ago concerning my interest in noctilucent clouds.

It's important to note that I did not ask Cora about radio propagation. My question was limited to only whether it was plausible that meteoric debris was in flux between the hemispheres of the planet.  

I was glad to learn that this was not an idiotic question!  Cora cited the results of a peer-reviewed paper of 2008 (Numerical simulations of the three-dimensional distribution of meteoric dust in the mesosphere and upper stratosphere, Bardeen et al, Journal of Geophysical research, Vol. 113, D17202, doi:10.1029/2007JD009515, 2008), summarising that:

"meteoric dust in January... is transported from the southern polar mesosphere and lower thermosphere into the northern polar atmosphere, and that just the opposite happens in July (when it is transported from the northern polar region to the southern polar region)." [MW1CFN - see Figure 3 in paper for details]

Again, there is no claim about radio propagation, because that is not what I asked, nor what Cora commented on.  

But it does confirm that charged debris is indeed in large-scale flux between the hemispheres of the planet.  There is therefore at least the possibility that this debris might contribute to upper HF/lower VHF radio propagation.

It's up to us, as mere radio operators, to now go and develop the ideas further.  As always, comments from 6m (and any other) experts welcome.  'Old man' criticism and angry nonsense is not.

Satisfying

A lovely email and a nice, brief video link came through the other day.  It's very rewarding to see other operators get such delight from a simple act via the magic of radio!

Amazing 2m Es outbreak

A nice period of Es at 144MHz has just faded away.  Signals often up at +20dB or more - enough to support reliable SSB.

A FT8 signal from Slovenia hits the stops!

Here's a graphical summary:

Very localised Es!

Snapshot of my results at around 16:30UT.

Let's try to beat the Yagi!

Yes folks, I may have many faults.  But lack of dedication to the cause is not one of them!

Though it's difficult to make the time at the moment, I did manage a brief visit to a beach with a clear sea horizon from NNE to SSE this evening, to see how well a 1/4 wave vertical, using WSPR, would compare with my 12m LFA aimed at Scandinavia.  I was glad to find some tourists again take an interest in what I was doing; this is a very good way to promote radio if you explain things in a lively, jovial manner.

Looking east, towards Scandinavia, from IO73

The sea is a fair way out but the tide was flooding.  The sand, as is typical on very shallow beaches like this, is permanently saturated with seawater when the tide is out; you can actually see the water break the surface to the right of my rig box and backpack. I know from lots of earlier work that this acts to reduce ground losses pretty much as well as if the water were at the antenna's base.  Modellers always get it wrong, in that they treat a beach as though it is perfectly dry land, a bit like rock or concrete, and then have a sharp dividing line between its poor characteristics and the sea's much better traits.  The reality is very different.

Location (IO73ui) of beach operations.  Lines indicate limits of clear view (north at top).

Relative position of antennas. Yagi just to the south of the Parys Mountain label, vertical on beach at Lligwy Beach label.  Image: Google Earth.

So, how did it go?  Well, Es is of course the dominant mode at the moment.  Closer stations in Denmark were coming in at a tpyical 5dB better to the Yagi, compared to my vertical.  Better by about 4dB than when I took the vertical to the copper mine hill.

Beaming Scandinavia - at considerable expense, effort and visual impact.

But there were three stations at greater distances that produced remarkable results.  Remember, there aren't many stations active on 12m WSPR, and beaming a specific direction means there are even fewer.  Robust results would need a long period of study, but these are pretty reliable, all the same.

SM2LTA came in at -22dB to my 3-ele Yagi.  In the vertical on the beach - wait for it...-5dB!  A 17dB advantage to the vertical!

OH6BG produced an 8dB better signal in the vertical than the Yagi.

LA3JJ heard my 1W at 6dB stronger than the Yagi. 

There's no doubt that, at and beyond 1000km, the enhancement from the beach location can be very strong.  The explanation is definitely ultra-low arrival and departure angles that are inaccessible to the Yagi.

We can see this in action with standard models built into MMANA-GAL. First, the Yagi on my estimated ground conditions, 10m above that ground (most of us can't manage much higher than this, certainly in the UK):

If you plug-in perfect ground conditions (below), there is no practical difference - the peak gain (which is at 30 degrees elevation) - is only 0.3dB greater.  In both cases, you can see that by the time we get to 5 degrees above the horizon, the gain over an isotropic radiator has fallen to the -10dB ring, which is therefore a realised gain of just 2dBi.  Anything that renders the ground ahead of the antenna less than perfectly flat will reduce the low angle gain even further.

But don't get hung-up (great tune!) on the gain at 5 degrees elevation, because this isn't very low at all!  1 degree is a good place to start talking about 'low' angles, by which time the Yagi's pattern line is intersecting, approximately, the -25dB arc, or about minus 12dBi gain overall.

It's easy to see how this all plays out in favour of the vertical, when we look at its (vertically polarised) pattern over seawater:

The gain peaks at ultra-low angles, giving plus 6.65dBi all the way down to the horizon line.  If we add 6.65dB to the negative gain of the Yagi at these elevations, then we get up to around 18dB - which is the gain seen in reality with the case of SM2LTA. Possibly a simplistic analysis, but the general picture is not far from the truth.

Well, I'm glad I did that experiment.  Not that everyone will accept the results.  In recent correspondence, I see such idiotic nonsense as "yes, but not everyone lives near the sea", which is like saying you shouldn't use a car if you happen to have one, because not everyone does.  If I live near the sea, I can - and will - take advantage of it.  I hope others reading this will, too, because you get world-class performance from little more than junk wire!

OFCOM is not your friend.

The fallout from the new licence conditions concerning RF safety compliance continues.

Over past days, I've been reviewing the consultation documents that ran some time ago now. 

I was a surprised to find that the RSGB had, eventually, found it "impossible to support" the proposed new rules as they were presented.  This seems to have been a volte-face, because when news of all this first surfaced, the relevant RSGB representative gave a very firm impression of being fully behind it all.  The reason for this U-turn would appear to have been the outbreak of widespread dissent amongst the membership.  

Not that it mattered, because OFCOM went ahead anyway.

More worrying to me was the manner in which OFCOM started to engage in the kind of explicit disdain for public input and process that now characterises much of the current right-wing UK government machine.  

Entirely legitimately, and as is very common practice, the RSGB had issued standard response forms that members could either simply put their names to and send to OFCOM, or else use as a starting point for their own, perhaps more individual submission.  It was, after all, a complex area where the RSGB could and should have been expected to help members understand the background and make their views known.

OFCOM, to my mind very distastefully and in a manner unbecoming of a body that should have some sort of respect for the public and spectrum users, decided to go to town on all this 'copy and paste' protesting.  They "note" how many objections were submitted using the RSGB form, suggesting that this made them in some way illegitimate.

Now, if someone handed you a form about overthrowing the government in the street, and asked you to put your name on it, you would expect that, in very short order, to be used as evidence against you by the authorities.  They wouldn't turn around and say "oh, your name's only appeared on a standard form, so it doesn't matter - you are free to go".  

No, OFCOM, the world is not like that.  If someone uses a template or other standard form to make their voice heard, then it is the fact that they are making a representation, and not precisely how, that is important.

This story is not over.  I still haven't seen a single piece of peer-reviewed work that indicates there actually is a demonstrated risk to health from the frequencies and powers typically used by amateur operators.  And I have tried everything in the book - including statutory requests to OFCOM, Public Health England and a plea for information from ICNIRP itself.  

I'm still prodding these people to explain on what basis - other than what they accept was now concern about social media-promoted public hysteria about 5G - all this was dumped on the amateur radio community, who, again by OFCOM's own admission, have never been shown to breach any EMF safety limits.

Moreover, I still can't find a reasoned justification from ICNIRP as to why they deem 'HF' to mean 100kHz to 3GHz, whilst everybody else, including a 2012 Public Health Agency report, defines it as being 3MHz - 30MHz.

And, sadly, the more you look, the more it is confirmed that supposedly informed organiations like OFCOM and WHO have been simply jumping to the tune of the ignorant, hysterical public, who share their idiotic ideas online as though that makes them legitimate.  Almost all WHO information about EMF safety falls under 'mobile phones'.  We are not mobile phone operators.

We have been thrown under the bus, and OFCOM should not be allowed to get away with any more of this nonsense.  As the RSGB itself writes, in failing to identify any known breaches of ICNIRP guidelines (noting they are guidelines, not law), OFCOM appears to have broken the law in introducing these controls.  That kind of failure to adhere to legal requirements is, again, very much in the spirit and manner of the Boris Johnson government.

 

12m from the seaside.

Weather improved to warm sunshine last evening, so off we went to see the local porpoise family, and play some WSPR radio!

12m, out to sea. Looking NE.

This was to see if I could narrow the gap between my 3-ele LFA Yagi and a 1/4 wave vertical, by moving down from the hill and ~2km directly onto the coast.

It's not easy doing WSPR at 12m.  There are very few stations active, and when using a Yagi in a specific direction, this limits things even more.  

12m spots with the vertical at the coast.

12m spots with my Yagi.  Note: it had been active for ~one hour before I began with the vertical.

The location on the coast is only metres from the water, but is rocky.  Accordingly, losses due to the ground must be much higher than were I on damp sand.  

For now, we live with what we have.  I did in fact see a reduction in the advantage of the Yagi, from 9dB on the hill (accepting a very limited amount of data), to 5.5dB at the rocky coast.  

The range spanned 12dB (OZ7IT received by me) in favour of the Yagi, to 0dB (SM7PNV hearing me).  Yagi and vertical, in the direction of interest, had similar coverage in terms of stations heard or hearing, again noting the Yagi at home had been active for an hour or so before I set out with the vertical.

The SM7PNV spot highlights the crucial role of arrival angles; the zero difference to Sweden almost certainly indicates a very low angle not available to the Yagi, due to it being on land, and in a direction where there is low ground clutter.

I do expect that, when I take the vertical onto wet sand, or at the water's edge, I will see a further improvement in the vertical's performance; my informed guess is by about 3dB, possibly a little more. 

[UPDATE - there are some very interesting results to come from a beach outing the following day]

And do remember that the outcome for the vertical would almost certainly be much stronger if my Yagi was inland and not, itself, on top of a hill with a direct view of the sea!

A crucial aspect, though, with 12m is that Es leads to very large variations in signal level (I saw 11dB) over short periods from any given station, and so it is absolutely essential to use simultaneous spots for comparisons.  Averaging non-simultaneous spots, even over the same operational time span, may lead to incorrect conclusions.

 

9dB

Last night, far too late in the day, and with some rain showers around, I decided to compare a vertical antenna up on the copper mine 'mini-bog' site against my 3-element LFA Yagi at home, just a few hundred metres away.

Well, I only managed one simultaneous spot from both, such is the paucity of active WSPR stations at 12m. But three spots were obtained within a few minutes of one another, so that gives a slightly better picture.

Beaming North America - against my simple vertical!

 

The single simultaneous spot was to KD2OM.  I have to say I was very surprised to find the difference in favour of the Yagi was only 9dB.  The three spots within much the same period, but not simultaneous, gave 10dB in favour of the Yagi.

Of course, this is a big difference; you get ten times more effective signal from the Yagi than the vertical.  

That said, it will be interesting to now take the vertical to the water's edge and see whether it can erode that advantage.  We'll see if I can make some time this evening.

Whilst the Yagi is a superb performer, it is a relatively complex beast to put up in the air, rotate, maintain and - a big issue here - protect from frequent hurricane-force winds in winter.  All that sometimes causes worry.  To be perfectly honest, whilst putting up a beam is very nice and give a sense of achievement, the hassle of it all for an additional 9dB over a simple vertical is not a favourable equation, at least for me.

In the meantime, for those starting out, or simply curious, here's a sweep of the whole 12m band when using my 1/4 wave vertical with 2 elevated radials at about 1.5m feedpoint height above ground, radials sloping: a flat SWR, for this very narrow band, of just over 1.2:1

Although it's by no means necessary, you can bring the match closer to 1:1 by using a small coil connected between the radiating element and the radial connection, as shown in the image below (it's the orange coil at lower right, used in this case for another antenna experiment):

6m to Alaska

No.  First of all, I didn't know about the 6m opening yesterday to Alaska, nicely reported by EI7GL.

It's certainly an unusual opening.  But it struck me that, though it's a trans-polar path, it's not such a long distance.  We can wrongly think Alaska is spectacularly far away because of the way a sphere is depicted on a flat map.  EI7GL's leading map of the event has dramatic-looking lines that seem to go on forever.  Not his fault, but a product of mapping techniques.

If we look at that flat map, we tend to go 'oooh - so far to Alaska!':

But when we look down on the pole and use a spherical projection, suddenly things look far less impressive.  

The dotted line to the contiguous US is a typical Es path that is seen on many days during the summer season (it's open today, in fact).  It's about 6300km.

The line to Alaska you can already see just by eye is of a very similar length - it's only about 500km further, actually:

Yes, polar fading and so on does make this a path less likely to be successfully worked, and there are of course not so many operators in Alaska anyway.  But we shouldn't be deceived by flat representations of spherical surfaces.

Not that I would complain, had I actually made a QSO with Alaska yesterday!

Let's try 15m...

Another fairly nice evening brought me out with a 15m 1/4 wave vertical onto the hill yesterday.

21MHz from the hill.

I went a little higher up the hill, but to a place that is quite dry and rocky, even though the mineralisation of the ground is very high.  I know from 17m work that it doesn't produce results as good as the wetter ground a few metres lower down, even though it has a much more open aspect in all directions.

All the same, the site produced the goods: KFS heard my 1W at -24dB, but not my vertical delta for the band at all.  The only other UK station he heard came in 8dB weaker than me on a Watt-for-Watt basis; plot is for a full 24 hours' of reception by KFS, which just underscores how few European stations are making it across at the moment:

KFS receptions at 21MHz 05-06 July 2021. 

Reports for the vertical delta loop at home.

Reports for the vertical on the hillside.

Both antennas got 1W across to N6GN/K at 7125km, but with a modest enhancement to the vertical on the hill of 4dB.  But at K9AN, the difference was 8dB - more typical of what we see at 17 and 20m.

Whilst these enhancements might not appear to be enormous, they are certainly significant: a 4dB enhancement turns 5W from a QRP rig into nearly 13W, whilst an 8dB improvement takes us to 20W from the same input. 

It's definitely cycle 25...

No doubt about it.  Good radio days are here again!

Today's Sun.  Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams