What we choose to celebrate

Special event callsigns are something many of us like to operate from time to time.  I typically run one or two a year, although it's quite an effort to get the callsign certificates and QRZ.com pages all set up.

This past month saw a lot of VE Day 75th anniversary SES callsigns operating around Europe, including my own, GB5VEP.

Also in May, we saw a number of 'stay at home' callsigns and, in the UK, the rather unusual acceptance by OFCOM that the suffix /NHS could be used with any callsign.  

One thing that is often true about SES events is that they have little direct relevance to radio per se.  And indeed, there has never been any legal or other understanding that they should.  We are free to choose what we would like to celebrate, from the local village fete to globally-historic events. 

So, I was surprised to see that nobody, thus far, has started using a 'Black Lives Matter', 'BLM' or other such callsign to raise awareness, protest and celebrate, possibly in equal measure, following recent events in the US.

And the UK is hardly innocent: non-white men are over nine times as likely as white men to be stopped and searched by Police

Partly to see what would happen, and partly out of genuine interest in why we haven't seen any SES in support of black lives suddenly spring up, I posted a simple question on QRZ.com as to why not?

The response is rather disturbing.

Here are a few selections, those from the US being made at ~4am local time:

VK4HAT, from the immigrant nation that obliterated Aboriginal black lives:

"Only a matter of time before a mod logs in and nukes this shit."

ON6KE, from a nation that was heavily 'involved' in Congo:
:
"We already have enough special call sign crap." 

WE4B, from the immigrant nation built on black blood and toil:

"This is not going to end well..."

K4AGO, as above:

"Has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with ham radio."

WZ7U, entirely missing the point (and data) about black experience:

"Incoming!
So, in the interest of staying on a radio vector, would the call sign suffixes need to be BLM or ALM for all lives matter?"

And an afterthought by WZ7U that doesn't improve his image:

' "I can't breathe" would be a really long call sign'

(it's hardly much longer than 'stayathome', which was no problem for anyone)


WZ7U and VK4HAT then find their echo chamber working very well, and issue the following:

 
Of course, I've previously and long-noted the lack of non-white and non-male faces appearing in the ham radio press, and this kind of troubling responses, made in public with full identifying information, is hardly a good message for any non-white people reading it nor, for that matter, for any thinking white people doing the same.

Up yours, QRZ.com and its racist members!

So, now you know: when black people are murdered by the Police, you can look forward to that being equated to a potato.  But no SES callsign to raise awareness.  That would simply be going too far, apparently.

Update:

QRZ.com yielded to the inevitable racist backlash and 'moved' the thread, which was in general discussions already.  Though it says it has been moved to a 'proper forum', I see no sign of it.  I fear that QRZ.com is more 'White American' than I already found it to be, and I am quite disturbed by the degree of hatred on display there.  None of those people making mockingly racist comments have been censored, of course.

New WSJT-X v.2.2.0

Yes folks, the latest release of WSJT-X is out!

The improvements and changes are all listed here, which I'm glad to see includes a lot of attention to WSPR, amongst many other things.


The last time I tested the two systems, this showed the then latest stable WSJT-X release was 4% behind JTDX.

A quick test for an hour or so today showed the following:

JTDX v2.6.0 RC150 = 540 decodes

WSJT-X v2.2.0 = 524 decodes

So, Joe Taylor and company are still struggling to keep up with Igor, coming in 3% behind JTDX and so closing the gap by only ~1% since the last test.

Add to that the fact that JTDX decodes everything at 'deep' setting within about 15 seconds, whilst JTDX takes about 25 seconds, and the former software is even more attractive.

Real-time propagation

I've been thinking some more about John, EI7GL's recent activities, and a little about my own, with QRSS (slow Morse) transmissions, and what they can reveal about propagation.

John rightly notes that QRSS is a very useful, visual way of keeping track of propagation, and how it changes in real time.

A QRSS signal, showing propagation changes over several seconds.

There is a problem with using QRSS, though, and that is the tiny number of people transmitting it, making gathering data rather difficult.  This number isn't very likely to increase much, because one has to build a fairly involved kit to send QRSS.

This problem doesn't afflict WSPR so much, not least because you can buy cheap 'plug and play' WSPRlite units, or just use a transceiver and computer. As a result, there are many more WSPR stations on the air than QRSS.

So, I got to thinking: why not just use Argo, the QRSS-optimised spectrum analyser, to display WSPR signals instead?

So, I tuned to the 28MHz WSPR QRG, and adjusted the frequency scale on Argo to ~1400Hz. Soon, enough, a nice example signal appeared, nicely expanded in frequency and time, such that quite a lot of detail is visible.

A 28MHz WSPR signal, also showing propagation changes, visualised in Argo.

OK, you can't directly read the callsign using WSPR and Argo as you can with QRSS.  But there are simple workarounds, such as multiple audio streams, one feeding Argo, the other JTDX, so that callsigns can be matched with signal traces on Argo.  Or, just becoming familiar on JTDX with who is transmitting at which frequency, and then applying that to Argo traces.

Altogether, using WSPR in this modified way is quite interesting, and a lot more productive than waiting for the small number of QRSS signals to appear or, as is often the case, not appear!

Ebb and Flow

There wasn't an awful lot of visible QRSS to ponder about yesterday.  But, during the later afternoon, TF3HZ started coming and going on the waterfall.

It's interesting to relate how the signal changes with the structure we find in the middle atmosphere during midsummer.

TF3HZ's undulating 28MHz QRSS yesterday afternoon.

In essence, what we have is wave structure presenting a suitably-orientated reflective surface which permits propagation.  By looking at noctilucent clouds, which are reasonably considered a visual analogue of Es, we can actually see what's going on.

NLC - 'seeing' what Es looks like.  (C) 2019 MW1CFN

The wave, moving rapidly, soon changes such that the signal path is no longer supported.  And, as we all know, Es propagation is often highly localised, with one station hearing strong signals, whilst someone down the road hears nothing.

And gravity waves, which cause these undulations in Es, is the reason why this happens.

Waves in NLC and Es are rarely of trivial structure!  (C) MW1CFN

Effort - or a complete lack of it!

Last autumn, I thought I might have a go at some 2m digital work.  The aim was to have an outsider's attempt at crossing the Atlantic.

Already, I've managed a FT8 QSO ith D4, using just a three-element beam and ~50W initially.  That makes my investment in the IC-746 worthwhile, on its own.

Beaming North America.  But is there anybody there to hear or be heard?

But the transatlantic stuff is really very curious.  Indeed, it is very disappointing for the almost complete lack of effort people are making.

The now regular exchanges between D4 and mainland Europe happen because, mainly, the D4 contest group is making a big effort to be on the air as much as they reasonably can.  If they won a prize of any sort, I think we'd all say 'yes, and well deserved, too'.

So, what about the effort made by US operators?  Here is a plot, taken this morning, of what I see, pretty much day in, day out:

The Japanese, ever-hopeful, are making a valiant effort, as are many European stations. OK, they may not all be chasing DX, but at least they are there, being active. Yes, more FT8 will appear in the US as the day wears on, but they never reach large numbers, and almost all are not in a position, anyway, to be likely to make a transatlantic crossing, which ideally needs a far shorter path.

Indeed, there are no monitoring stations currently active in the US, despite the fact that, right now, we are already in a peak of Es occurrence, at least so far as EU-based data is concerned:

Those few in the US who are interested in the Brendan Prize - or simply in the joy of making the transatlantic contest, regardless of any prize on offer - tell me that they prefer JT65A or B.  This is sensible, because it's considerably more sensitive than FT8 and, one could argue, somewhat more likely to be heard by chance due to its nearly 1-minute long transmission period.

So, how many people are listening for JT65 today?

One guy in Australia - listening on 129 MHz (a second JT65 station later appeared deep in the US, unlikely ever to make a transatlantic crossing, and probably not even trying to).


I've come to thinking that people are basing their decision on whether or not to be active on 2m DX on the tropo maps available online.  Of course, tropo propagation is only one mechanism, and Es is the other, probably much more important mechanism for this particular path.  

So, with this kind of non-effort going on, I don't expect the Brendan Prize to be snapped up through a mainland Europe - US (or Canada) QSO! 

There, but rarely seen.

I undertook some more WSPR work at 28MHz yesterday.  Prompted by the not-unexpected finding that Es-mediated signals are extremely variable over short time periods, I thought I'd look at data that is rarely examined: frequency drift.

Why?

Well, it's obvious that the cause of the vast signal strength changes over short timescales is due to the irregular nature of the Es 'clouds', and that there is also organsed wave structure within them.  Also, the Es clouds move with a high velocity - perhaps from a few tens up to several hundred metres per second, where a Doppler shift would therefore be strongly expected.

To visualise the complexity involved, take a quick look at this fine video of noctilucent clouds, which are closely related to Es, at least in terms of structure and motion:

For this simple experiment, I chose TF3GHZ, as that station has an underlying zero frequency drift in TX.

I plot the results of the signal received (blue), together with the signal drift (orange), to which 10 has been added in order to bring the line away from the horizontal scale (i.e. where you see the orange line = +10, it was actually 0dB drift).  Blue boxes indicate periods when no signal received here:

TF3GHZ 1W 28MHz WSPR received by MW1CFN 2020 May 31-June 01.

With Iceland slightly to my NW, we would, simplistically, expect the signal to be coming from Es with a resultant motion (mindful I am looking 'broadside' to the motion, not in line with it), that yields a negative Doppler shift (i.e. a slight drop in frequency as the reflecting surface recedes).  And, indeed, that is what is seen: up to minus 4Hz shift.

Sticking 4Hz into the Doppler equations yields an effective 'broadside' motion of, very roughly, 40m per second, with the proper motion significantly higher than that.

Obviously, one would need to look at a large number of stations to see if this result is just fortuitous, or is repeated consistently.  Even then, motion in Es is, as the video shows, non-trivial, and so I expect it will be a very messy picture.

One obvious question to ask is whether the expected Doppler shifts are seen for receivers with transmitters to their west and east.  It can be done, but it needs more time than I have.  It also needs a pretty sophisticated statistical analysis to drag the real effect from what is a very messy picture, given we need to identify, for each TX-RX set-up, a zero underlying drift - itself a tedious exercise - as just a starting point!


 

28MHz WSPR

It's a long time since I did any WSPR activity at 28MHz, but recent conditions are now making this worthwhile, as operators return in much larger numbers to the band (although many could well do with forgetting what they did 5 years ago, and turn their power down from 5W!)

The clear thing with 10m WSPR is that, because signals are coming in via Es, which is inherently irregular in nature, the SNR pattern is extremely noisy when compared with lower bands; rapid deviations of ~20dB occur regularly in the following plot of my signal heard by DK6UG yesterday evening and into the morning today:

DK6UG hearing my 1W at 28MHz (TX: vertical delta loop, at 1st harmonic).

Meanwhile, a monster PMSE cloud is emerging through this morning.  It may well be another busy day on the higher bands!

PMSE echoes, Arctic Norway today.