Quiet field, but busy higher HF

Rather oddly, despite very low geomagnetic activity over the past couple of days (Kp ~1 or less), the higher HF bands have been active to some extent.  I suppose one must wonder as to the cause, especially as signals I've seen on 12m have been very transient and weak Es-like.  The recent meteoric input from the Draconid shower may have something to do with it.

I've seen activity and made QSOs up to and including 10m this weekend.  But 15m has been especially good, with very early morning (~08:30UT) openings as far as Indonesia, even with simple wire antennas. 

12m has been reasonably busy, but as is often the case, seems to suffer from the 'band in-between' syndrome, where 15m and 10m are active, but 12m isn't very.  Even so, signals have been getting to South Africa and Latin America, albeit not very strongly on this band.

In the next year or so, we might see these openings become near-daily features of our radio days, as we climb into solar cycle 25.  But then, after a lot of hype and excitement last month about cycle 25 definitely being on the up - seemingly the product of three consequtive increases in spot numbers - the Sun had other ideas, with the sunspot count taking a nosedive!  Well, the trend is still, probably, upwards. But the timing of the drop in spot numbers was impeccable!

Campaign time!

Well, after a bit of a hiatus in contesting during the lockdown period, RTTY contests seem to be back in fashion again - as is their habit of stamping on WSPR transmissions.

This is something I've been complaining about for a long time - and made only modest progress with.  Calls a couple of years ago for those who populate the WSPRnet chat room to support change led to little if any response, which was particularly regrettable.

Yet, I am certainly not alone.  EURAO, the rapidly-expanding, pan-European radio society, has already published clearer band plans some time ago, with clear warnings about those parts of the bands where WSPR resides. 

And then there is the JTDX software, which prevents users from transmitting the digital modes it supports (sadly, not RTTY), on frequencies where WSPR is found.

Where RTTY supporters will always lose their argument against protecting WSPR is in the fact that, regardless of where they operate from, it will almost universally be the case that knowingly transmitting over existing transmissions is a breach of licence conditions and, by extension, law.

On the flipside, those who developed WSPR should have, in my view, negotiated with regulators before launching it to the world, that such a permanently-used beacon mode should properly be placed and protected in the beacon portions of the bands.  I am not aware this was ever done, nor that any attempts have been made in the years after its release.

I regret to say that each and every attempt to contact Joe Taylor about this has met with total and utter silence, and I have long ago understood he does not wish to engage.

If you find RTTY stamping on WSPR - which only uses a very tiny part of each band and is easily avoided without consequence - equally irritating and wrong, then please do write poitely to each RTTY contest organiser and your national society.  Some organisers will be helpful, but many will be anything but.  National societies are likely to do nothing until sufficient numbers complain, and in many cases, will not care very much about a mode they wrongly perceive as 'pointless'.

Callsigns

An interesting (well, actually rather dull, but you know what I mean!) debate broke out the other day, concerning what a UK issued callsign actually is.

This started when a station - I'll anonymise it by using my own call - EA1/MW1CFN  - was transmitting that callsign from Spain.

Most people today would accept that the actual callsign that should be used when not within the UK and in EA1 would be EA1/M1CFN, not EA1/MW1CFN, because we're not actually in Wales at the time.  When I operated from Iceland last year, I used TF1/M1CFN. 

If we apply for a temporary change of licence conditions to allow the use of a special callsign, we receive the following document, indicating clearly that our allocated callsign does not actually contain a regional secondary locator as an integral part of the call, but is 'hashed', to show that use in the UK requires the use of the correct RSL (but, always confusingly, not  in England, unless it's a Intermediate licence(!))

But, if we look at the parent licence document issued when we apply (or renew, as in the document below), then we get something that includes the RSL.  This seems to mean that the callsign issued to the operator is MW1CFN in my case, not M1CFN, which doesn't appear in hashed form anywhere at all in this, 23-page document.  If I never applied for a variation to my licence, I would presumably never actually know about this hashed version!

Yet, because section 2(2) of the licence issue document is clear that the RSL must be changed when moving location, it's also clear that the MW1CFN callsign can't actually be the callsign issued!  They have the opportunity to issue M#1CFN as the callsign in the licence document, but don't!

I've asked OFCOM, the regulator in the UK, to clarify this confusing situation.  Their response was as follows, confirming that the British station operating in Spain who was of the defiant opinion he was right to include a British RSL in his call when located there was, in fact, completely wrong:

"Thank you for your enquiry about including Regional Secondary Locators (‘RSL’) in the call sign of an amateur radio station.  You are correct that callsigns are effectively issued RSL-free, and that the operator must insert the correct RSL, according to area of operation."

Clearly, that means no RSL is to be used when we are not in any of those UK areas.  Not that this official confirmation has changed the mind of the real operator in Spain, who continues to merrily use his secondary UK locator.  Another example of fixed old men's minds...

Italian oddity

Quiet conditions have returned to the geomagnetic field over the past day or so.  Even so, there was a surprising spot at 14MHz WSPR overnight.

Curiously, IZ6QQT stopped being received at all from 23:30UT, but then reappeared in dramatic fashion between 01:40 and 01:50UT.  This is turning out to be a very narrow, well-defined and interesting time period for 14MHz WSPR reception at the moment.

I've drawn the plot as points only, because drawing lines between them 'fills in' in the gaps between them, giving a misleading portrayal of a decreasing signal when the signal is in fact absent:

14MHz reception of 2W 14MHz WSPR from IZ6QQT

There was only the usual quiet-conditions, daily undulation of the geomagnetic field last night, and the best fit for a restoration of the field from a very slightly disturbed local condition was the magnetometry output from Dickson, Russia (labelled 'dik' on the plot), with Tromso ('tro') also being close:

Somewhere at high latitudes, changes there bring this transient enhancement of signals from Italy.  Quite how is, to me anyway, a mystery, but it must involve effects that make their way to central European latitudes.  And why only one Italian station?  There are a large number of transmitters in operation, yet none are heard.

Whither the Lab599 TX-500? (Reprise)

Continuing the delight-despair journey of the TX-500 from Russia-based Lab599, it seems there isn't an awful lot happening at the moment.

Apart from a couple of review units that have been online for a few weeks now, there has only been one fairly recent 'unboxing' video by a US-based operator, where the radio was actually bought and sent across the world.  But he hasn't done a lot with it, despite asking for ideas of things to review.

A look at the only European distributor, DXPileup - based in Sweden - showed that there are no units available at the moment, with supplies said to be expected around mid-October.

This fabulous-looking and well-specified portable transceiver must have a huge audience waiting to throw money at it.  Yet, it seems to be very slow in launching onto the market, at a time when the ICOM IC-705 stands to steal a lot of that audience instead.

I don't know why the TX-500 is not yet available from a wider range of outlets in Europe.  The absence of any outlet in the UK, no longer a member of the EU, means a large market will, for the most part, not risk buying an expensive product from a country where consumer protection laws do not apply to 'foreign' transactions, should something go wrong.

Well, I can wait.  But not forever...

Australian Anomaly (updated)

Last night saw some fairly disturbed conditions for a period starting around 19UT, with quieter conditions following within a couple of hours, but remaining a little perturbed throughout the local night.

The last 'normal' evening DX station heard at 14MHz WSPR was 8P9DH at 21:40UT (-21dB).

From then on, all but a very sporadic spot or two of one German and one Italian station were received, with everything stopping at 22:58UT.

Then, 92 minutes after no spots at all had been received, and very anomalously, VK3QN and VK3MO, both operated by Ian Williams, VK3MO, came through at around -27dB for  just the period 01:30UT to 01:40UT (both stations transmit 5W at 10 minute intervals).

The only other UK station to receive the VK3 signals was 2E0PYB, with two spots at 01:00UT and 01:10UT - 20 minutes earlier than my spots, indicating that the mechanism of propagation was consistent with displacement due to the Earth's rotation (2E0PYB, being in Cambridgeshire and so to the east of me, would be expected to hear the spots a computed 16 minutes earlier than my location).

Plot of received spot distances, 2020 October 05-06, 14MHz WSPR, showing anomalous reception of VK3MO and VK3QN around 01:30UT (later morning spots are normal long path events).

 

Compare the disturbed field outcomes with the quiet field condition the following day (06-07 October 2020), using the same X and Y scales:

Distances of WSPR spots 14 MHz, 06-07 October 2020 under quiet geomagnetic conditions.  Note how not only are spots from VK3 not present (either in the depths of early morning, or later, long path morning period), but that the reception of UK and European (local) stations is also suppressed between ~ 02 and 04UT.

These anomalous spots came about 6 hours after most of the geomagnetic activity had occurred.  Whilst it is usually the case that anomalous spots will arrive as the field relaxes to a more quiet state, it is not common to see such spots so long after a relaxation.  Unfortunately, the Kiruna magnetogram, which can provide a better understanding of the field at times, is currently being serviced and unavailable.

(Above) Norwegian line magnetometry 05-06/10/2020(Courtesy TGO).

Norwegian line magnetometry for 2020 October 06-07

Things to ponder

I can't say there's been much excitement radiowise again this past week.  The closest thing to radio I can muster today is a fantastic colour photo as Sputnik 1 was launched, a mere 63 years ago, on 05th October, 1957 (local time: UTC launch was 04 October, 19:28UTC; Baikonur is UTC+6 hrs).

It's quite strange if you imagine yourself at the Baikonur launch site, when there was nothing at all man made in orbit around the earth.  The colour image, especially of the late dusk sky, makes everything very familiar, yet it's a very different era.

Sputnik 1 had a 1 Watt transmitter sending beeps at both 20.005 and 40.002 MHz.  The launch of Sputnik provided the scientists developing the world-famous Jodrell bank radio telescope with the significant additional funds they needed to complete the structure, so that the new satellites could be monitored.

Today, there are about 9,000 satellites in orbit, the number rising very quickly, notably due to the controversial Starlink project.  

 

 

At risk of cancellation due to serious cost overruns, Sputnik 1's arrival made completion of Jodrell Bank assured, and the launch rocket - an R7 ICBM, was tracked by the telescope in radar mode.  Image: Getty.