Yearning for Solar Cycle 25: But will it even happen?

Posted on July 2, 2017 by robert

According to Dr. Sten Odenwall, we will start seeing the new sunspots of Cycle 25 appear sometime in late-2019. Sunspot maximum is likely to occur in 2024, with most forecasts predicting about half as many sunspots as in Cycle 24.

The bad news is that some studies show sunspot magnetic field strengths have been declining since 2000 and are already close to the minimum needed to sustain sunspots on the solar surface. This is also supported by independent work in 2015 published in the journal Nature. By Cycle 25 or 26, magnetic fields may be too weak to punch through the solar surface and form recognizable sunspots at all, spelling the end of the sunspot cycle phenomenon, and the start of another Maunder Minimum cooling period perhaps lasting until 2100.

Let’s hope that Cycle 24 isn’t our last!

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Mid-way through 2017, DX is Crawling

Posted on July 2, 2017 by robert

At this point halfway to the bottom of cycle 24 (2020), I suppose it is only natural for things to slow down, not only due to the sunspot cycle decline, but also just because there are fewer needed DX entities to obtain.

In the first six months of 2017, the country count is up four to 262.  The DX Challenge is up 18 to 1,243.  (Up one country total and 6 countries in the Challenge in the last quarter).

No luck hearing a WV station on 12 meters, my one remaining state needed for 9-band WAS.  At this point, there is almost no activity on 12 meters anyway.  Maybe on the next sunspot cycle maximum I’ll pick it up.  Meanwhile I’ve picked up a couple more states on 6 meters, and a couple more states on satellite.  This fall/winter should be interesting on 160 meters with my new antenna.

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Calibrating the Uplinks for FD

Posted on June 21, 2017 by robert

The satellites are conspiring against me this year, mostly passes in the dark (nothing like stumbling/fumbling around in the dark in a field), but I’m getting the uplink calibrated again on my IC-9100.

Anyway, was able to calibrate AO-7 uplink (off about 200 Hz from last year), in both CW and SSB.  XW-2B, 2C, and 2F were easy to setup, but no takers for my CQs.

Made a couple of contacts with KK4PP and W4FS on SO-50.  Even had a contact via ISS Digipeat with W4MII

  • 20170621210810 : W4MII]CQ,RS0ISS*,qAR,WB4SON:=4102.57N/07496.02W- Greetings from Tony in grid FN21ma

XW-2A and XW-2D were also calibrated.  Had QSOs with W2JAZ on XW-2D CW, and again later on XW-2B SSB.  Also had a QSO on CW with KA8NCR on XW-2B.

Later at night, I heard myself on the AO-85 downlink around 01:23 to 01:26 UTC, but no takers.  AO-73 continues in sunlight so its impossible to test.

While I had no trouble calibrating for FO-29, and heard my downlink loud/clear from 01:39 to 01:51 UTC, there were no takers for SSB or CW CQs.  I did hear one response to a SSB QSO, but sadly below my local noise floor.

Posted in AO-7, AO-73, AO-85, ISS, Satellite, SO-50, XW-2A, XW-2B, XW-2C, XW-2D, XW-2F | Leave a comment

Field Day 2017 Satellite Passes

Posted on June 20, 2017 by robert

As usual, here is the list of decent satellite passes for Field Day 2017.  Times are in EDT, and the station location is set to FN41 (Rhode Island).  Many of them this year are after dark.  Going to have to hope AO-7 works, or some of the XW satellites.

 

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First Radials on the Ground for Inverted L

Posted on June 3, 2017 by robert

I’ve been using a low loop, about 450 feet of wire, around 20 to 30 feet off the ground for years.  It worked well for me, enabling me to get 9-band DXCC and 8-band WAS.  But the sunspots have diminished, and longer wavelength bands are coming into their prime.  I’d really like to get DXCC & WAS on 160 meters.  A low loop is a cloud warmer at that frequency.

The new plan is to install an inverted-L antenna.  It will have a 55 foot vertical element, then run horizontal to the ground for another 90 feet +/-.  That wire will be attached to a remotely tuned L-Network which is coax fed.  Since the tuner will present a 50 ohm load on the coax side, the feedline loss will be minimal.

A decent radial system will be required for the Inverted-L to work effectively.  So far only 5 radials are on the ground (each 123 feet long), and more will be installed before the first snows this winter.  I’m hoping that this start will be enough to give things a try on 160 and 80 meters.

 

Posted in Antennas, DX, Propagation, Testing | 1 Comment

Amazing LOTW Participation in NEQP

Posted on May 9, 2017 by robert

I just uploaded my New England QSO Party log to LowT and was expecting a few confirmations.  I was stunned when I saw that 60% of the 163 QSOs I uploaded were already confirmed not even 48 hours after the contest conclusion.

As an interesting tidbit, eQSL only had 14% confirmations despite the fact that many log programs automatically update eQSL.  Just shows how it is slowly dying off.

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New England QSO Party Fun

Posted on May 7, 2017 by robert

I don’t recall ever operating in the New England QSO Party before, but several emails were circulating encouraging activity, so I thought I’d give it a go.  Conditions were OK on the lower frequency bands — not a lot of noise.  15-meters even opened up for a brief time Sunday afternoon on a North/South path.

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Replaced my Mobile Mount Today

Posted on April 14, 2017 by robert

Back in March of 2013, I installed a Diamond K9000 Motorized Antenna Mount. Unfortunately it started acting up about five months ago after about 3.5 years of service mounted on a truck that leaves its garage about twice a week, and an antenna that has been raised/lowered less than 100 times.  Needless to say I wasn’t happy.

I was even less happy when I opened the failed unit up and found that it obviously been filled with water at one point as many parts were heavily rusted, despite weep-holes intended to allow the water to drain.  Another issue was discovering a cheaply made limit switch that turns the motor off when in the stowed position.  This was very odd considering that a real snap switch was used for the other limit switch (a SPDT used in the raised position).

The unit was purchased new in early 2013.  The final surprise was discovering that it had been fabricated in 2008 — meaning it had hung around in inventory for 5 years!  Given the lack of quality of the broken limit switch, even having it sit around probably caused the contact to oxidize.

Given the cold weather I waited until spring to swap it out with a new one.  This one appears to be new 2016 inventory.  Hopefully it will last longer than the first one.

Poorly fabricated Limit Switch (Lowered Limit)

Visible Rust in shell (where bottom of motor frame is attached)

Metal Frame of Motor Bracket rusted (likely that water was in raised limit switch too)

 

 

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How Well Does the Pixie Receiver Work?

Posted on April 11, 2017 by robert

My club, Newport County Radio Club, just completed our third and final meeting on the 40-meter QRP Pixie kit.  We packaged the inexpensive Chinese QRP kit with sockets for the crystal and final transistor, two additional crystals (7.030 and 7.040) to go along with the stock Extra Class-only 7.023, and a 2N2222 to be used in place of the stock final.

We did this as a club build project, setting up multiple assembly and test/rework stations. In the end, about two dozen Pixies were built.  All but four of them worked right out of the box.  Two had cold solder joints.  One had a solder bridge.  The only “mystery” turned out to be a LM386 that was on the high-side of its maximum current spec, which caused its power source to collapse.  Everyone managed to get the right components into the right locations and there were no missing parts.  All of the kits produced from 300 to 500 milliwatts output power.

Another question was how well did the receiver perform.  My expectations were quite low as the entire receiver circuit consists of a fairly inadequate LPF (see multiple posts about a Pixie LPF that actually meets FCC requirements), followed by a gimmick mixer (the final transistor), and a LM386 audio amplifier run wide-open gain.  After testing a bunch of Pixies, a pretty reasonable performance specification would be:

  • RX MDS -76 dBm (25 microvolts)
  • -73 dBm is full copy but weak (this is S9)
  • -33 dBm is ear splitting (S9 + 40 dBm)
  • Selectivity is in excess of 10 KHz

Those are pretty bad specs, but what would one expect for a few dollars?  The RX does work and many of our kit builders have used their radios on-air with great success.

Posted in Pixie, QRP | 1 Comment

First Quarter 2017 DX Results

Posted on April 1, 2017 by robert

February and March were pretty good for me at my current snail’s pace, adding three new countries for a total of 261, and bumping the band-point count up to 1,237.

So even near the bottom on Cycle 24, there’s still DX to be had, but 40 meters is now yielding better results, and there is very slim pickings on 10/12/15 anymore. So now I have to be content with working a station on one or two bands rather than six or eight.

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