My brother John got married to Jodi this past weekend in Stratford upon Avon. A good time was had by all and it was great to spend time with friends and family.
Suffice to say we all had a bit to drink and Sunday was very much a ‘recovery’ day. Back to work this morning and still feeling a bit rough but well worth it for what was a great day out.
Best wishes to John & Jodi for a long and happy life together!
Dean Life... marriage
…is, that he is using a form of Hellschreiber, a fax like data transmission mode. Hellschreiber (also known as Feldhellschreiber, Feld-Hell or simply Hell ) was invented br Dr Rudolf Hell in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s and was developed to provide intelligible communication even over very poor quality radio or cable links.
You can read more about Hellschreiber in the wikipedia article here.
Dean Amateur Radio Hellschreiber, technology
You may or may not have noticed that I’ve changed the title of my blog. It now makes it quite clear whose blog it is and what the content relates to.
I also thought it appropriate I highlight the amateur radio aspects because they did seem to be taking over anyway. Over half of all posts to date (38 of 67 at the time of writing) are amateur radio related!
Dean Amateur Radio, Blog blog, G0RIF
I was checking out 20m last night to see what South American stations might be working PSK31 when I noticed an unusual trace from an Italian station, IT9AQR, Vincenzo in Sicily.
PSK31 ’symbols’ for CQ and 73 from IT9AQR - how does he do that?
He also has a similar symbol for ‘QRZ’ which I didn’t get a screenshot of. I think it’s quite neat.
I’m not going to get into the rights or wrongs of it (because I haven’t yet seen any other comments on this kind of PSK extension) but I’d love to know how he does it. I’ll ask around and report my findings.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures PSK31, technology
We have been told that our office is now dried out to the point we can move back in tomorrow, Friday the 26th of June.
I’ve been through that part of the office a few times over the past 8 days while it’s been drying out and to be honest, it does still smell a bit, but we’ll have to get used to that because I reckon it’ll take a while for that to subside to a ‘not noticing it any more’ level.
It’ll be nice to get back to normal but I do wonder how long it will be before we have to move out again following another flood.
Dean Totally random flood, office
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WSPR, an acronym for ‘Weak Signal Propagation Reporter’ and pronounced ‘whisper’, is a program written by Joe Taylor (K1JT) that allows radio amateurs around the world to conduct real time propagation tests in conjunction with an online spots reporting database.
I had previously tried WSPR about 6 months ago but with little success at that time. I decided to try again last night on the FT-950 and was pleased to see it worked perfectly. I can’t be sure but I think the FT-950 has something to do with it - the digital filters really help in pulling out the very weak signals that the software is looking for.
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WSPR screenshot
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Part of the appeal of WSPR is that you can have it ‘watch’ a particular band for you (although activity is limited outside of the 30m band) to see what propagation there is to various parts of the world, even as you do other things. You can optionally configure the software to transmit to a pseudo-random schedule, to see where in the world your ‘whispers’ are heard. I have uploaded a few screenshots of the software and the online spots database where you can see how this information is presented (Pictures >> Amateur Radio).
If you would like to read more about WSPR there is a very good write-up on Julian Moss’s (G4ILO) website in his article entitled WSPR - Distant Whispers.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures FT-950, propagation, WSPR
just another sunny day in paradise…probably
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I can’t be sure but I think it’s probably another sunny day in paradise. It’s sunny here too in central England - the problem is I’m stuck in the office all day…again.
This morning is another beautiful morning with clear blue sky and not a cloud in sight, just like yesterday. It’s days like these when you wish it was like this all the time. Sadly, up here in the northern climes we inhabit, that isn’t the case. The best we can hope for every summer is a month or two of hot sunny weather at the very most!
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As I sit at my desk (a temporary location this week due to last weeks flood - see earlier post for details) I see in my minds eye, not the trees and office blocks I see from my window, but a sandy beach and a blue ocean beneath a clear blue sky - my idea of paradise.
Living somewhere with a view like that is a dream of mine and one I intend making a reality with my partner Dulcie. For now though I can only sit in my office looking at the beautiful clear blue sky and working toward making that dream come true.
Dean Life..., Pictures, Totally random dreams, paradise, weather
I caught the last 10 minutes or so of a television show last night entitled ‘James May at the Edge of Space’, part of a BBC month-long season of programming to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the moon on 20 July 1969. In the program James flew to the edge of space (an altitude of 70,000ft) in a USAF U-2 spy plane.
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What struck me was his reaction to the view of earth from up there on the edge of space - on landing he said something along the lines of ‘if everyone on earth could do [see] that, just once, it would completely change the face of global politics, religion, education, everything! Maybe a slightly simplistic view but certainly an element of truth in his sentiments.
I have heard that many astronauts experience profound and deep emotions on seeing their home, planet earth, reduced to an almost insignificant orb in the vastness of space.
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home to 7 billion souls
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One such astronaut (not sure who but he was from the Apollo program) summed it up very well when he said, that on seeing the earth from 250,000 miles away while in lunar orbit (as in the classic ‘earth rise’ image shown), all he could think of was that the small blue green planet in the distance was home to 5 billion souls!
There are a few billion more souls on earth now but it is very humbling to think that we all inhabit a small planet that is home to each and every one of us. I think it would serve us all well to consider this every once in a while.
Dean Pictures, Totally random earth, space, universe
The frequency with which cards arrive from the bureau depends entirely on how active you are and how many cards you send out. I’m not particularly active but I do make a point of sending out as many cards as is sensible for new band/mode slots. I tend to get packs from my sub-manager about every 6 months so it’s always a nice surprise when they arrive.
a selection of the QSL cards received from the bureau today
Todays pack contained a few cards I’d been waiting a long time for (from Guyana, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan) in amongst the usual selection of colourful cards from around the world. I’ve compiled a little collage of a few of the cards received - you can see these and more in my QSL picture pages.
Dean Amateur Radio bureau, QSL
…with the FT-950 are in the log but it wasn’t all plain sailing! Despite leaving it all in a working state when I powered off last night, turning it on this evening intent on meeting Richard (M0SNR) on 6m for a quick RTTY sked resulted very much in a ‘back to square one’ type scenario - nothing would work!
To cut a long story short the problem appears to have been 6m. Whenever the radio was set to transmit on 6m it would stay in transmit even if the PC software sent a PTT off command. HRD wouldn’t unkey the transmit, neither would MMTTY. Only unplugging the USB cable to the interfce box (the SB-2000) would force the radio back to receive mode.
I’m going to see what others on the HRD forums and the FT-950 Yahoo user group think about this but I suspect RFI on 6m getting the interface software or low level COM port driver into a bad state.
The good news was I made a few contacts tonight once I had figured out what the problem was. At 20:02 UTC I had a short PSK31 QSO using the Digipan software with HA1FB (Feri) and at 20:32 UTC I had a RTTY QSO with OH1LWZ (Hannu) using the MMTTY software. I do eventually hope to use DM780 for PSK31 but I will continue to use MMTTY for RTTY even though this does mean you have to close the HRD software because they both use the same COM port. Not ideal but I am prepared to put up with it for the sake of using MMTTY and FSK keying.
I have more work to do but the first thing I’ll check tomorrow is that tonights settings are still ok when I power it all back up again after shutting it down tonight!
Dean Amateur Radio computers, DM780, FT-950, HRD, PSK31, RTTY, SB-2000, technology, Yaesu