Now /mm but not et up with radio yet. More when I can.
de TA/G0LFP/mm

Just a quick update, because I'm trying to keep myself distracted. After the 6m milestone, it's something of a coincidence that 10m has just passed the 100 grid squares worked!

This week turned out to be quite a disappointment on 6m. I managed to catch brief openings on the 13th and 17th. The weekend was busy with the 6m contest, so plenty to be worked. At the end of Saturday night I had a problem with the radio cutting out, not sure what it was as it seems to have cured itself!!! Anyway, Sunday afternoon I played safe and operated QRP from the 817. I still managed to get another 6 contacts in the log, one of which was 9A1V for square number 250.

Nothing for the 8th (Tuesday)
Wednesday:
Quite a mixed bag really, 9 DX contacts in the log, notably SQ5WAA for KO02, and DJ6YX for JO52. Both new grids.
Thursday:
CQ7OA for EU-040, and then EA3AR for JN12 and another new grid.
Friday:
White noise!
Saturday:
3 Canadians, VO1SO in GN37, VO1BC in GN38 and a new grid, VO1KVT in GN29 and another new grid. Much later on the band changed and the conditions favoured the Caribbean, resulting in KP4EIT and HI3TEJ. Neither of these were new.
At the end of play today, as the band seems to have closed:-
GRIDS 50 MHz All time = 249 Confirmed = 85 Current year = 46
DXCCs 50 MHz All time = 57 Confirmed = 26 Current year = 28
Best DX this year: 6886km, HI3TEJ

The Sunday morning portion of the UKSMG contest. I managed to miss the early activity due to guests staying in the G0LFP house. By the time I did get to the shack, there didn't seem to be a great deal going on. So, just as an experiment, I dropped the lower mast, and took the 4m halo off, cut a 17m dipole, and put that up in inverted-V configuration. No balun, nothing. Just coax and wire. It runs N-S so although I was hearing Madeira at 59+ I wasn't making it back through the European callers.
I did still manage to work EA8DO and CO8LY for two new DXCCs.
This evening, a short opening to Iceland netted TF2JB, and then Gulli, TF8GX.

Not much doing during the week, though Friday night late on a couple of brief openings resulted in IZ7EUH in JN81 for #237.
Saturday afternoon, and the start of the UKSMG contest, the band really wasn't in too good shape DX wise, with few decent signal being heard. A quick resume of the logged contacts for today goes something like;
10 contacts in the log, of which, 7 were new squares, and 2 were new DXCCs.
5B4AIF KM64 New square and DXCC
MW0ZZK IO72 New sqaure
UT1I KN96 "
SO8FH KO10 "
SM5EJN JO88 "
LY1CX KO25 New square and DXCC
OH1MN KP10 New square and EU-096

Summary of squares and DXCCs now looks like this:
QRA locators
28 MHz All time = 95 Confirmed = 24 Current year = 4
50 MHz All time = 244 Confirmed = 78 Current year = 26
DXCCs
28 MHz All time = 63 Confirmed = 29 Current year = 4
50 MHz All time = 57 Confirmed = 25 Current year = 18



There is a new addition to the stable too, I recently acquired an FT-817ND via a well known online auction site. I'd been thinking about getting one for a while with the upcoming /mm operation only a little over a month away. I had been 'watching' a few, when I saw one like new in the box, all orignal packaging... and at the end of auction we were both on the Isle of Wight! Well I had to didn't I. I've made a couple of brief contacts from the car, so I know it's working fine. Let's see how it operates from a couple of feet above sea level.

Apologies for not adding an entry earlier, but I thought it might be an idea to report the activity from Tuesday 25th May 2010. Being a Tuesday of course means that I don't get to spend too much time in the shack, however, I was greeted with a band full of signals mostly from Scandinavia. In the log for new all time sqaures went SK2AT (KP03), SM3XGV (JP81), OH0/PA3BAG (JP90) and a new DXCC, and finally OZ2IE (JO46).
This brings the total all time squares to 235, and the new DXCC raises the total to 55.
Wednesday evening was a little bit of a disappointment. Nothing in the log.
More from tonight (Thursday) as it happens.
A couple of contacts on 6m, one of which was SM7UFR in JO87 for an all time new square. (236)

It was lovely to come home to lots of lines on the map, so in as long as it took to boil the kettle I was on my way to the shack. There wasn't much around to start with, just a few stations in and out of the noise, so it was a case of grab them while you can! First one to come right up was 9A2PT. We had a quick 'rubber stamp'. So too did E76C, and S57AR. The conditions seemed to be changing in favour of more N/S paths, which was a pity, as I hadn't managed to grab one of the 4Z stations that had been spotted, and worked by locals (to me). In and out of the noise came IW0UII, he peaked at 59, so I grabbed him quick, same with CT1JHU. Reports were still coming in via G0LGS and M3WDS that the 4Z was still audible, so I turned the antenna, and fully extended the mast. Got one!!!! All stations worked were new squares for the annual totals, but 4Z5LA was an all time (#231) and a new DXCC (No.54), not to mention of course, the year's best DX so far at 3678m.
Now I have to say, that I don't really like extending the mast unguyed with the beam on it, it makes it rather top heavy. Since it was absolutely flat calm here I thought I might be OK. Stupid boy Pike.... or so I thought when I saw it going past the shack window!!! Fortunately it landed on the flat garage roof, and no serious damage done, just a slight bend to the reflector. Looks like I got away with it!!

At long last, after much fiddling with the code, I've managed to get the DX Map fully working. I had a problem where the map would load but the imagemap, although loading, wasn't being refreshed. When you select the band, (by default it loads all spots on all bands) the map is refreshed, and 1 second later an up to date imagemap is loaded. These are both refreshed every 30 seconds. There should not be any need to reload the page. Please feel free to have a play and try and break it. If you notice anything odd, please let me know via the email address on the front page. Many thanks. - Steve G0LFP

The 2010 E's season is with us at last! Nothing too strong here, but enough on the map to make me put the beam up on the telescopic mast. It'll get transferred to the main mast when the stub mast has been replaced, it got bent in the gales, and I don't trust it not to give up with the extra load on it.
Since the end of the E's season last year, I've been playing with maps and other graphics on the webserver, and put them all together on their own site called SIX Addict, no really! OK, it's not strictly limited to 6m, 50MHz operation, but that was what was in mind when I put it together. Go on.. follow the link.. dare you!

Despite pointing a 12 element antenna at the moon for well over an hour last night, I actually heard nothing. A local amateur with a much better antenna and feed heard 'a few tones' during the JT65 part of the experiment. Result = disappointed.
The DX Maps are now fully working with respect to the lines and blobs. The little orange square is the sun (solar time), and the little black square is the 'clock' time. I'm currently working on a way to display the callsign and the frequency on the map using tooltips. This however, is proving a little more difficult than I imagined. More when I've got something working.
Something else... is WORK! I'm currently busy, and travelling quite a bit, so playing radio has had to take a back seat for the recent past, and certainly for a couple of months yet.

Well, at least for me it does, today is the 21st birthday of my Full UK Amateur radio licence.
I was away on holiday in Cornwall when it arrived, so unfortunately, it didn't get used for a the first few days.
Happy Birthday G0LFP :-)

There are some new toys to play with, and for you to try to break. When you succeed, let me know how!
Over on the right, of the main page, you will see some distance and bearing calculators. There are three so far... Beacons, repeaters, and if they're in my DX database, you'll get distance and bearing to DX stations, all you need to do is enter your locator and the dx callsign. Do have fun :-)

New page now complete and tested. If you try it and break it, let me know how please.

The Yaesu FT7800 currently represents good value for money in my opinion. So I bought one! It very quickly became apparent that you can't easily program the memory channels easily using the user interface. Fortunately, Bob, G4HFQ, has written a lovely little program that mimics the clone mode of the radio on a PC, allowing you to download/upload memories. If you want to enter a lot of repeaters, that still leaves you a fair bit of typing to do.
Not any more it doesn't!
There is now csv generator on this site to allow you to make a csv containing all the repeaters in a given region/band.
Click HERE!
An updated version is already underway to allow you to get the csv directly.
Feedback please.

Yes it really is that long! As you may have read, there is a new shack. The plan was originally to refit, and move in as quickly as possible. It didn't quite work out like that. The new shack has been properly insulated this time, it has a plastic membrane on ALL sides, including the floor. The walls have a foil backed 'bubble wrap' material, and then OSB, painted to make it look nicer. Same for the roof. The floor has a thick black plastic liner, underlay, and then carpet. All in all, quite cosy.
Obviously, this means that there has been virtually no real radio since the end of the summer, that means no log entries, and no blog entries....

Until Today!
For the first entry in the log of 2010, E73EPA on 20m. That's a new DXCC on that band, so happy enough with that. Tuning up through the bands, 17m and 15m seemed to be open, so a quick check of the cluster, and up pops D2CQ. I've been folloing him up and down the band by DX spot rather than by hearing him, but as yet, only weak voices in the noise. It's been 15 minutes since his last spot, so maybe I've missed him. There are still one or two ZS stations being spotted, so there is still hope. More later if I actually work anything.

One of the great things that I love about this hobby, is that you can devote as much, or as little time to it as you can afford... and still enjoy it. The only log entries since my last blog have been contest entries.
So here's an update on what's been happening.
The Shack is on hold now for a while. So, yes, I'm still in my temporary home. That's not likely to present too much of a problem over the winter, and it gives me much more time to organise things rather than just pile them all back in there.
I'm still WSPRing on 30m. I have managed to obtain some air-spaced caps, and some semi rigid copper pipe. The sort that's bendable by hand, but not the really skinny stuff (microbore). Anyway, I've made a circle of tube around 1m in diameter, it's a little over that at the moment until I figure how I'm going to hold it up. I have an old ATU that will be the sacrificial tuner box, and heaps of info thanks to James, 2E0JCA who has already been down this route.
More as it happens.. I'm off to get coffee.

To save you the bother of looking..:
TK/LX1FX/MM 2009-08-09 15:00z 50.150 SSB JN41IT 59 57 Andre

is the only log entry since my last blog entry!

For those of you who know me, stop reading now. Otherwise, here's what's been happening.....
Four of the last six weeks I've spent working away, so radio time has been non-existent. Additionally, there is a new shack, which as yet, I haven't managed to move into. This of course means that I'm still in a temporary shack set up in the back half of the garage, surrounded by all of my clutter, randomly strewn around in plastic stacker-boxes. As I haven't managed to catch very much in the way of 6m activity, I've been having another bash with WSPR. It's quite amazing how far a small handfull of watts can get you! If you haven't tried it yet, it's worth having a play with. The software is free to download from Joe Taylor's website, and in addition to a radio, all you will need is some form of interface to your computers sound card. Check out http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wspr.html for more info. You'll find me on 30m if I'm active. Hope to see you there.

As is not uncommon in the G0LFP household, work and other commitments have kept me away from the radio during band openings for much of the E's season this year. This is likely to continue certainly past the end of this years main E's activity. Others will no doubt attest that the level of a weekend activity has also been very low this year. Excuses out of the way, let's get on with some reporting. Since the last blog entry, and until today, there was only one contact in the logbook, KP4EIT, (FK68) on the 24th at 22.38z, and the only signal on the band over quite a long period of time.

Today's activity was centred around northern Europe and southern Scandinavia. The first QSO in the log was DF5KB, (JO72), followed by three in Sweden, SM0CHH (JO89), SM7NR (JO76), and lastly, just before G0LGS did an 'LFP' on the band, I quickly nabbed SM1/DK2ZF (JO96), for a new square and a new IOTA Gotland Is. (EU-020).

After the 'spots' part of the main page got broken by the change to the plain text version of the spots page at dxsummit, I decided to change the way it was done. Initially I read the last 1000 spots in text and then chopped them up by frequency. The down side of doing it this way was the slow refresh rate of the 1000 spot page (3 minutes). Since then, with a great deal of help from Dave (G7RAU) I have Live MUF v7 running feeding a MySQL database. The spots are now taken from that database and displayed as you see them. You will also see a little box with a grid square in it. Change this to your grid square and you will see all spots with one end in your square highlighted in RED. The page is also noticeably faster to load.

NP4A (FK68) and HI3TEJ (FK49). Two new DXCCs and two new squares in two QSO's. What a happy bunny I am. I've never worked the Carribean before, so it was a real treat to not only hear them, but also to be able to work them both within a few minutes of each other.

As is usual for NFD, the increased activity on the VHF bands enables a little 'gap filling' of grid squares. It wasn't really an enormous effort on my part, with only 19 serial numbers given out on 3 bands. First one in the log within three minutes of the start, was E7DX, and he gave me serial number 10!!!
High point of the weekend was definitely the outstanding Sporadic-E opening on 2m. A look at my maps will tell you that 2m really isn't my band, but even I managed to net CT1DHM for IN61 and a new DXCC. What makes this contact really strange, is the fact that I'm missing that square on 6m! The last 15 minutes of the contest, I switched over to 4m, and managed a whole three contacts. With only 10W out to a mismatched antenna I wasn't expecting much, but IO93 was nice.

Other projects on the go..
Yesterday (Sat) I did something I've been meaning to do for as long as I've been in the present shack, I stripped and cleaned my Morse key. The contacts had become dirty and it wasn't performing very well. The screw terminals on the back had come undone underneath too. Now all I need is a little practise oscillator, and to try to remember how to use it. Why am I doing this? Well, it has become apparent that, after talking to G0HVQ and G4ENZ, sometimes the only way to work the dx on 6m is to use CW. If that's what it takes, then that's what will happen. Since I must have been good enough in 1989, I'll just have to brush up a little... wish me luck. ;-)

What an evening! It has to be 14 years since I first ventured onto the 6m band when I bought my old TS680S, with its massive 10W of power. In all that time I've only heard the USA/Canada on a very few occasions, but never as strong as I did tonight. There were some signals peaking 59+20dB, and I was giving and receiving genuine 59 reports. The strongest signal by far was K3TKJ (FM28), but no real surprise that he was the strongest with his stack of 4x7 element yagis and 1.5kW !!! The band started to open for me in IO81 at around tea time with a few stations working into the Caribbean, though at the time all the transatlantic QSOs were on CW. At just after 2100z the first stations started to appear on the SSB portion, and in the next 90 minutes, ten new grid squares went in the log. Best dx was KN5O (EM40) at 7316km. Bringing the totals to 225 squares worked, 93 this year, 10 new ones today! EM40,63,89, EN91, FM28,29, FN10,12,20,31,42,43, went in the log.
DX Sherlock map

The 6m band was open throughout the contest this weekend which I'm sure will make for some VERY big scores. I put 16 QSOs in the log and managed a few new grids. Even after the contest there was still some activity though much lower than during it. Since the last Blog entry, I did manage IW3IFJ for a new one (JN55) and then SM5YMS whilst listening for HV0 for JO78 a new one this year.
Totals for 2009 now sit at:
All time squares = 215 Confirmed = 78 2009 = 81 in 106 Contacts. Next chance to operate will be at the end of the week, so nothing from me until at least Friday night :-(

Well well...! The band did us proud today. Excellent conditions all day, and even as I type at 23:15 local time, the band is still wide open. Propagation has moved round, giving us a chance to work some new squares. As it happens the same happened yesterday too, so over the last couple of nights its has been possible to add a few new squares and a few new DXCC entities. New squares over the last couple of days, so far looks like this:
KN87 EN5ØØI
KN46 ER1SS
KN15 YO7NW
JN73 9A2ZH
JO82 SP3YDE
IM12 CT3FQ
DXCCs now 50 on 6m with Latvia and Madeira. :-)

I neglected to blog on the 11th, even though I had had a good evening on 6m. With a few calls in the log, the band seemed to be open in all directions at once. New all time square was F1TZG in JN25. It was great to work Gulli, TF8GX again, in HP84 helping the annual totals.
Today, 14th June:
A good opening into Europe, and the Caribbean, though as usual I didn't hear much from that direction. In the log went EB1TT (IN72) for #207.
One that got away, despite calling and calling, was IS0/DK7ZB from JM48. As I type at just gone 17.30 local time, the band has just closed altogether. Here's hoping it comes back later to catch the IS0 as it's the last day of the DXpedition. :-(

Saturday 6th:
A few contacts on 6m in the log to improve the annual score, as well as two new ones, EA1AS (IN82), and EB6ADS (JM29).
Sunday 7th:
Only a handful of contacts on 6m today, the band was fairly quiet generally, but I was fairly lucky nabbing C37NL for a new DXCC, though their DXpedition isn't supposed to start until tomorrow (8th). Needless to say Stewart (G0LGS) and Matt (M3WDS) also worked him, bringing the totals to; 205 squares, 49 this year. and 47 DXCCs, 21 so far this year.
I have also been playing with WSPR on 30m, which is quite interesting. As I don't have a proper 30m antenna I'm just using the 1/2 sized G5RV through an ATU, but even so, 5W can go a long way! Using the website WSPRnet.org, it's possible to see who is hearing who, and was surprised to see that my signals had been hear over the pond! Very gratifying. :-)

It's always nice to hear the band open, and have the chance to work a few squares. It's especially nice to hear it open in a different direction for a change. This is exactly what happened when I returned home tonight, with the band open to Scandinavia. It also means that there is a chance to work a few new all time squares and start filling in the gaps. Amongst quite a collection of calls in the log, the ones worthy of mention here are;
SA3ANZ (JP93), OH7TE (KP20), SM4Q (JP70), ES6DO (KO27), LA5AKA (JO49), and then YL2MD for KO16. Bringing the all time squares total on 6m to 203, 38 this year, and the DXCC's to 46 and 20.
A little 10m activity on the way home netted OZ5AGJ (JO47), and SA4BEQ for JO79.
Bringing the totals on 10m to 91 squares, 13 this year.

OK, I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping up. I was away until late on the 29th May so I really didn't get to play much radio for a week. Anyway, Saturday 30th fairly quiet with only EA8SL for IL18.
Sunday 31st, E73CW for JN93.
Monday 1st June, things improved greatly, with a gaggle of squares, including IW0CZC for JN62, which had eluded me for no apparent reason, and then on the 2nd, EB5CNK/4 for IN90, EA5CLH for JM08, and then on 2 meters during the contest, GI4SNA for IO64. Bringing the totals to:-

QRA locators
50 MHz All time = 197 Confirmed = 78 Current year = 30
70 MHz All time = 6 Confirmed = 1 Current year = 1
144 MHz All time = 25 Confirmed = 7 Current year = 9
432 MHz All time = 12 Confirmed = 5 Current year = 0

DXCCs
50 MHz All time = 46 Confirmed = 25 Current year = 17
70 MHz All time = 4 Confirmed = 1 Current year = 1
144 MHz All time = 7 Confirmed = 3 Current year = 3
432 MHz All time = 3 Confirmed = 2 Current year = 0

No entries since the 21st May, I must be slipping...! It doesn't reflect my lack of activity. A quick look at my log will tell you that I have been working stuff, on 6m mainly.

I'll edit this bit out later, but I'm now on 197 squares on 6m, having added a couple that had eluded me for some time! More later, when I return from work.