I had heard a bit of pulsing noise on all the FT8 bands the other night.

On the Morning Grind Net, Rick, WB3CSY, mentioned this as well and that he suspects it came from a solar flare that was hitting us.

My Week in Radio

• I purchased some power cables that split out the 12V line out of USB-C, so I can power my radio from a USB-C power brick/jump-starter battery.
• Marie and I relaunched my EFRW even higher into the the tree in the front yard. I used the slingshot out the second-story window, while Marie watched that the street and sidewalk were clear.
• I did the RTTY test and FT4 sprint last Thursday.
• I saw some better propagation on FT8 before the weekend’s solar storm: Ukraine, Northern Ireland, and Greenland at the arctic circle.
• While the bands were dead over the weekend, I built a couple new, lighter antennas for POTA. I cut and tuned some 20m-long EFHW wires and tuned them with NanoVNA. I used recycled plastic gum boxes as enclosures and winders for the un-uns and wires. I also 3d-printed a winder that holds the transformer and heavier speaker wire. I’ll test the antennas when bands are obviously better. I’ve not really used an EFHW much, so I’m curious to see how it performs compared to EFRW.
• I saw some recovery today in the band today: Panama, Canary Islands, and the Cayman Islands.
• Ron, WA3VEE, sent photos from the Antique Radio Meet in Kutztown.

My Question for the Night

What are the effects of solar cycle and solar activity on propagation? We’re in a high point of the solar cycle, so 10m is good, but too much and it blacks out propagation?

Discussion

• Vic, KC3TYX, made a VARA-C contact.
• Jim, KC3RFG, found an OCF dipole to be quieter than end-fed.
• Jim, AF3Z, has trouble with his Ten-Tec radio sometimes not transmitting.
• Jeff, W3JAM, wondered if anyone was making 6m contacts over solar storm.
• Mike, W3MFB, noted that 17m sometimes is a pipeline right into Florida in afternoon/evening.
• Tim, W3QP, is headed on SOTA campout.
• Jack, K3YVQ, Is it OK to use GMRS on a radio that does ham freqs and more?
  • Mike, W3MFB: technically, the radio should be locked to gmrs frequencies.
  • on the air, no one would know, though.
  • Ron, WA3VEE: FCC approves radios for particular services.
  • GMRS radios are “type-acceptance”, and the right power limits.
  • Some other radios might be hard to limit to the right power.
• John, KC3WWC: What’s the solar storm do to propagation? Some activity is OK, but too much is bad?
  • Chuck, NA3CW:
    • RF is produced by accelerating (“wiggling”) electrons.
    • Ionosphere doesn’t “bounce” signals, but instead “receives” and “retransmits”.
    • We have loose electrons in the upper atmosphere, good for retransmit.
    • Solar storm ionizes the atmosphere at different levels with varying intensity.
    • Our RF hits ions in lower part of the atmosphere and gets slowed, absorbed (D layer).
    • LF is affected the most, since it moves the electrons further.
    • Solar minimum offers less ionization at any level.
    • D layer, E Layer, F1 layer, F2 layer.
    • Better shortwave propagation at night.
    • Lots more is understood now about the ionosphere.
    • Frequencies are coordinated in SW to adapt to seasonal changes.
    • Electrons free in thicker air recombine more easily, so don’t pass RF.
    • Winter: great distances, because air is thinner.
  • Tim, W3QP: noise also comes up during storm and masks signal.
  • This video from Coastal Waves and Wires explains the effect a bit.

The bands were dead with the terrible geomagnetic storm this weekend, so HF is very limited. I was only able to contact Lititz from Mountville.

With the downtime, I built some new EFHW antennas. I tied some wires to trees, stretched them out, and tuned each of the 2 20m EFHW antennas with the NanoVNA: one speaker wire, and the other lightweight silicone wire. I built new ununs and mounted them in plastic gum cases and a 3D-printed winder.

I also cut a lightweight EFRW, 12.5m, from the silicone wire and gave it a gum case as a winder.

I’ll test the new antennas soon when the bands are better.

My Week in Radio

• Backyard antenna
  • build
    • cleaned up the backyard
    • threw wires high in the tree near the top of the hill
    • took my time
      • routing
      • tied and supported solidly,
      • no stress on connectors
    • first floor window to high on the hill
    • the hill is to the east
  • testing, discussion last week
    • made some contacts on 30m
    • switching
    • FT8 on 15m and pskreporter
    • counted decodes in wsjtx
    • new antenna had fewer decodes on average
    • compared the map - missing europe, since it followed the hill and not enough of the antenna is above the ridge
    • old antenna is mostly flat, but is 2nd floor and above
  • scheme to get more of the wire higher
• Reading the manual for fldigi
  • better prepared for contesting and logging
  • less fixing logs
• Observing some very boring HF propagation
  • if it weren’t for the propagation reports, I’d think I broke something.
  • leaves also came in on my antenna tree

Discussions

• Tim, W3QP, talked about sota.
• Ron, WA3VEE, is helping a new operator shop for equipment.
• Ron’s going to the antique radio show to sell.
• Leon, AA3LH, is practicing CW.
• Jeff, W3JAM, why do we conventionally use LSB and USB?
• Bill, KC3OOK, does internet time sync work through hotspots?
• John, KC3WWC, What are better interfaces to SOTA?
  • map: https://sotl.as/
  • phone apps
    • sota spotter
    • sota activator (update the maps periodically)
  • uploads and data: https://sotadata.org.uk/
  • Tim’s presentation: https://w3gmsrepeater.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/sota-an-overview.pdf

I cleaned up the backyard a bit, and ran a new 12.5m (41ft) random wire up the hill behind the house.

My first tests the next day on 30m at 1W got me some contacts. By 4:40pm EDT, the bands were all in “poor” condition, so it got tough to test.

The next morning, I watched the 40m band close. It was ablaze at 8am, but getting pretty quiet by 10:30am EDT.

I compared the old antenna out the front with the new antenna out the back using FT8 and PSKReporter.

The back antenna saw fewer decodes on 15m on average. It mostly lacked any stations from Europe. Looking at the antenna’s physical attributes, it starts on first floor (lower than the old antenna) in backyard, but it slopes up more vertically. The middle of the antenna, on average, is blocked by the hill to the East.

The old antenna out the front saw more decodes overall, including Europe. It starts at second floor window and only slightly angles up. The whole antenna is higher and clears the hill, even though Europe may still be mostly all the end of the antenna. It performs better.

I had fun physically launching the new antenna, but I’ll need to do some more work to get more of it higher in the air to be useful.

I spun the dial below the 30m ham band at the end of the night, and I caught all kinds of interesting broadcast (31m) and HF air traffic.

My Week in Ham Radio

• Built and deployed a 1/4 wave ground plane with radials
  • wire soldered to an UHF chassis plug
  • fed from the bottom
  • hung in a tree by cord
• York Hamfest and 2 parks out that way
  • Codorus
  • Sam Lewis
  • EFRW
  • Mostly ft8
  • 40m hot at 5:30pm
  • 2 phone contacts in Canadian parks for park-to-park QSO
  • Took some time to experiment a little
  • Fishing pole mast with 3D-printed fork on the end to catch the wire
  • Stop pulling on coax…loosened ends
• SPDX RTTY contest (Poland)
  • 2 contacts
  • ended at noon UTC on sunday, so ran out of time
• AubsUK firmware for Quansheng
  • 10 scanlists
  • automatic scan on power-up, feature request
• Picked up a new podcast: Ham Radio Workbench
• Simplex Net: heard 16 of the 38 people

My Questions

• with nicer weather and time to experiment with antennas, how would you recommend iterating and experimenting? I have:
  • the QRP transceiver
  • digital modes & pskreporter
  • nanovna
  • some modeling software I could learn
  • the latest ARRL Antenna Book

Discussion

• Dipoles, sloped or flat?
  • Flat leaves nulls toward the ends
  • Sloped fills it in to be a bit more omnidirectional
  • An antenna close to the ground is going to be NVIS
  • Vertical is omnidirectional
• Ron’s seeing infinite SWR on the “screwdriver” antenna.
  • Others have had problems as well.
• Mike wonders about viability of using 6m FM in his area
• My Question: How should I evaluate and structure my experiments with antennas?
  • Conditions change constantly
  • Learn to read solar data
  • Take notes on conditions and try to test in similar conditions
  • Vic’s experiments:
    • endfeds
    • hamsticks
    • radials
    • aluminum screen or faraday cloth for ground plane
  • WSPRnet and pskreporter help gauge how you’re getting out
  • See what you can hear
  • Qualify callsign for different tests, so I can tell them apart in pskreporter: kc3wwc/a, kc3wwc/b, etc
• Ken wonders about TNC for packet radio on HF/VHF
  • Glenn, N3MEL would be the person to contact
• We heard lots of interference and doubling in the beginning of the net
  • This was likely another manifestation of intermod
  • Tropospheric ducting happens more in morning in the summer

The ISS passed at 8:55am EDT at 49 degrees. My vertical 1/4-wave ground plane antenna in the tree picked it up really well. I copied a handful of callsigns pretty easily:

• KO4PDI - FL
• KC4Y - AL
• K4MMD - FL
• N5ACR - MD
• KC4YMT - GA
• KC3MM - SC
• K3DMM - PA, Harrisburg

I confirmed hearing K3DMM on the Morning Grind round table (K3IR) a few minutes later that morning.

York Hamfest

I ran to York for the Hamfest and I saw a handful of new friends from SPARC and 985. I only bought some BNC adapters, a speaker that’s OK but not great, and a wireless keyboard/touchpad for my Raspberry PI projects.

POTA

While I was out, I figured I may as well play a little radio and activate 2 parks.

Codorus, US-1342

I ran the 12.5m EFRW stretched from high in a tree to a picnic table. I started at the picnic table, but moved into the car when it started to rain. To reach the car, I stretched my coax a bit and camped that to the table, and I ended up with no signal. The feed cable (RG174 with SMA connectors) had pulled loose from the SMA connector, so I had to debug that and push them back together. I operated 17m mostly, FT8, and contacts came a bit slow.

Sam Lewis, US-1418

This time I stung up the 21.56m EFRW, 2-3m off ground on ends, stretched between trees, and a fishing pole mast supporting the middle peak. 17m was still a bit slow, but 40m was hopping for FT8. I had a steady stream of contacts.

Before packing up, I spun the dial and found a park-to-park SSB on 40m: 2 operators on one radio at the intersection of 4 parks in Canada, so that counted for 8 hunter points.

I followed calculations and instructions to build a quarter-wave ground plane antenna from some wire and a UHF connector that I picked up at the last Ham Fest in Harrisburg. I cut everything a little long and soldered it together. I trimmed the radials to about 54-inches and folded and rolled the radiator wire to a length that is resonant at 147MHz. I measured with the NanoVNA. Once it was at the right frequency, I found that bending the radials up and down could adjust the SWR at its lowest point on the graph. Keeping the radials slightly flatter had a lower SWR than the 45 degrees suggested in the original design.

This ground plane antenna feeds from the bottom, which is physically more sound than the vertical dipole I had up previously. I tested it last night when I strung it up, and it reaches Harrisburg and Parkesburg with no problem.