It is quite obvious that the internet helps to spread news very fast and thus, a real FT8 explosion took place. On busy moments there is a myriad of stations and it is impressive to watch how good the WSJT-X software decodes the whole bunch every 15 seconds. Hats off for the developers! The FT8… Continue reading »
FT8 has been around for some time now. It was adopted fast by the amateur radio community and it is clear that FT8 overtook JT65 quickly. But is it an improvement? It has to be said that Franke and Taylor (FT) have done a tremendous job with the development of various weak signal modes and… Continue reading »
During the morning of Feb. 23, conditions across the north pole appeared to be good. My JT signals were spotted in Alaska and on Hawaii. WH7AA (Hawaii) and KL7J (Alaska) reported me just after 06:00 UTC. The path to Hawaii crosses the polar region and is prone to absorption. Although the magnetic indices were not… Continue reading »
Currently, I am working on a paper regarding propagation on 60 metres. Transmissions with JT mode were used to collect spots and create datasets. A valuable datasource is wsprnet.org, to which WSPR spots are uploaded and fed to a database. The data can be downloaded. In order to support the study, I developed a WSPR… Continue reading »
One of the latest developments is a parser/analyser for the ALL.TXT files that WSJT-X and JTDX create. The ALL.TXT file contains all sent and received messages and as I wanted to have a tool to retrieve the data in a structured way, I decided to write a parser. It is made in Visual Studio 6…. Continue reading »
Today, another good opening to Australia was recorded. During the last month, quite a number of openings occurred, showing that propagation from Europe to Australia is not as rare as I initially thought. In a number of cases, a peak is observed around 19:30 UTC. At that time, in Australia the sun is already above… Continue reading »
In my humble opinion, Joe Taylor, K1JT, is a true innovator for the amateur service. As a scientist, Joe received several notable awards. The amateur community should be grateful for his efforts and resulting advancement. Many amateurs may forget that our use of frequency spectrum is justified by experiments, with possible spin-off that benefits everyone…. Continue reading »
Celebrating one year of 60 m in The Netherlands with a surprise from Antarctica!
Both 15 and 16 November 2016 had good openings again. Data of 6 openings is gathered now. Below is a graph of these 6 openings, again with SNR against UTC. The differences are remarkable, especially at the beginning of the opening, but towards the end, the pattern is more “in sync”. I again used about… Continue reading »
The story continues Yesterday, Nov. 13th, the propagation to VK was weak. Just a few spots from some European stations were reported. Alan, VK7BO mailed me that he would leave his receiver on, when possible. That encouraged me to continue the observations. Nov. 14th, I was checking to see if a free message with “TST… Continue reading »