VK5CE/P St. Peter Island

Craig, VK5CE is out on his own at the moment on St. Peter Island (OC-220.)

Oh, to be there!

He's doing a fine job of managing the inevitable pile-up, more especially since it's about ten years since this island was last activated.

I was lucky enough to cut through the massive wall of calls at 18:11z this afternoon, using just 100W pep and a single element delta loop. 

Craig has done very well to use simple verticals, which of course send out superb signals when sitting essentially at sea level, with the water just metres away in any direction.  It's always a bit dumb when folk put up Yagis at beach locations, where they simply can't compete with a quarter wave or a 2-ele vertical beam. 

With a 59+ signal into Wales at early greyline, Craig is showing us all how to do it the right way at the seaside!

In the Office at 7am. The RSGB Response.

Earlier in the week, I sent a letter to the RSGB to express my views (but not as a formal complaint) that £60,000 was a very generous remuneration package for one person working in a hobby society.  Of course, all we know about the actual payment is that it is in excess of £60,000.

Members of the society may be interested to read the response issued a couple of days later.  Whilst I had already accepted that there is no doubt a lot of work to do, I am not remotely persuaded by the bleating that this "person" is at his desk at 7am, and doesn't leave until 5pm.  At at least 2.3 times the average national UK wage, and probably significantly higher than that, you'd kind of expect someone to be working at least those hours.

No car as part of the upper crust's salary.  That's alright then!

I think I have to be concerned that the Board Chairman compares the existing position holder's benefits with those enjoyed by the previous incumbent.  If one is to assume that the person receiving this salary is the General Manager, then of course, the past incumbent (and not the present one) was involved in activities that led to legal action to recover monies owed to the Society.  That he had a car on top of the lovely salary was perhaps just an extension of that taking the membership and the society for fools.  It certainly isn't the wisest comparison to make!


Here is the response.  I had considered not publishing the name of the correspondent, but his position is given within the text, it hasn't been marked private, and the society is accountable to its members.  So there is no real moral or legal reason why it should not be public:

"Your e-mail has been passed to me as RSGB Board Chairman.

I note your concern about the payment but would point out that in 2010 the highest salary paid to a Society employee was greater than £59,000 plus a fully funded car. The person currently receiving a salary of greater than £60,000 does not have a car provided by the Society.

Bearing in mind that there have been Board changes over the last five years, I believe that the current salary is commensurate with those offered to people with similar responsibilities in similar roles elsewhere and the various Board members over the five years have noted this in reviewing the salaries.

What I would also point out is that the person who receives the salary is in the office at 7am and leaves at 5pm during the week, participates in calls/meetings in the evening on a number of days per week to coincide with the wider RSGB volunteer community, many of whom still work, and also works on Saturdays and/or Sundays for many weekends per year. The person concerned has also proposed and implemented cost saving measures as the Board is fully aware that we need to be as cost efficient as possible in the current climate.

Finally I would remind you that neither I, as Chairman, nor any other Board Member (who are all directors of the company) receives any salary.

Thanks you again for raising this matter.

Regards

Graham

Graham Murchie  G4FSG"

Worked All States

A small cardboard tube arrived in this morning's post.  I wondered for a while what it might be.

Ah!  The ARRL label gave the game away as this - finally - being my WAS (basic) award certificate!

'Finally', not because it took me a very long time to obtain - in fact, it took me a very short time of about three years, but because I applied for it on the last day of December, 2014!  Format changes to the certificate printing were apparently the cause of the long delay.

Worth hanging on the wall. 

So, three months later, I have my certificate.  Not bad for the $17 or something is cost (postage was $9.70!), arriving in good shape and no dog ears in a stout cardboard tube.  QRZ.com might take a hint from the ARRL, in that the former organisation's awards ship in envelopes only somewhat stiffened by thin card, and a bit more prone to damage (though mine wasn't.)

I find myself again wondering about QSLing.  It's now almost a requirement to QSL via three main systems: LoTW, e-QSL and, more recently, QRZ.com.  It takes a depressingly large amount of time to process all the requests, though one does it in the knowledge that it is a two-way thing; it's never nice when someone fails to formally acknowledge the QSO.

I'm still short on Hawaii for e-QSL, despite having had both the ARRL and QRZ.com WAS awards by now. The most difficult state to get was not Hawaii, in fact, but North Dakota, where few hams seem to exist amongst what is, admittedly, quite a low population - about half that of HI.

And to bring this post back to the general spirit of this blog - of enjoying ham radio on a budget - absolutely every single one of those WAS QSOs was with nothing more than a maximum of 80W SSB (more often 10W on PSK-31), and single-element wire delta loops.

Will I be chasing WAS on each and every individual band?  No chance!  That really is taking the hobby too far...

Web SDR and the Partial Solar Eclipse

Last Friday (20/3/2015), the UK experienced a deep partial eclipse, reaching about 92% over north Wales.

Steve Nichols, G0KYA, who is the RSGB's main propagation man, tried to raise interest by getting as many people as possible to monitor AM radio stations by ear, and with recordings where possible.

I was unable to monitor my ham station or an AM broadcast radio because I was hurtling ahead of an advancing weather front to keep seeing the eclipse with a telescope that I can assemble and disassemble faster than a special forces soldier deals with a gun!

The Moon covers ~92% of the Sun, as seen from southern Anglesey, Wales, 20/3/15. Image (C) this blog.

So, a few days in advance, I'd looked into the possibility of monitoring an AM station in Iceland (RÚV) via a web-based SDR.  These are really very good facilities, which very usefully permit audio recordings to be made and downloaded.  I wasn't sure if my internet connection, or the overall connection to the web-SDR would stay up reliably during the 2.5 hours of interest, or that the recording would allow such a long file.

So, at about 08:01UT, I set the recording running at the University of Twente's SDR in the Netherlands.  The only other suitable web-SDR station in the UK suffered from horrendous and continuous broadband QRM, making it essentially unusable.

Path of the eclipse, totality path in deep pink (timeanddate.com)

After returning home and stopping the recording at 10:29UT, by which time it was actually raining outside, I found that the web-SDR monitoring had worked perfectly, generating a 120MB file.  You can find the recording here.  If you want to refer to my time indications, you will have to donwload the file and play it on software that shows this (like Windows' native player.)

I think I'm right to say that, at 1h23m into the recording (about 09:24UT), RÚV's signals start getting stronger.  By 1h35m in (about 09:36UT), the signal is very strong and clear, just like at night time.  By 1h54m in (about 09:55UT), the station is well on its way to daytime noise and weak signals again. This seems to tie-in nicely with the progression of the eclipse.

RUV 1 signal strength over 2h28m, showing a clear increase, peak and then decrease in strength as totality came to pass between transmitter and receiver. Don't be fooled by the higher bars in the first hour or so; most of this is noise.

So, I think that is a successful demonstration of the effects of an eclipse on long wave radio propagation.  It's also a successful demonstration of how, if the web-SDR location is in the right place relative to the eclipse, it can be a very useful way to allow mass-participation in radio propagation experiments during eclipses.

If you have any way to objectively analyse the recording and yield a plot of signal strength output with time, that would be very interesting to receive.  Until then, I have to rely on my ears!