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Tomorrow I am going to try to build my little 40m Pixie kit that I bought for just over £7 from China. This build is an attempt to see if I am “up to the job”. I know the limited performance the Pixie is capable of and on 40m BC breakthrough may be a major issue here in the UK.

I really really miss doing real building and truly experimental amateur radio. This is a step on a long road. My health has been so poor in the last 16 months or so that there was no way I could have attempted this before. People have been very kind and offered me building help and help with antenna erection. These offers have come from all over the world – the world is filled with good and very kind people. There are far more good and kind people than evil ones.

By normal standards a little Pixie build would be trivial. For me it is a major step and test of my current abilities. I do so hope I can manage this! Please don’t laugh – to me it is a major step.

As the price has dropped to £199 (a drop of £50) from Nevada I am now very tempted to buy one of these as 10m is my favourite band of all.  It is just coming up to the Es season too. Power output is ideal (for me) and it does all modes. I owned the original Lincoln President transceiver and it served me well for many years.  It worked all over the place on SSB and even on 10m AM.

This is basically a CB radio with bells and whistles, although as delivered it is 10m amateur band only. It covers CB bands with a simple, illegal in UK, mod.

Anyone any views?

We now seem to be, on average, on the downward slope to the next solar minimum. Some are predicting that the next peak will be almost a non-event with the sunspot number peak of just 7. Of course no-one really knows, but I think it is true that most experts now think cycle 25 will be very poor. Conditions on LF/MF are likely to improve but decent F2 propagation on 10m is likely to be rare, except perhaps with N-S paths over the equator.  What is certain is no-one is really sure. Summer Es could well be the dominant DX mode on the higher HF bands.

UPDATE 2048z:  I have now gone QRT (for the night) on 10m but I will be on 160m now and overnight. Back on 10m tomorrow morning after breakfast.

Much to my surprise, the RSGB actually published my recent letter to their “The Last Word” column in RadCom, together with a (pathetic) reply from their Spectrum Chair. At least my letter was printed.

The response did nothing to address my concerns. Although the RSGB claims not to be anti-AM, you’d find this hard to believe with a look at the most recent band plans. AM has its place on all bands from 28MHz upwards. I just wish the RSGB and other national organisations would simply acknowledge that this mode has its place. It may be a minority interest mode, but in my experience it is the simplest mode from a building viewpoint.

 This morning I received this email from KK4HSX saying that (certainly in the USA) Amazon is already selling wifi connected slow cookers called “Crock Pots”. Not sure if this is a stateside generic term.

It’s already here. Behold,the Crock Pot you can monitor and control with you phone.

http://www.amazon.com/Crock-Pot-Wifi-Enabled-6-Quart-Cooker-SCCPWM600-V1/dp/B00IPEO02C#

Landwade was the site of my first “over the horizon” optical tests. The tests were successful, but predate my stroke by some time. I remember well being surprised at the reception when “on beam”.

We go here each year about this time for a delightful walk of about 1.5km calling at the small private church (locked these days). The church is surrounded by seas of snowdrops and aconites at this time of year. Landwade is very quiet at all times. It is in Suffolk but was in Cambridgeshire until 1994. It has been occupied since Roman times, but consists of a few farms, a hall and the odd cottage these days.

I have updated one of my other blogs.
See http://eachurches.blogspot.co.uk/ .

An amateur band at 40MHz would be really useful as I suspect the F2 MUF has been in this region several times in the last few years. There are a very few beacons around 40MHz (UK and Denmark only I believe) but wouldn’t it be good to have even 100kHz around this frequency? Sadly it is very unlikely, but I would happily lose 100kHz at the top of 10m in exchange.   It would also be a very useful Es band.

Somehow I can’t see this happening, more is the pity.  The world of radio science would really benefit. This would have been so much more useful than 146-147MHz recently released to UK amateurs by NoV.  I know a handful of UK amateurs are trying narrowband DTV but the 2m band is mainly Japanese “black boxes” and is mostly white noise in most areas.