Challenge(s) for Next Year.

 A "few" words on what should be next year's challenge.

0) The  open home brew challenge goes on. This is all about making at least one QSO on as many bands as possible, with home made equipment. This could be a kit I built, a fully home constructed transmitter and/or receiver, or modified versions of equipment not designed for amateur radio.

I do intend to get some more kits built next year, and use some of those already built for HF band monitoring. A part of the propagation study may include a WSPR and/or WRSS transmitter, and/or some WSPR/QRSS monitoring, and more bands with FT8 monitoring when I am not actively operating on the bands.

Apart from the kits, I may get to some more home construction. We shall see.

1) The primary challenge for 2023 will be all about improving the solar power system and its efficiency for the amateur radio station. 

In particular, all systems for monitoring the radio propagation has the highest priority. This includes both the improvement of the capacity of the solar panel and battery system and reducing the power consumption of the receiving systems.

More solar panels are needed for charging the battery. I expect to increase the peak "capacity" of the panels to somewhere between 600 and 900W. The precise configuration is yet to be decided. Currently I have a peak capacity of 250W and a non-optimal position for the panels.

An improved system of solar charge controllers. MPPT controllers are inherently more efficient, though they tend to be more noisy in the radio spectrum. I found some that seem to be relatively quiet, but the3y are not yet tested at full charge current. I suspect that they can be useful with good RF filtering at the inputs and outputs.

Improved battery capacity. The 12V system for the station should be updated to 400Ah capacity at 100% charge.

The aim is to provide pure solar power to the minimum requirements of the station all through winter.

This leads to the next part: Minimizing the power requirements of the station, especially the parts that will be required to run 24/7, or many hours per day, such as some propagation monitoring and monitoring e.g. local traffic on 2m.

2) The other challenge is concerned with microwave activity (above 1GHz) The aim is to make at least a first QSO on a few microwave bands. starting with 2.4GHz and 10GHz. Long ago I was active on 23cm, but I would very much like to get going on that band, too. If I can get away with making experiments on 3.4, 5.7 and 24GHz, that would be nice, too. Improving the QO100 system is part of this, too.

I am already active on the QO100 satellite. This means that I have transmit capability on 2.4GHz and some receive capability on 10GHz.

This system is rather primitive, and many improvements can be made to it, especially on the receive side.

a) Further, I located a 23cm (1.3GHz) module for the IC-910, as well as a more precise and stable reference oscillator (TCXO) for that transceiver. During the winter nights I need to make sufficient space on the lab desk, so I can get going with mounting those, and also make a fresh alignment of the transceiver. Straight forward when the space is available.

As the IC-910 is quite heavy I intend it for home operation only. If I want to go portable on 1.3GHz I will need a transverter and a portable transceiver. I could use one of the FT817s or the IC-705. Both need modifications, so the transverter(s) are not blown up if they get high power TX signals in.

I will still need to get some antenna up for 1.3GHz. This should happen some time in the spring. I expect to use a Diamond X-5000 (I think) for vertical omnidirectional (mostly FM) with a 23cm preamp, and a small yagi, like the front mounted Flexa antenna for horizontal polarization (mostly SSB/CW/digital modes). The horizontal antenna will need a rotating system that needs to be set up. Lots of work.

For portable work I still have a small 23cm yagi that can be used on hills etc.

b) While it is possible to use my up-converter for the QO100 system for transmitting on 2.4GHZ in general, the existing system will be very cumbersome, especially when going portable.

I could possibly use the up converter with the FT817 as the transmit system, and the AR8600 SSB capable "scanner" as receiver. Operating portable from a parked car could be done with this system, but setup will take time, and I am not sure I have the patience ;) 

I think that a much better system can be made with the FT817 driving a transverter from e.g. SG-Labs, and a PA. A bit of relay and sequencing will have to be made. The transverter system should be sufficiently compact for portable use, and should be easily connected to the home system.

Antennas for 2.4GHz? I have some low cost WiFi antennas, such as 16el. yagis, and some patch antennas. Both most likely have a gain of 10-12dBd gain, and can be used for the first light weight portable experiments.

For home use I would likely use a panel antenna with about 20dB gain. Again, as with the 1.3GHz system, a rotator is needed.

c) 10GHz: 

It is possible to make some simple, mostly line-of-sight experiments with a modulated HB-100 module, a satellite LNB and a scanner receiver in the 500-700MHz range. Using WBFM this could likely provide 10-20km range without using anything but the modules, no dish antennas or horn antennas. More, if "external" horn extensions or just a dish for the RX part would be used. This is mostly for portable experiments.

A small system for 10GHz narrow band, with a transverter, is also on my list. Most likely a Kuhne/DB6NT transverter, driven by the FT817 or the IC705.

Other narrow band experiments could be a NBFM/CW transmitter used with a satellite LNB down converter.

First experiments will likely be portable, but long term I should have a small station running from home.

Am I likely to get all of this done? Not really, but the minimum will be to get going from home and portable on at least one microwave band.

On the solar power and monitoring front, at least I will get some improved solar energy and *some* "reduced power" monitoring done.

Idea Box. QO-100 Downlink Reception.

For quite a while the setup for my QO-100 activity has been rudimentary:

For uplink I have used an old IC-821 as transmitter, with a lot of attenuation, followed by a low cost Chinese up-converter (BU-500) indoors, about 15m RG6 coax, with a so-called 8W WiFi booster that can deliver 2 - 2.5W without modifications, feeding a 4x patch "WiFi antenna and a 1.1m dish reflector.

This provides a decent signal on the downlink side, and certainly never overloads the transponder (triggering LEILA).

For the downlink I am using a 60cm dish, a low cost synthesizer controlled LNB, modified to be controlled by an external 25MHz reference signal.

The 25MHz reference oscillator is indoors in the shack in order to minimize the temperature drift. As this is an uncompensated DIL oscillator there is, of course some drift, up to a few kHz to each side. Actually not too bad for such a simple setup.

The LNB converts the the 10489MHz signal down to 739MHz, so for now I have used an older AOR multimode scanner receiver, the AR8600. This works, and I have made some QSOs, and often participated in the Danish-speaking net on Sundays. It is a bit inconvenient with the drift, as I have to compensate by manually checking the AR8600 frequency for the beacon, and then remember to calculate the offset.

Further, the IF filters in the AR8600 are low cost ceramic filters, so for SSB and CW the selectivity is not what I am used to from my HF/VHF transceivers.

Here comes the idea: The AR8600 has an IF output on 10.7MHz, with a bandwidth of 4MHz. Why not use that to feed one of my HF radios? That way I can use the better filters of the HF radio. On top of that, a quick manual compensation of the LNB frequency drift can be made by switching to one of the beacon frequencies and retune the AR8600 so the beacon is in the pass band of the IF receiver. Then the recalculation of the offset becomes unnecessary.

This is the simplest way to improve the downlink receive system with the equipment I have at hand.

It does require using two radios, as the AR8600 is simply used as a second down converter.

If I want to eliminate the AR8600 from this there is another idea. This requires more construction, so I think I will use the AR8600 in the first instance.

I have some older TV tuner modules with synthesized local oscillators. With a bit of programming of the synthesizer chip using a microcontroller, the Arduino or the like, this can function as a down converter to an IF of 28-40MHz. One little disadvantage is that the TV tuner as-is inverts the IF band. 

This can be eliminated in two ways:

1) a second down converter inverting the band once more. This adds complexity to the system, but can be done without too much building.

2) retuning the RF filters of the tuner, so the LO moves below the signal input frequency. This is the simple way, but requires more test equipment. I do have enough test equipment to do this, so if I go the TV tuner way, this is the likely way to do it.

For now, the AR8600 with HF receiver will be the way, after all the Christmas activities. I am looking forward to improving my QO100 setup.

I am still looking into what next year's "challenge" will be. It should require some activities from my side, on the other hand it should also be fun.

I do think that a part of this will be running the most used parts of my station on solar (with battery backup, of course) hopefully on solar power, even through the winter. I may have to switch parts of it on mains power in the poorest sunlight conditions. The really power hungry parts, like big linear amplifiers will be running on mains power in any case, but they will not be running a lot in any case.

Using only the IC705 in December I have been able to get the battery up to 80%, but that has been with saving the time I was using it.

The Sun Has Somewhat Reduced Flare Activity.

The solar activity has reduced a bit. The massive flare activity on the Earth facing side has subsided, as the extremely active sunspot group has rotated out of sight.

There are more sunspot groups rotating into view from Earth, so the general solar activity may not become very low yet.

We shall see.

The Sun Goes Wild.

The past 3 days has seen a flurry of solar flares.

Two sunspot groups have generated over 20 major (M-class) flares over a period of 3 days. I think this is the most I have seen. In any case this is most definitely the most active the sun has been in the current cycle 25.

The 21cm solar flux has also risen to 166 today, and in between the flares 10m has seen massive signals. 

The solar activity has been much more than the official prediction, since the new cycle started. If we are lucky this solar maximum is likely to exceed the previous one by a factor of two.

It will be interesting, indeed, to see where this goes.

Working in the ARRL 10m Contest With 5W and Solar Power.

 In the past week end I tried to extend the challenge again.

I worked all CW in an easy going search and pounce operation. With 5W and a 1/2 wave vertical that is a slow process, and I stayed on for some hours each day, with breaks for doing other stuff.

The end result was 41 QSOs in the contest, and I am quite happy with that result.

The battery had had the opportunity to get a bit more charge, as it had been used very little, so there was more than sufficient charge to work the contest as much as I wanted. At this time of the year the days are very short at 55 deg. North. But the system charged a little bit, even when the shy was clouded. This has been the case most days for a few weeks now.

Now for my challenge for this year.

When I received my IC-705 in January I set out to work at least 365 QSOs this year, and that is what I achieved in the CQWW CW contest. 

I then extended the challenge: Doing the 365 on all solar power (and maybe 500 in total with 5W). This is a bit of an estimate, as I worked with mains power in the beginning, but soon I got to do solar in full. 

The result after the ARRL 10m contest is above 500QSOs, and I do expect to do a few more before New Year.

With 500 QSOs on total I estimate that 365 of those have been made on solar power, so my challenge is a success.

Now I should think of a challenge for next year.

I have a few things I would like to do:

- expand the solar power system, so I can feed more of the radio station on solar power

- get to operate two-way on some microwave bands

- build some low powered system for more propagation monitoring

I do have some material for expanding the solar power system, but working in freezing temperatures outdoors does not work fro me. From spring time that work will resume.

For the microwave band working from home the same goes. No outdoor antenna work. I am in the process of locating a 23cm module and a TCXO for my IC-910, I have it somewhere, so in the process of tidying I should find those and get the 910 upgraded. First microwave band is possible in the spring when antennas can be installed.

I already talked about using some simple kits for some of the monitoring receivers, and/or extend their use with converters. 

We shall see what I choose for next year

Small Solar Power Update and More.

 The output from the solar panels has been very low the last several weeks, actually most of November.

I can hardly power my IC703 all day with the current solar input, even if it has improved a bit with the new MPPT charge controller. Some more solar panels should be mounted, but working outside in near freezing temperatures is no fun, so it may have to wait until spring, or if we get some mild and dry days. 

For just monitoring of the low HF bands 20,30,40,60,80m I should use the small Chinese built HB-1B CW transceiver when not at the radio desk, as it uses less power than the 703. The spectrum display of the 703, after all, is only useful when I am there looking at it ;).

With the current very high price for electricity I am looking more at reducing power consumption for the shack. The stand-by/monitoring system has been reduced at the moment until I can get some really low power gear built and/or put to use. Yes, there are options.

Then there is the heating. 

Recently I got an air-to-air heat pump mounted, and now it is finally connected to mains power in the correct way. Yes, I had the electrician here, and at the same time I got an outdoor connector made for charging my new "toy car" (yes, fully electric, running on batteries).

It does look like the mains power consumption is lower than last year, in spite of the fact that I used gas heating last year, and electricity to power the heat pump this year. It will be interesting to see how things will work when I get more solar power up and running. I am aware that going off grid is not possible with the garden I have available, especially in December/January, but any reduction of mains power usage is welcome.

CQWW CW on Solar Power, and My Challenge.

 The past week end I was very active on the radio front.

While I do not plan to send in a log, I made about 150 QSOs, giving many stations points for the CQ WW CW contest. All this happened with just 5W output, and the vast majority was done with my solar power/battery system.

Since the solar power input has been quite low the last few weeks, all the radios were connected to mains power in order to let the battery re-charge. At the same time I did not work too much radio.

After a few QSOs in the contest I decided to make this a mainly solar powered event for me. The IC-705 was reconnected to the solar power system and I worked all through the week end, with some battery energy to spare.

My QSO count with 5W this year is now 460. This means that the challenge of working 365 QSOs this year with just 5W (and no weak signal digital modes) has been met.

Now I extend the challenge to 365 QSOs this year with solar power (as well as 5W). This will be an estimate, as I did not count exactly when I started using solar this year. My preliminary estimate will be that I may have met that challenge, too, but I will work some QSO for the rest of the year. I expect to be fairly sure to meet the challenge this year.

Now what will be my personal challenge for next year? I see a few possibilities.

- maybe with an expansion of my solar power it may be possible to run the main part of the station on solar, with the exception of high power amplifiers. We shall see

- maybe I should make my first QSOs on the microwave bands (everything above 1GHz)

- I *should* finish some more kit building

- maybe I should build a more fully home brew TR/RX just for one band, and work some QSOs with it

- maybe run a challenge with even lower power, allowing for the use of weak signal digital modes

MPPT Charge Controller for Solar Power.

The battery had been charging a bit with a few sunny hours. I did not see a charge current much above 3A with the existing PWM charge controller.

A few days ago I changed the charge controller to a 20A MPPT controller. With decent sunshine the charge current then peaked at about 5A. Definitely an improvement. 

At the moment the system is still not connected to any radio, but the intention is to see if I can run the IC-705 on solar this week end.

Why the 705 and why this week end? The 705 is my go-to radio for running 5W,  it has a relatively low power consumption. I hope that there is sufficient juice from the solar system to run this week end. Further, this week end there is the CQWW CW contest, hopefully with plenty of opportunities to make some CW QSOs with 5W, and make a contribution to the 5W/365 QSOs this year. I still need another 60 to complete my challenge for this year.

If there is insufficient capacity on the battery I can use some other battery that has also been charged with solar power.

The main purpose is to have the vast majority of the 365 QSOs this year run on solar power. I estimate that I have probably done around 50 of them on mains power, so I stand at around 90% solar right now.

With the planned improvements I expect to run the 705 fully on solar power all year, and some of the other radios most of the year. 

The other test with the MPPT controller was to detect RFI/noise from the controller. As it is right now I have not noticed any noise, but the controller has not run full charge current yet. 

I do expect, however, that with a bit of filtering I can run this MPPT controller without creating a noticeable amount of RFI on the HF bands. More testes will be needed.

Solar Has Gone Into Winter Mode.

 The sun has been hidden (mostly) for quite a while. The battery I used is almost empty.

This is a good test of the system. The energy generated by the panels is simply too low for the load.

All the radio equipment is now running on mains power until the battery is (at least) 50% charged. That may take a while, as the days are short at 55 deg. North. More panels are definitely needed.

I will also have to make a test of RF noise generated from MPPT controllers. Those are definitely more noisy than the lower cost and lower efficiency PWM controllers. If I can reduce the noise to a sufficiently low level I will probably switch to MPPT. The expected increase of power is between 20 and 30%.

For now the battery receives a very low charge, simply because it has been cloudy for more than a week.

The existing panels used for charging are 2x 130W. 

I would expect to go solar again in mis February.

Yes, the station needs to be more energy efficient, and the battery/panel system needs to be improved. Still mush to do. Much of the indoor work should be done in the winter time: Monitor receiving system with lower energy consumption, and the bigger battery.

6m Opening From OZ to ZD7.

Interesting time on 6m.

I still have my FT8 monitoring running on 50.313MHz. Today that kind of monitoring gave an interesting result. I did not make a QSO, but I made the following observation:

From about 1542 and 1809 I received ZD7BG, mostly at lower levels, but peaking at -1dB SNR. 

This happens with a sub-par system, running the 6m element of my R-6000 antenna  (feed point at 6m) with an old Tokyo Hy Power handheld radio. The R6000 has very poor performance on 6m, but is quite good on 10-12-15-17-20m.

I could see in my listings on WSJT that several local stations worked QSOs with the ZD7, but I saw this a few hours later.

To me this shows the value of monitoring 6m outside the sporadic E main season.

To be fair, there was some sporadic E on 6m with good signals from Southern Europe. This happens all year round, and the past few days there have been some openings.

Sporadic E alone cannot explain signals from St. Helena, though. The distance is just over 8000km. I suspect that this was sporadic E propagation feeding a signal into the TEP (Trans-Equatorial Propagation) zone. The Solar flux today was relatively low at 115, so F2 propagation is very unlikely. Also, the time of detecting the propagation makes F2 propagation even more likely, as in the North-South paths like this one F2 propagation would peak about local noon.

To me this shows the value of 24/7 monitoring of 6m, especially at times outside the peak of the solar cycle.

29.6 MHz FM Monitoring Now Included on Solar Power.

 Today I located an old CB transceiver for FM, modified for use on 29.310 - 29.600 MHz FM with 10kHz channel spacing.

I found this radio on a ham radio rally a while ago.

Current draw at receive is 200mA, and it will be running for several hours each day.

Why now? Yesterday I had a report of US stations and repeaters coming in on 10m FM, from someone on a local channel on 2m. As I want to join the fun on 10m I will have to improve my monitoring capability.

While on the subject of 10m monitoring, today I did get to hear Europe on 28.200. The OH2B beacon signal suddenly appeared.

As I want to be able to better detect 10m openings I will have to add two more frequencies to my monitor system:

- 28.074 MHz for FT8 reception

- 27.555 MHz. This frequency is used as an international calling frequency for CBers, and can be used as a slightly early warning for 10m propagation.

Initially I should probably locate my old HF3 receivers and some power connectors/cables. Even if they are not very sensitive, with a bit of preamplification they should serve as receivers on those two frequencies. With current draw of about 130mA the 10m monitor system is getting a bit power hungry. 

I may have to try building some very simple equipment for this. I have seen some good ideas. Building does take time, though.

10m Is Alive and Well. Worldwide Openings.

 My monitoring of the International Beacon Project on 10m has really paid off today.

As there is no beacon on the Antarctica continent that cannot count.

Today all the normally populated continents have been heard on 28MHz - yes just one frequency and CW.

Oceania: VK6RBP

Asia:       4X6TU (been there every day for weeks), VR2B

Africa:     CS3B (most days for weeks), ZS6DN

South America: YV5B, LU4AA

North America: 4U1UN

The only beacon in Europe is OH2B, and that is inside the skip distance, so it has not been heard. However, many signals from the Mediterranian  Sea have been heard, and in my 5W/365day challenge I worked EA5NI today. After the QSO I heard a Japanese station calling him. Not too bad with a vertical.

The challenge stands at 271 QSOs this year, so with some breaks some days I should work a few QSOs per day, one or two will likely do it. As I am not limited to any single band that should not be too difficult to do.

If the solar activity continues like it is now, with a solar flux about 140 or higher, I would expect this fall/autumn, winter and spring to be excellent on 10m, and the summer season should provide some excellent sporadic E. I think we will have a few golden years for 10m propagation.

As to 6m, IF the solar activity continues to be above the original prediction I would not be surprised to see F2, TEP and other propagation at the peak of the solar cycle 25. Right now it does look good, but we never know. A wise man once said "Prediction id hard, especially about the future." ;)

Small Update on Reducing Energy Consumption of the Ham Station.

 With the price for electricity going up I have decided to reduce power used by my ham station from the mains network.

The first stage was a small system for using solar power for a part of the station.

Stage 2 I have shut down more of the radios.

My current setup looks like this:

1. My old 7/21/50MHz hand held used as a receiver for 50MHz FT8, running on solar/battery (24/7)

2. The IC705 running HF operation, 5W and mostly CW, solar/battery (day and evening)

3. The IC703 for 10m beacon monitoring on 28.200MHz, solar/battery (day and evening)

4. IC910 2m and 70cm, mainly used for local FM traffic, running on mains power (day and evening)

5. Kenwood TM-D700 running stand-by on local 70cm and 2m RX, mains power

6. Occasional use of the IC7300 for low HF band or 50/70MHz operation

7. Occasional use of the IC7600 for 50MHz band operation

The multiband dipole and the R6000 vertical for 10-12-15-17-20m have been connected to the IC705 with a coaxial switch. This removes the IC7600 from quick use for the high HF bands, and makes the IC705 usable on almost all bands, 6-10-12-15-17-20-40-80m. I still miss 4, 30 and 60m here. Maybe adding an extra dipole for those bands to the multiband dipole will do the job, if there is not too much interaction?

With another coax switch the 30m "long wire" antenna can be connected to both the IC7300 and the HB-1B. The HB-1B can do 30m, but not 60, the iC7300 can do 160 - 4m.

As the IC910 draws more than 2A, just receiving, I need something different for daily stand-by operation for 2m/70cm FM.

At the moment the energy consumption from mains power is considerably lower than last year at the same time, but as I want more versatility and less power consumption I will have to develop the station further. I still have some low power receivers (scanners, HTs etc.) and that will have to be used with the solar power system for monitoring/scanning. More on that later.

The solar power system also has to be improved. More panels, bigger battery (batteries).

I also have to test the RF noise from more advanced solar charge controllers (MPPT types), and possible ways to reduce or fully eliminate RF noise from those.

Back to Monitoring 10m a Bit More.

 In the energy crisis (which is likely to continue for a while, I have reduced the number of radios used for monitoring.

The daily operation runs a 2m/70cm transceiver (the IC-910 at the moment) scanning FM frequencies and making the occasional local QSO. The drawback is the rather high power consumption, about 2A at 12V, so about 25W, just for reception. At the moment the 910 is running on mains power, as the only radio running daily. I may change this into another (FM only) transceiver consuming less power, and still running 2m and 70cm. I do have another (FM) transceiver monitoring a local frequency on each of the  2m and 70cm bands. A mobile rig using about 500mA.

Most of the remaining daily activity runs on my small solar power system:

24/7 monitoring of the FT8 frequency on 50MHz, running an old ("handheld" brick) transceiver with 120mA current consumption.

Day long monitoring of diverse HF frequencies, mostly CW, and a bit of QSOs with 5W, RX current consumption about 300mA

Day long monitoring of 28.200, the frequency on 10m for the International Beacon Project, at the moment using my old IC703 with 600mA current consumption. As soon as I set the 703 to 28.200 the 4X6TU beacon was received with good signal strength. Yes, 10m is open.

There is a possibility of reducing the power consumption of the monitoring system, but this requires some building and other activities. At the moment I am working on getting the heating for the house, so I am ready for the winter, because, as they say: "Winter is coming!"

5W/365/2022 Challenge, And a Surprise.

 Here is a small update on my personal 5W challenge, attempting to work at least 365 QSOs in 2022 with just 5W, and not using weak signal modes, i.e. CW,SSB,AM,FM only.

The status right now is 239 QSOs. 

Several of the QSOs have been on 29.6MHz FM in the last few weeks, so I am not complaining.

By far the most QSOs have been made with CW, and a few with SSB. All bands from 80m all the way to 6m have been in use.

Tonight I had a surprise. I was checking 30m, and heard a decent signal, about S6, from FY5FY He was not having a pile up, but stations calling most of the time. When I finally tried to call, I made it in just 3 attempts. Not bad for 5W in a low hanging wire in the garden.

Who knows, maybe this autumn I will make more, as I expect the F2 propagation on the HF bands to improve from now on, as we are already in the late summer season.

Taking into account that I have not been particularly active, I should fulfil the challenge this year.

If I do that, I will make up another challenge. Maybe a single band with an optimized antenna.

Since we are on the upward slope of solar cycle 25, I should probably get up a decent antenna for 6m, as I have not had much time in OZ to work on 6m with F2 propagation. Who knows, maybe already this year ?

10 FM QSOs, and the HB-1B CW Transceiver.

10m FM. 

Having a receiver running on 29.600 FM gave results today.

Twice this evening French stations were coming in with S9 signals, so QSOs were attempted calling them with just 5W, as a part of my 5W challenge this year. Both stations came back and I had two real QSOs, as I call them. exchanging more than just reports.

The sporadic E (Es) season is still going on, and 10m has been quite good today. Yes, it is up and down, but there is a reason we name it "sporadic".

HB-1B transceiver.

Also I did some listening with my small Chinese CW transceiver, the HB-1B transceiver for 80,40,30 and 20m. The sensitivity is absolutely sufficient, on 40 and 80 I usually have the attenuator switched in. As the TRX has only about 5W output the sensitivity is not all too critical. 

The variable crystal filter works nicely, but the AGC is not quite as good as I would like - it has a slow attack, but it does give some protection against signals that are very strong. Most of the time it actually works well enough to listen to (not all too strong) signals. I need to be able to extend my CW keyer "distributor", so this radio can be added to my CW system. 

This could be a nice addition to use in my 5W challenge on the 20-30-40-80m bands. I should probably make myself a diplexer, so my 10-15-20-40-80m dipole can be used on the lowest bands (40 and 80m) with the HB-1B, and another transceiver on 10-15-20m simultaneously. Long term I might make some more multiplexing, so the antenna can be used on all 5 bands (plus 4 and 6m) with different transceivers, or receivers .

Building a big Battery for 12V in the Shack and the Lab.

After buying 28 LiFePO4 100Ah cells I started building batteries.

In the shack:

The intention is getting a battery build for powering the majority of my radio station, especially the monitor equipment, using mainly solar power for charging.

This has two aspects:

1.

Reducing the power needed for radios that should be on at all times, and the ones that are powered a lot of the times. This means that the older radios drawing 1-2A during stand-by are out of the question for 24/7 use.

Fortunately I do have some radios that can be used with low power consumption, more about this later.

The other radios with higher power consumption can then be switched on whenever I want to operate.

More about this in other posts.

2. 

Improving the power supply situation, so most of the monitoring can be run on solar power only.

This will be in stages. Right now I have 2 solar panels with a peak power of about 130W, feeding a charge controller. The batteries consists of 2x 12V - 100Ah LiFePO4 batteries, with a total of 200Ah available when the batteries are fully charged. This is just not quite enough for my use, so some of the cells will be used to create a 12V - 400Ah battery for the 12V supply in the radio shack. At the moment I have prepared 8 cells, running a "12V balancing" process right now. The test battery looks like this:

Yes, this needs to be protected against short circuits, but this is the preliminary setup.

What I need is finishing another 8 cells and make some more bus bars (connection between the batteries), getting the other 8 cells completely ready. Getting them balanced and fully charged, then connected together in a 12V configuration with 4 cells, then the second set of 4 cells connected as the second battery.

All this is done upstairs in my lab, and then I will have to use a cupboard for the 12V system with the 2x 12V batteries in parallel, plus heavy switches and fuses for the charging and power supply. 

I should then have a solid 12V power supply system in the shack, with a capacity of close to 200Ah.

As I expect to have some power amplifier using 24-28V, and some laptop power supply, plus a 24V soldering iron I expect to add a 24V battery in the shack for this purpose. This could be a 50Ah battery, as it will be in use infrequently, or a set of 8 cells with BMS (100Ah).

If I want to use the radios with high power, (>500W) output I expect to use the mains for powering those, as the batteries and a corresponding inverter is not practical for this purpose.

In the Lab (upstairs):

The two 12V batteries in use at the shack right now will then be free to use in the lan upstairs, creating a 12V - 200Ah. As I expect the lab to be less in use than the shack, I think this will work nicely.

In the lab I have a few pieces of test equipment running on 220-230VAC, and I suspect that using a (pure sine wave) inverter is quite capable of providing power for those, as they will be used infrequently.

I do want to have 24V available in the lab. This could be done in 2 ways:

Either creating a true 24V system for the lab, or adding a 12V battery system in series with the existing 12V system.

Winter is coming:

For both systems, but especially for the shack system I suspect that there will be a energy deficit in the deep of winter, especially Dec/Jan, and probably also Nov/Feb.

If that happens, and the battery voltage drops below a certain value, I intend to get some power into the system from the mains power system, preferably in "low tariff" periods.

Solar panels:

This expansion means that I will have to mount more solar panels outside.

I have some, alrerady, now I need to make some solid supports for them. There will be some experimentation with amall panel arrays first, then I will go larger.

I am afraid I have been bitten by the solar power bug ;)

Found at Rally: Triplexer.

 A few weeks ago I found this at a local get-together taking place at a repeater site. At this meeting they sell (often donated) stuff for the benefit of running the repeater.

This year I found an unknown set of band filters in a box, I suspected that it would be a kind of triplexer, and toady I got my NanoVNA out, and yes it is.

The connector at the far side is the common one. On the near side we see two very recognizable labels, VHF and UHF. I did not know what the third one was, but measuring I found.

Testing from the common port:

TOS: Low pass filter, flat up to 117MHz, then a small dip of up to 5dB, then a 3dB cut-off at about 134MHz.

VHF: Flat from 135MHz - 270MHz, but some feed through up to about 315MHz. Good attenuation below 100MHz and above 400MHz.

UHF: High pass filter with 3dB cut-off around 336MHz. Attenuation on 1300MHz was about 3dB.

Residual attenuation:

Below 100MHz: Practically flat with <0.5dB attenuation

VHF: <0.5dB at 144MHz

UHF: <0.5dB at 435MHz

Attenuation between band ports was more than 22dB at frequencies where I would expect to transmit, so that is insufficient for a transceiver triplexer. For a VHF-UHF monitoring receiver system, this would work nicely.

I got a few of the filters for experiments. I had decided that the shielded boxes, at least, could be useful for other RF projects, and there were some decent looking (SMD) capacitors for VHF and UHF. There were quite a bit of these filters,  so I might have got a few more. If they are there next year I may get some of them again.

 Yes, finally I got to use my RF test equipment, now it is time to get some construction done.

Test of HB-1B for Digital Modes.

 For a few years I have had the HB-1B transceiver.

This is a small sized 5W CW transceiver capable of operating on 80-40-30-20m with CW. It does not transmit on 60m. 

The receiver covers 3.2 - 16MHz, and the RX mode can be set to USB/LSB on 40, 30 and 20m. For some obscure reason it only runs LSB on 60 and 80m. The variable CW filter can be set to receive in the full SSB bandwidth, so I thought this could be used for digital modes without problems.

The set runs with a headphone only AF output, so the AF attenuator I used with the higher end rigs (with speaker output) provided an insufficient signal to the computer sound input, no surprise. 

In any case, this makes the receiving setup simple for the frequencies the HB-1B is capable of. I was a bit worried to see if the frequency stability would be sufficient for WSPR monitoring.

I have run tests with 20m WSPR, and 20-30-40m FT8, and the system works very nicely with sufficient frequency stability. The fact that the transceiver draws only 80mA at receive, makes it a decent candidate for this kind of monitoring, until some receivers with lower power consumption have been made. 

Because my main interests are in the higher HF range, like 10m, and also in VHF/UHF, the initial receiver for the International Beacon frequency of 28200kHz could be reached with a simple down converter, using a 19200kHz crystal oscillator that I have, a diode balance mixer, and a 28MHz preamp should be sufficient for using the HB-1B as a 9MHz IF. Then a "real" 9MHz IF/detector/AF amplifier and filter can be built later. I suspect that the full receiver for 28200 could draw as little as 20-30mA, depending on the power consumption of the 19200 oscillator.

When that is done the HB-1B other types of monitoring can be done, both on 10m, e.g. with a 22MHz canned oscillator as converter LO, covering 10m - or other oscillators for covering the following bands:

30MHz: 40MHz monitoring

40MHz: 50MHz monitoring

60MHz 70MHz monitoring

The 10m monitor with a "base" frequency of 6.000MHz

the 40, 50 and 70MHz with a "base" frequency of 10.000MHz

Each converter should draw less than 30mA.

The 50MHz monitoring could initially be done with an older 3-band Tokyo Hy-Power hand held (like in holding a building brick ;) ) that runs 40-15-6m, since it draws about 120mA in receive mode. 

All this "power saving" happens because I want to run most of my station with solar power (maybe not possible in the deep of winter, then it will be assisted by mains power charging the batteries in low-tariff hours), and because some of it will run unattended 24/7, and other stuff just running when I am awake and at home. 

Quick Test of Some Receivers for Monitoring.

Over the week end I found some older scanner receivers etc that I want to use for propagation monitoring and general (local) traffic monitoring.

Because I like to have the monitoring running for hours every day, and using solar power, I want to limit the power consumption.

Monitoring FM channels:

I have a 10m FM transceiver that I intend to use for monitoring 10m FM on 29.600. Draws 160mA on receive, which is acceptable, though not ideal. Current consumption is still about 160mA, but it is better than using the IC-703. For 10m FM it is also possible to use a Bearcat UBC92XLT handheld scanner running 6V with 70mA current consumption. A voltage regulator reducing the 13V to 6V will be necessary for this (easily built).

For 6m FM, monitoring frequencies in the 51-52MHz segment I can use my older Yaesu VX-5.

The best results of those came with 2 handheld scanner receivers, Bearcat UBC65XLT. These are 10 channel units capable of running in the 4m, 2m and 70cm bands. They draw 5mA when off, and 50mA when receiving. 

I think that one of those should scan the 4m FM segment - 70.300 - 70-500 - 9 channels, and 69.900. the frequency pair 69.900/70.500 is allowed in Denmark for use with repeaters - yes 600kHz spacing, just like the 2m repeaters.

The alternative would be using a (Wouxun?) handheld for this purpose, if I can find out how to program its memories.

The second one can be used for 2m, and the 143.625 MHz, all in 25kHz spacing system. 143.625 has been used by the space stations Mir and ISS for communication with the ground stations in Russia.

For 2m FM I could also use my older Kenwood handheld TRX, or a Baofeng as monitor, again if I can figure out how to program the beast. Since I have no intention of transmitting with those I have no problem using those Chinese radios for monitoring.

For 70cm I could use the Baofeng's again.

Now, what to do for 23cm? I do have an old Kenwood TM741 triband radio, and that could be useful for FM monitoring on that band. I will have to test the power consumption of this one, but it does have the advantage of being capable of running 3 bands simultaneously, with additional transmit capability. I can likely find a low power scanner capable of running 23cm. We shall see.

I am well aware that some antennas will be necessary for all this (and more) monitoring.

The advantage of receive-only antennas is that the preamplifier, if it is necessary, can be placed close to the antenna, so a low cost coax cable (cheap satellite cable) can be used.

The 10 - 6 - 4m, and 8m bands could be covered by a TFD antenna about 2.5m long, hanging in a tree in the garden. Essentially invisible.

For 2m, 70cm and 23cm a short tri-band vertical can be used, with a wideband preamp, and stilll the low cost cable. Not invisible, but relatively discreet. Yes I am aware of the possible overload of some receivers when transmitting, but that is, for now, an acceptable compromise.

For reception on bands in between - such as air band and FM broadcast radio of both Western European and Russian stations, a wide band antenna, such as a discone or a log-periodic antenna could be used with a wideband preamplifier.

The next level will be some monitoring using FT8 and beacon reception, and this requires more sophisticated reception systems capable of SSB. I have some ideas, but this will have to wait for another time.

Idea Box: A Small Solar Lighting System Etc. for the Bedroom.

 Overview:

Using some GEL batteries for providing light in the bedroom. Using small panels mounted to the "top window panes", and a simple charge controller, e.g. the 10A model I already have. Tests of small solar panels will have to be made to see if they can provide sufficient power for the night light, as well as power for MP3 player(s) and amplifier(s), so some audio (e.g. audio books) can be played in there. If necessary, an externally mounted solar panel can be used, but a fully indoor system is preferred.

If this works a similar system can be used in the living room. Both rooms have windows facing South, so it might be possible.

A bit of testing and design:

All this should be tested, (and possibly used) until a more permanent system can be made for solar powering more of the house, e.g. a solar powered audio player system. 

A video player system will require more power, but this can be a start before more solar (entertainment) becomes available in the house.

Bedroom system:

Here is an idea for a small solar power system for the bedroom. As you can imagine, the power requirements for bedroom lighting are not very large, so I would like to add a low power "entertainment system", just for audio, some very low level "orientation lighting" with short LED strips, a "reading light", and a tiny audio system with one of my MP3 players, so I can listen to audio books when resting there, and a charger for the mobile devices, such as phone, tablets and e-readers. I suspect that I can keep the daily energy consumption down to some 10s of Wh, so I need to make myself a budget. 

First I will have to test the energy consumption of the different devices I have, then calculate the needed overhead of power, e.g. make an estimate of the number of sun-less days I need to have energy storage for.

I finally located some small panels I have. They are so-called 20W ones. I need to test them to see how it works in full sunlight (open circuit voltage and short circuit current test), and how they they work behind my windows I will try to make the system with some of those. I have 9 of them, so I should get sufficient power for some low light and some audio in the bedroom, probably using 3 or 4 of them. Even if they are only 10 - 15W the system should work. An effective 40W will likely be sufficient for the bedroom system.

Somewhere I should have a box of single cells and very small panels that I should test and see if I can get sufficient power out of them for similar systems

For similar systems I might also try to salvage some small panels from worn-out (discarded) solar-power-packs as well.

If I consider the idle current draw for the charge controller too high, I have to make a simple one myself, or a switching circuit for disconnecting it when there is no sunlight. 

If I get satisfied with this system I may make other low power systems for other uses, e.g. a weather station with remote sensing and rechargeable batteries as power supply.

Let this be the first test ...

Es on 10m, 6m and 4m.

 The sporadic E season seemed to start a bit slow this year.

OK, I was away for a week around 3. June, so I have probably missed several openings.

Now I am back, and the activity has got going again.

In my 5W challenge I have worked a few dozen QSOs on 10 and 6m. The QSOs worked in the challenge just passed 200, so I am fully on track. On 4m I worked a single station with 25W, and could probably have done more with more activity.

The solar activity has been a bit lower after the quite strong activity we have had in April and May. The SFI just dropped below 100 for a few days, but now it is coming up again. There was one spotless day (the first this year, I think). The geomagnetic field has been rather quiet, as there have been no significant flares or coronal holes to send any substantial solar wind in the direction of Earth.

The solar power for the shack is still insufficient for the use of all the radios I want to make use of in this time when propagation monitoring is quite interesting for the high HF bands and the VHF bands. More battery capacity as well as solar panels need to be connected, and some low power monitor receiving equipment is also needed.

There are now 8  LiFePO4 cells ready to build a battery for the lab I have upstairs. All have been charged and balanced with the small solar power system for the lab, and I still have 20 cells to prepare for more energy storage.

What I need for making a good, solid battery (12V - 200Ah) will be some bus bars (heavy duty copper connections between the cells) Right now I will test the system with a somewhat lower load, and therefore I *can* use some heavy duty wire for the connections, but I will have to locate or make some of the bus bars if I want to use the battery efficiently for powering the main part of the lab. 

When ready the lab solar power system should be able to deliver/store 12V - 200Ah and shared with the 12V system, an added 12V -> 24V for use with soldering iron and computer. I also have a 100W inverter, so it should be possible to power the spectrum analyzer and the TRX test set, plus other 230V test equipment for limited periods. This system should also be used for the charging/balancing of the remaining LiFePO4 cells.

Also, I noticed a substantial amount of switching noise from my primitive switch mode charger for the single cells, so I will have to limit the charging/balancing of the remaining cell to the night time, then get some EMI filtering connected as soon as possible.

New LiFePO4 Cells For Use With Solar Power. Test And Charging.

I picked up 28 unused, but older LiFePO4 cells, and started setting up a test system for them.

I also picked up some BMSs (Battery Management System), 2 for 12V 50/100A, and one for 24V 50/100A systems. I may need to get one or two more.

Solar Power Charging: 

The charging system for those batteries are configured like this:

I am using my solar system in my lab, described in the previous post, i.e. 2x 100W solar panels, charge controller and 3x 30Ah / 12V batteries. This may be expanded a bit with more batteries in parallel. providing a nominal capacity of about 180Ah. Because the batteries are GEL type, I count on a total usable capacity of about 90-100Ah.

The single cell charger consists of a DC/DC buck (step down) converter capable of delivering a maximum peak current of 20A, with CV (Constant Voltage) and CC (Constant Current) settings available on the PCB. To be sure of avoiding overheating I have set those like this:

CV: 3.60V (the upper limit of charge voltage for LiFePO4 cells)

CC: 10A (Just to keep it cool)

The circuit does have a fuse in the battery lead, a 15A one. A bit of redundancy is good. The system should not make a show of spontaneous combustion ;) .

This system is now running, and the first cell is being charged. Things seem to run smoothly right now - no overheating.

More Efficient Energy Use:

The intention is to get all 28 cells tested for capacity, then match them for the best possible batteries.

For this I could just use a resistive load and waste all the energy. Here is the idea to avoid some of this waste:

When I have 4 cells fully charged I will get them balanced for voltage. This happens with 4 low-value resistors, one in series with each battery (plus connection). When connected all in parallel the 4 battery-resistor sets will slowly balance the voltage of the cells. This is the simplest way to do this, and may not keep the batteries in balance long term, but that can come later, when all cells have been fully tested.

The first 4 cells can then be connected with a BMS to form a second 12V power supply, provisionally. With this and a second charging circuit, and considering the losses in the system, this system should be capable of charging 3 cells from (near) 0 to full charge. The 4th cell can be charged from the solar system, providing a new 4-cell battery for test charging the next cells. I could also be connected as a provisional (second) solar power system.

This is a long process, but it will test the cells for reaching the full charge voltage.

Checking Capacity Of Single Cells:

The intention is expanding the 12V system for the radio station, and also create an expanded battery capacity in the lab upstairs.

I expect the 12V battery at the station to be about 300Ah (12 cells), and the lab system to be 200Ah (8 cells).

The first system should likely be the one for the lab. So a full test will have to be made of enough matched cells (8 pcs) to make the 12V - 200Ah battery with all cells the closest possible with respect to capacity.

For this a discharge system has to be made. This could be a simple resistive load with a digital meter. The meters I have seen, however, need 6.5V, so they cannot be used for testing a single cell. Hmmm!

Can I program an Arduino (or the like) and make a simple circuit for testing capacity? Of course...

The simplest solution will be making a simple constant current load (or a simple resistive load) and measure the time before the output voltage reaches the lower limit of 3V, then read out the time and switch off the load. Not too difficult with an Arduino, even with my limited programming skills.

I do not need to measure the absolute capacity, just to match the cells, so the resistive load should be sufficient. The absolute capacity can then be measured when the cells are connected as a 12V battery.

It will take a while, as I am not constantly home to monitor the process.

Also, making this with simple means, things do take time, although they battery/cell testing is not too time consuming, as other things can be done while the tests are running.

I suspect some building of supports for solar panels, and some simple receiver circuits and/or microwave stuff, is in my future, along with the battery testing - and doing some QSOs with the radios.

No time to be bored...

Update: After some hours of charging the first cell still charges with about 8A, and the voltage rises very slowly.

Solar Power Expansion.

I moved the older GEL battery system batteries upstairs into the lab:

The 4x 30Ah battery is now connected in parallel (again) and placed on the shelf next to the lab desk. 

I set up 2x 100W solar panels in series with a (max) 6A cable to the indoors. (maybe more). This is a preliminary setup, so the system can be tested (well, it has worked before, so why not again?) . A certain voltage loss is expected, but less so as the panels are in series, and the current in the cable is therefore reduced. Preliminary cable laid, and a charge regulator added, the lab 12V 60Ah system is now running and charging.

Further needed:

- improved (and shorter) cable from panels to the indoor charger/battery system

When I get more batteries I will probably move the 2x 12V/100Ah LiFePO4 batteries upstairs to use as the base 12V system. The existing lead-acid batteries can then be used together providing 24V/about 100Ah along with providing 200Ah -> about 100Ah at 12V. More solar panels will be needed for this extension, of course, as I want the charge to be the best possible.

The 12V - when finished - should be powering things like the GPS/10MHz reference generator for the spectrum analyzer, frequency counter and the transceiver test set.

The 24V part should be powering the small 24V temperature controlled soldering iron, and also a small laptop. 

When the bigger battery gets installed I can try using a (pure sine wave) inverter to power some of the 220V instruments, like the transceiver test set, spectrum analyzer and a few more.

While this system should work well in the summer time It may need some additional assistance from the mains grid in winter time. I should build some relay switching for this before the winter comes, because, of course - Winter Is Coming  (but not for several months) ;) 

For now I do have enough panels for improving the existing system with the batteries at hand, but I need to build much better supports for the panels. I also expect to start getting some larger panels, a few at a time.

Right now it is about extending the solar power system, and getting the antenna system maintained, and some indoor activity with getting some microwave (and other) stuff up and running.

There are interesting times ahead at OZ9QV. I hope it is not in the Chinese sense ;)

Microwave Day.

 In the past week end I went to the Microwave Day in the town of Horsens, Denmark.

Although I have not really built any microwave equipment yet, everyone interested is welcome, and I did also go to the previous one 3 years ago - the ones in the last two years were canceled due to the COVID situation.

I wanted to take things easy, so I did the drive there on Friday, and home again on Sunday.

There were two presentations, one about the Norwegian beacon LB2SHF and the other about the 122GHz experiments. 

After the presentations there was social gathering and microwave talk, as well as Ole, OZ2OE demonstrating his 122GHz equipment. 

There was a small flea market, and I got just a few things. Two N-connector to WR90 waveguide transitions and some ancient 12GHz LNBs with WR75 waveguide inputs.

Because I have some horn antennas for both sizes of waveguide I wanted to have this. The WR90 transitions can be used as they are, and the LNBs can be used in different ways:

1) As a simple down converter, used as-is.

2) As an "active antenna". This requires a modification, taking the output of the 10-12GHz (pre)amplifier to an SMA connector.

3) Removing all the electronics and grinding a bit of material away, the LNB can also be used as a waveguide to SMA transition.

At the flea market I also saw transverters. There was an old version of the DB6NT transverter, complete with a horn antenna for a reasonable price, even if the output power was limited to 30mW. I did not bring it home, but I should probably have bought it, as I do have another 10GHz amplifier module that could have increased the output to about 200mW. A bit of a regret, but there may be other opportunities.

A 24GHz transverter, also at a reasonable price, was seen, but again, I did not bring it home. I know the seller, however, so I could probably still find it for sale.

Then there is test equipment. I had an appointment with another participant, that he would bring a 26GHz spectrum analyzer to check and possibly buy, and I did bring it home. I can now see what the things I build and buy are doing, signal-wise.

In the afternoon there was a demonstration of the 122GHz equipment at a longer distance (5km). Not that far, but not so easy. Signals were heard both ways, though.

Some time ago I purchased a CBNL 10GHz link transceiver module, but there is not much information, so I asked if any of the others had more information.

I have found a bit, but I am worried about the simple stuff: How critical is the order in which I connect the power supply. On the on6ll.be website I found the following:

Since it is used in a remote link the "base supply voltage is 48V (see the two connections at the right side of the connector). Then I see that there is a +8V connection The question is now - do I connect the 48V first, or the 8V? What I cannot easily see is where the negative bias for the GaAsFETs is generated. From the 48V converted to 7V, or from the 8V? It is not even clear if the 8V is generated on board when the 48V is connected. 

The other parts I have found sufficient information about to proceed. The LO should be somewhere around 7.5-8GHz, and the IF for the "RF/microwave" section then uses an IF of about 2.4GHz.

The T/R switching is clear enough from the description on the website, even the illustration above.

If any reader knows I would appreciate the information. I simply do not want to make a potentially destructive test, as the GaAsFETs simply will self destruct if the drain voltage is applied before the negative gate bias, as those familiar with GaAsFETs will know. If no reader knows I will have to extend the search.

Good to be back doing social activities again, there will be a few more coming up in the next months. Some of them will be outdoors, and others indoors. The next one is only a few weeks away.

Some Thoughts on 10m Propagation Monitoring.

It is no secret that one of my favourite bands (especially on HF) is 10m, and I want to be able to make the best possible use of that band. 

At the moment several receivers are used for monitoring the 10m band:

- the FRG-100 for 28200 "International Beacon Project" (IBP), current draw 500mA

- The IC-703 for 10m FM, 500mA

- The AR-8200 for 10m FT8, 200mA

All in all 1.2A of current consumption, just for monitoring 10m propagation using existing (older) equipment. Even using IC-705s for all it would be less. But for monitoring this could be considerably reduced by using simple home made receivers:

- Polyakov DCRX for FT8, using a (pulled) 14.04MHz Xtal as LO, 20mA?

- Polyakov DCRX for WSPR/QRSS, using a (pulled) 14.06MHz Xtal as LO, 20mA?

- Simple DCRX or superhet w/AGC for monitoring 27.555 (20-50mA?)

- simple FM RX with FM-IC for 29.6 FM likely 25mA

- simple superhet w/AGC for 28.200 IBP, likely 25-50mA

- the box could incorporate a Raspberry Pi 2 for decoding WSPR/QRSS and/or FT8, ???mA

Some LO signals could be made with an Arduino controlled Si5351 synth board.

A modular build of this is feasible, and could start with the 28.200 IBP TX.

After this the priority would be like:

- FT8 RX

- 29.6 FM RX

- 27.555 DXB RX

Signals from all could be mixed/matched into a stereo amplifier for "placing the audio", e.g.

28.200 in the centre, the 29.6 in the left channel and 27.555 in the right channel. If more audio monitoring, the 29.6 FM channel (squelched) could be shared with another (SSB or CW) channel audio.

A start would be a simple superhet for 28.200, using a 19.2MHz crystal oscillator (probably originally used for some GSM base station) as the local oscillator, followed by a simple 9MHz "IF receiver" with an audio filter. I do have 9MHz crystals, so if I can place the frequency correctly, a simple crystal ladder filter can be used. Alternative is using a simple audio filter. A limiter for audio (probably a combined clipper/AGC) should be used for reducing the shock value if a strong signal comes up on the frequency.

It should be possible to limit the total current consumption to about 50mA for all, including the audio output amplifier, replacing a receiver using about 500mA.

It should be possible to keep the total current consumption for all those receivers, including audio amplifiers, below 300mA. This should provide a considerable power saving when used with the solar power supply, compared to the present setup, and with more functionality when finished.

Considering that at least some of this should run 24/7, the solar budget looks considerably better.

More Radios on the Solar Power System.

The new solar charge regulator connected into the system, and more radios connected as loads. With the new controller I can manage around 600W peak power from the solar panels. Right now the panels provide only a maximum of 230W, so there is room for improvement, and I have some panels available

Setting this revised system up took a few hours. 

Radios connected now:

- IC-705 (running 6 - 80m with the new 30m "long wire" antenna).

- IC-7300 (running 4-6-10-(12)-15-(18)-20-40-80m with the dipole antenna)

- IC-703 (running 10 FM RX)

- FRG-100 (running 28200 Beacon RX)

- AR-8200 (running FT8 RX) will run continuously

- FT-8900 (running 70cm)

Total current consumption for all the above radios is about 2.7A, though not running all the time. 

Main radios for use will be the IC-705 and the IC-7300 and the FT-8900 for now.

As the system has been running all evening, the batteries indicate about 85% capacity left. Let us see how much sunshine is needed to get the power back up to above 95% tomorrow.

The IC-703, the FRG-100 and the AR-8200 are very inefficient as stand-by receivers and should be replaced with less power consuming receivers. Some of it should probably be home made, especially the FT8 receiver and the 28200 beacon receiver. This will likely reduce the total power consumption of the system by almost 1A - this could then be used for other  purposes, like a Raspberry Pi for running WSJT-X (FT8 monitoring).

In general, for general monitoring, the receivers should be really low power ones, as much as can be done 

I will need to test a Raspberry Pi 2 to see if it runs WSJT-X smoothly, and how the current consumption is.

Now I will have to see how this works as an independent power supply. I expect no problems from now, until October or November, but the few winter months will likely provide too little power from the solar panels. We shall see when that time arrives.

30m Wire Antenna Update.

 The 30m long piece of wire has found its place for a while.

The feed point is placed 2m high at the end of the out-house under an apple tree. It then goes up through the tree and lead to the second apple tree - the largest in the garden, then down to a smaller tree where the end is attached. Most of the wire is about 5m above ground, not particularly high, but definitely better than 1m above ground. 

The antenna now has a counterpoise added, about 50m of wire, about 2m above ground (and lower).

The system works nicely on 30m, and does not need a tuner when operating from 80 - 6m. On the resonant bands of the dipole, the dipole mostly works better, but on 20m in particular the wire gives signal mostly equal to the dipole. On 30m the dipole is useless, as it is not resonant at all, and the wire works nicely. A TZ station (Mali) was coming in nicely with up to S9 signals, but 5W was (as expected) not sufficient to break the pile -up. I will have to try again when signals are good, and less stations are calling.

The present set-up of antennas and transceivers for the 80 - 4m bands is now as follows.

IC-705:  Wire antenna, workable on all bands 80m - 6m.

IC-7300: Dipole working on 4,6,10,15,20,40,80m

IC-7600: The old R-6000 antenna running 10-12-15-17-20m, and the 6m part of the V-2000 antenna.

IC-7100: A vertical Sirio half wave antenna for 4m, mostly used for the local FM traffic.

New Antenna Experiment: 30m Wire.

 Today I made the initial test of the 30m long antenna wire I had lying around. I located a low power (probably absolutely max power 100W) 9:1 UN-UN.

I found a free cable end at the end of the out-house, and strung the wire from there to the low end of the garden. Both ends are only about 2m above ground, and the centre is sagging, so it is only about one meter above ground. There is a lot of room for improvements. The centre should be mounted near the centre of the dipole, i.e. about 5 - 6m above ground, and the end(s) should be higher up as well.

This antenna is right now connected to the IC-705 with about 15m RG-58 cable. Not the best in the world, but for the low frequencies it will work. Surprising that the OZ7IGY beacon is clearly audible on 2m and 70cm, despite the low height. 

The dipole cannot operate on 30m, so the 30m band was tested. A bit of a surprise, a QSO with a French station was easy, even running the 5W from the IC-705.

For now the wire antenna is connected to the '705, and some improvements are in my plans:

- mounting the antenna higher up

- adding some "radials", a 50m long piece, and a 10m long one, to see if the 160m band can be reached with a decent SWR. Right now the SWR is a bit up-and-down across the HF bands, starting being low-ish around 3.5MHz.

- adding a common mode choke at the feed point, so I can avoid RF running into the shack (and some of the noise being picked up on the outside of the cable).

If the weather permits, some of this will happen tomorrow, as well as weather proofing the setup.

The dipole is now connected to the IC-7300, and can be used on 4-6-10-12-15-17-20-40-80m, using the built-in tuner on some bands. At the moment the '7300 has been set to 5W out on the HF bands, but there is, of course some reserve if I *really* want to work a station - new country or the like.

I am expecting some packages tomorrow, so I can start improving the solar power setup. I expect to add the IC-7300 as one more load for the solar power setup, so in essence the "mainly QRP" setup will running on solar only.

HF Dipole Improved.

 My HF  dipole antenna for the IC-705 has been hanging very low for quite a while. Even then my 5W (mostly CW) challenge for the time of the year is on track.

Yesterday I made an effort to raise the feed point for the "inverted V"from 3.5m to just over 6m, just at the top of the largest apple tree in my garden. It can be brought higher, but for now it stays there, because some of the wires are somewhat entangled in the branches of the tree, and I have not yet un-tangled them.

The antenna is a Diamond make, 5-band dipole with one branch for 10 and 20m, and the other for 15 - 40 - 80m. It is likely that I can add 30m, maybe even 60m to this antenna, as I have some coils from a previous antenna. But this will be for later.

The result? It may be too early to say, but tests yesterday indicate more band noise on some bands.

First of all, the resonance frequencies are a bit high on the bands, mostly in the SSB parts of the bands, so the antenna is too short. I will have to "cut on" some wire (yes, I know, add a bit of wire, but I couldn't help playing with the words)

10m has not done too much, neither has 15m.

On 20m I have had clearly better signals, and it looks like more stations than before are coming back to my calls.

On 40m the band noise is clearly higher, as are the signals. Same for 80m. Some CQ calls on 80m gave a QSO to SP3CW last night.

This concludes the first stage of my antenna maintenance and improvement work, there is a lot more to do.

Shack Solar Power Update.

 During the past week I have worked a bit on my solar power system. 

A local friend had some panels he could not get much use from. They work fine, so I decided to get some of them and put them to work. The panels are:

2x 130W peak, 17V

4x 100W peak, 17V

Just before going to my friend I purchased and picked up 2x 12V/100Ah LiFePO4 batteries, as they are considerably more efficient than the (gel) lead-acid batteries I already have. For the shack I want to use them in a parallel connection configuration, so I now have 200Ah at 12V.

First step: Setting up some of the new panels.

I started setting up the 2x 130W panels, connected in series, and connected them to the old batteries via a charge controller. This controller is capable of delivering 20A charge current, and capable of accepting up to 55V (open circuit voltage, OCV) input from the solar panels. The OCV from the panels is under 40V, so there is a good margin. The panel setup is just an intermediate step. They are resting on the ground, leaning to the out-house South wall. I will need to build a lasting support, but right now it is a matter of getting the system up and running.

When coming home from the trip I realized that I missed a bit of hardware, so I went and got 2 100A switches, some 16 mm2 cable and some eyelet connectors for the battery. Next problem: The connectors were impossible to crimp with my current tools, so now I am waiting for a hydraulic crimp tool for the connectors.

The initial indoor set-up is them made with some 2x 4 mm2 speaker wire as the connections, so there is still a good deal of improvement to do, but apart from the improvements needed, the system is essentially ready to use, and the two radios originally connected to the old system have been re-connected.

The first test shows that in the good sunlight, even in the mid to late afternoon, the batteries charged from 89% up to 100%, even with the small load of the IC-705. Right now the 10m FT8 has been added, and the remaining sunlight is insufficient to provide much charge (well, sunset is about now (2000 MEST) in Copenhagen). The real test will be adding load, and see how this works long term. 

Here is the experimental setup of the panel:

Given that we are in the summer half of the year I expect the system to be running nicely with lots of surplus energy, even with just the 2x 130W panels. In the deep of winter time it is a different matter. I expect to have to use some supplemental power from the mains, in order to keep the batteries sufficiently charged.

For now I need to make myself a power budget to see what I can connect to the system. This will also involve testing the power consumption of modules, like the Raspberry Pi(s) I intend to use for FT8/WSPR decoding and QRSS grabber(s)

Now it is time to connect some more load - yes, more radios running on pure solar power here. I think that the first should be either:

1) running the QO-100 down converter (satellite LNB), possibly the 739MHz IF receiver - and the Chinese up-converter mounted indoors. Then I need to test the stand-by power drain of the old IC-821 transceiver. ... or

2) running some more stand-by monitoring equipment, such as more receivers and/or raspberry Pi(s) for QRSS/WSPR or FT8 monitoring, first on 10m, then on other bands, such as 6m, 4m or 2m.

A preliminary second solar power system can be used for powering the 2.4GHz power amplifier(booster) at the feed point of the TX uplink dish. For energy saving reasons I should make the voltage for the booster remote switchable from the shack.

Some antenna work will also be necessary, for the lower frequencies. I want to be able to work on as many bands as possible from 160m (630m?, 2200m?) to 13cm, and later 10GHz, maybe 3.4 and 5.7GHz, but I expect the latter two bands to be just experimental as part of my band-QSO-challenge.

Interesting time ahead for OZ9QV

Solar Flare Observed Today.

 Around 1135 UTC today I observed a radio burst of noise on 14MHz. Going to 28MHz it was there, too.

I tuned into the GOES X-ray observations, and could follow the X-ray flare rising to a peak of M4.0 at 1139 UTC.

This is the first time in this solar cycle that I could follow a flare rising to a peak. I was just sitting in my living room when I heard the noise burst(s), so yes, it is a good idea to have a radio receiver running in the 14 - 30MHz range, just for that. I may build a simple DCRX with an audio amplifier, and maybe a visual monitoring (graph) for observing radio solar bursts. Preferably in a range with no other terrestrial signals (or noise from electronic devices). Oh, bother. Too many projects already ;)

This flare originated in sunspot group (AR) 2975 near the center of the solar disk. Looking at the movies this could be a full halo, earth directed, CME. Is there aurora in our near future? (the next few days).

Solar Power Update.

 Today I made the latest update to the solar power system for the shack.

The system now consists of a battery capacity total of 120Ah nominal, 4 pcs. 12V / 30Ah batteries.

Additionally, the 50W panel has been replaced with a 100W panel. The intention is adding another 100W panel, so the battery *can* be charged with a peak current of just under 20A. In the summer part of the year this should be sufficient to run some of the monitoring receiver systems 24/7. For the winter season a back up system using mains power in the low light solar periods should probably be added.

A higher current rated solar charge controller is also added. The previous one could only handle 10A charge current, the new one handles 20A, corresponding to 2x 100W solar panels. The system should operate within safe parameters. I do have the second 100W panel, so it is a matter of making a good mounting system.

At the moment this system powers my IC-705 fully, and more should be possible:

1) If the voltage drop from inside to the outdoor QO100 PA at the dish is not too high, the second use would be adding this with a switch in the shack. This is necessary as there is a current draw of somewhere about 100mA from the PA, as it is just using a WiFi ("8W") booster that has a DC/DC converter and is also active in "receive mode". It uses a very fast "HF-VOX" transmit-receive switch, so it is usable with SSB signals. The current power supply for this is using an extra DC/DC converter. This way the PA can be mounted in a smaller box closer to the feed antenna.

2) I located an adapter for cigarette lighter connector, so now it is possible to connect the hand-held 10m transceiver to use as a 24/7 monitor receiver for the FT8 frequency on 10m.

3) A small CW-only transceiver with <= 50W on the 80-40-30-20m can be used for mostly monitoring on one of those bands

4) I have crystals for 7074kHz (40m FT8) and 14074kHz (20m FT8) that could be used in simple receivers for monitoring those bands. Other options for building simple receivers for other bands are available.

5) Some "transistor radios" with SSB function can be used on other frequencies not covered by crystals available to me, and for some broadcast frequencies. This requires some extra voltage regulators as their voltage requirements vary from 2 - 4.5 - 6V, maybe others.

Long term I intend to make a separate solar power supply system for the QO-100 system, and a system for lighting, and maybe later some electrical tools.

In the past week I also found some, not too expensive, solar panels. 1 100W panel and 5 50W panels.

I should now have solar panels for peak power of up to a total of 600W. I intend to find more and looked a bit around. I could find some panels similar to the new ones I got this week in Germany, but as far as I can see, a "local" (I can drive there and pick up) has some 280W panels for 24V systems.

When I get those I will definitely need some high capacity batteries for storage. I have been looking into this, and the best solution - long term - looks like using LiFePO4 type batteries. Longer life time/more cycles possible than with lead-acid (gel) batteries so all-in-all a lower cost system. This does require better charge controllers, but I think it is worth it.

I am aware that it will not be possible to go completely off grid where I live, but I can, at least,  reduce the cost of energy in the longer term. A combination of mains and solar power will be the way to go here.

More Solar and 10m Setup.

 I got the modified IC-703 connected to a RX signal splitter with 3 outputs. One is connected back to the '703, so I have 2 more outputs available. The signal level is high enough for sensitive receivers, and could be amplified for use with more receivers. The idea is to have monitoring receivers near the 10m band, e.g. on the following frequencies:

27.555 CB activity centre for early propagation detection (other CB frequencies?)

28.074 FT8 tuning frequency. This could become a simple Polyakov type DC receiver.

28.126 WSPR/QRSS monitoring (could also become a Polyakov type DCRX).

28.200 International Beacon Project audio listening (could become a very simple superhet).

28.322 secondary QRSS (could be simple DCRX)

29.600 (FM calling frequency) - I should probably use my AOR7030 for this, but it looks like it needs some repair.

Possibly other 10m frequencies

My old FRG-100 receiver was also connected to the solar power system, as a test. This radio is far too power consuming, up to 1.2A. I checked consumption. Right now that RX is set up for monitoring 10m FT8, with the antenna connected to the IC-703 signal splitter

The FRG-100 is *very* inefficient to use with solar. Stand-by current ("off") is about 130mA and with the RX running, 600mA. Not suited for the small solar system I have here. For alternatives, see above.

I decided to run the FRG-100 from a mains power supply for now. If I can find a "female" cigarette lighter 12V connector, I will try to connect the hand-held 10m multimode TRX (w/"mobile adapter") that I have, to see the power consumption. This could work as an intermediate solution for monitoring 10m FT8 using the solar power system.

10m FT8, just running for less than an hour, has yielded spots from as far away as VK and HS and South America, 5 continents already. More spots are expected in the afternoon and evening.

The International Beacon system has had audible signals from VK (Aus), RR9 (Siberia), ZS6 (South Africa), 5Z4 (Kenya), 4X6 Israel and CS3 (Azores), already before 1200 UTC, with the IC-703 RX. 10m is very lively.

Yes, 10m is may favourite HF band when it comes to propagation, and solar cycle 25 looks like it will be good.

First Radio Running on Solar Power. And First QSO.

I have now set up my small 50W solar panel with a charge controller and lead-acid batteries with a combined capacity of - officially - 60 Ah, using two "30Ah 12V" gel batteries. A more realistic estimate, for avoiding draining the battery below a safe level, would probably be about 30-40Ah from a fully charged battery. 

In the summer months I would expect this set-up to power for all activities with my IC-705, so that radio has now been connected to the solar small power system. 

Now I will have to check how the voltage/capacity holds up.

I expect to have the 705 running for about 16 hours per day. The current drain at stand-by is about 300mA, so about 4.8 Ah is expected to be spent, with the transmit periods I would not expect the consumption to exceed 6Ah per day, except if I would be running a full contest, or the like. This should leave sufficient capacity for adding a few (very) low powered receivers for 24/7 monitoring.

When I have tested the '705 system for a few days, I shall see, if I can add more.

The batteries are meant as a large buffer for the solar panel. With the 50W panel I would expect the average capacity of approximately 16Ah per day, probably more in the longer and sunny days of summer, and less on days with heavy cloud cover, but hardly ever going down to zero per day. 

For the winter season I should probably add a bit of charging via the mains power supply. but it needs to be checked. For now I expect to be able to run my IC-705 solely on solar power for many months.

Further, other systems with small solar panels are in my thoughts, like some lighting for my workshop, with a small panel and some low cost, low power LED lights, mainly for finding my way around at night. This may not be so often, so a large-ish buffer battery with a small 20-30W panel should be sufficient for this.

Later, when I can afford it, I do intend to make a system with larger batteries, this time LiFePO4 type batteries. This will need larger solar panels. 

This may become a life long project. I suspect that I cannot become fully off-grid, but I would expect to be able to run some essenstials, like fridge/freezer and some light on solar. Heating is another matter. That may be beyond the limits of what I want to set up in the garden.

A Bit of Spring Tidying Activity. Much More Needed. [not really ham radio]

While it is not quite spring, today's weather had a touch of spring here. Sun shining from a clear sky (not often in Denmark), and the temperature quite acceptable. Well, I say not quite spring because it is still February, and that is still officially considered a winter month.

After a long time with COVID, the tidying activity had been lacking here, so now a lot is needed, and finally, I got started.

Indoors the living room space got a little floor space freed. Much more is needed, but it is now possible to have a guest sitting in the few (more) square meters (sqm) available. Yes, it was that bad, but it is a start, and must continue. ;)

In the out-house (I would not call it "shed" because it is much bigger than a shed in my eyes. A total of about 40sqm (about 400sqft) sounds like a lot of space, and while some stuff has been removed from the out-house after my removal some years ago, A lot still needs to be done there, so I can start some workshop activities, including some antenna preparation work.

I need to look at all the stuff on shelves, to see what is useful to me, and what should be discarded, and what must be discarded. A lot of sorting to do, but finally it has started.

In the indoor department, there are some thing needed. The bathroom is over 50 years old, and it needs a complete renewal. Since I am lousy at that type of work, I have decided to have it done and saved enough to pay the bill. It had been postponed due to COVID, but now I need to have it done.

Raspberry Pi as Shack Computer.

 The fan in the 8GB Raspi is failing. The SD card for the 8GB Raspi has veen re-located to a 4GB one in a casing with passive cooling. Some web browser tabs have been closed, so for now the 4GB is running as shack computer with reduced memory.

Casing(s) with passive cooling has(have) been ordered for the 8GB. The "old" SD card from the passively cooled 4GB Raspi has been re-located into the Raspi400. That SD card was set up as SDR, so I can monitor the QO100 satellite again.

I may be able to find a usable fan to replace the defective one, at least until the new casings arrive. 

When that happens I will have the following Raspberry Pi 4/400s available:

1x Raspi 4 8GB, should be the shack computer for browsing and logging, maybe back-end for VNC

2x Raspi 4 4GB for SDR and/or digimodes

1x Raspi 400 (4GB) Probably digimodes, some (circuit) and/or antenna design software.

Apart from that, I have a couple of Raspi 2s, usable for digimodes and/or QRSS monitoring, likely running a VNC (or other remote) server, so they can be remotely operated.

A Few QRP QSOs with CW on the QO100 Satellite.

 Yesterday I got my SDR connected to the converter again (after a long pause), after re-arranging the shack corner.

When I saw some signals in the CW portion of the transponder I found PY2PIM and tried to call him, he was gone.

In stead of just giving up, I moved up a few kHz and made a CQ call, and voilá! There he was. 

After the QSO I was called by several stations, activating the LEILA (overload) system, so I could not hear them immediately. I made 6 QSOs all in all. 2x PY, 2x SP, 1x E70, 1x G)

Not bad for a single CQ call.

Since my output to the antenna is less than 3W, I will consider those QSOs as a part of my personal QRP challenge. We shall see how many satellite QSOs I can make this year with this set-up.

On HF the QRP QSO count is up to 80 this year, so I should be quite capable of reaching my challenge goal of min 365 this year.

Small Update on the Solar and Batteries.

2 small updates in one:

1)

The 20Ah Battery (lead-acid, so more or less effectively 10-12Ah) has been prepared and connected to the solar charger with the 50W panel. The battery was full, so charging is intermittent.

With this I should be able to run the IC-703 on receive 24/7, as it draws less than 300mA. (x24 -> 7.2Ah/day) There should be sufficient juice from the panel to charge 10Ah on a daily basis, with a bit to spare on very cloudy days. I will have to set up a test.

If that works nicely, a DC/DC boost/buck converter "lab power supply" will be added, so I can do more electronic experiments at the operating place. I have a 24V DC operated soldering iron, so that should be possible to operate as well, with a DC /DC boost converter. For that I might need to set up a larger 24V system with he two 100W solar panels, the second charge controller and 2 larger batteries in series.

2)

On the advice of a friend who has I have increased the possible current draw for the "revived" 28Ah batteries, and increased the voltage to the max "allowed" 14.4V. This is to see if the current stabilizes at a lower level, indicating that the battery is fully charged. 

If that looks good, some charge/discharge tests need to be done to determine the energy storage capacity of the batteries. If that works with the two batteries that look like being close, they will be added in a second solar system, likely running as a 24V system.

3)

If all this works, I may use some 20-25W panels I have available with a charge controller to start reviving other batteries, so I can use (at least partly) solar power for the revival of old batteries, in place of using mains power all the time.

4) 

Yes, I can see already that I will have to do more with panels/controllers, and then start using LiFePo4 batteries for higher power. That will be a whole new adventure, so it will be a bit later.

Some Solar Power Activity to Come.

 The past years my activity on the solar front has been lacking, but now I should get it improved. Here are some thoughts.

I started preparing (somewhat larger lead-acid) batteries for use in the solar power system, as replacement for the (too) small battery I have connected at the moment - that one got depleted last winter during the *very short* charging phases in midwinter. The solar panel has been moved to a better position, but I still need more buffering. For now one of the batteries will be setup for solar, the others will be set up as buffers if main power is lost. I still have one more solar charger, so I could probably get another battery running on solar (when the weather improves). I might also find a few low power 12V solar charger/controllers for use with the smaller batteries. As long as we are talking lead-acid batteries a "float charger" could probably be of service

That means that two batteries, 18Ah and 20Ah, are being charged, so they will be ready to receive charge from the solar charger, and will not be depleted by supplying power to the charger when no sunlight is available. Later I may go to pick up some 12V/45Ah batteries designed for electric scooters. They are available locally. 

I do have a few more panels to set up when the weather improves (right now the weather changes between frost and sunshine, then storm and rain. Not good for outdoor work, such as setting up solar panels and/or making/maintaining antennas.

Right now the setup uses one 50W (12V system) solar panel.with a battery of around 7Ah - too little buffering. 

The first battery being made ready to run with this panel (initially) is a 20Ah one. That should provide about 10Ah usable per day, i.e. 120Wh. 

I have two 100W (12V) panels that can be mounted, and some 20(25?)W panels somewhere, they need to be located and put to use, too.

My two charge controllers can be used in a 24V system, so there is an option to use this with a DC/DC converter to a 13.5V system, with a decent efficiency. 

I will need some calculations to see what I can drive with that setup.

In the long term there is no doubt that I should use LiFePo4 batteries, as they are lighter and have better storage efficiency/capacity. In addition they are, in the long term, less expensive than lead-acid batteries.

Further, two of the 4 (almost dead) recycled Pb batteries (nominal 28Ah) look like they should go into a cycle of charge/discharge, to get them up to a decent capacity (probably 20-25Ah).

Update On the QRP Challenge.

 Almost every day I have been working QSOs with the 5W output CW, mostly from the IC-705. QSOs have been made on 10-12-15-17-20-40-80m.

Now we wait for 4 and 6m to open - and 2m in the summer Es season. I suspect that I will mostly run more power on those bands, but some 5W work will be tested in the big openings.

New antennas are needed, so I can include 30-60-160m. Initially I expect to make and use a 30m vertical 1/4 wave GP, usable on 30-10-6-4m, probably good enough to listen on 8m (40MHz).

Next antenna will probably be an EFHW wire antenna for 80m. That should work on all HF bands except 60m, and with an extension coil it should be extended to work on 160m. I do have the transformer (49:1), it must be built into a box, but then it should be ready for deployment when the weather gets a bit warmer. Yes, I am waiting for spring weather. It may be variable, but I think I can find some warm and dry spells to play with antennas.

We have got more sunspots than I have seen in several years, and we are getting more daylight, so the HF propagation is already better than I have seen it in years. Good times for HF QRP operation ...

The Higher HF Bands Are Good Again.

 Now that we have more daylight in my area (55 deg. N), the propagation on the higher HF bands is improving again.
On top of this, the solar flux numbers have been above 100 for several weeks, with very few days below 100 SFU, I is now about 60 days ago we had no sunspots visible. Cycle 25 has started in earnest.

In my 5W challenge I have now had QSOs on the 10-12-15-17-20-40, and 80m bands.

Testing the SWR with my 5-band dipole showed that it is also useful  for a few more bands than the design frequencies - 10-15-20-40-80m. The dipole can operate on 4-6-12 and 17m. SWR is too high on 30 and 60m, and far too high on 160m. But not bad to be able to operate 9 bands on a 5-band antenna. This may change when I get the feed point higher up, as it is less than 4m above ground. I will have to improve the HF/MF antenna system, so I can include the remaining bands, and maybe try out the 630m band, or the 2200m band.

Last night I made what I refer to as a real CW QSO on 80m. F6BBQ with much more exchange than calls and report. Nice and moderate tempo, perfect for my modest CW capabilities. 

As it is right now, I am using the IC-705 for all the 5W QSOs. When I add an antenna for 30m (planned as a 1/4 wave ground plane), that should be usable on 10m (possibly with a tuner), 6m and 4m on thr 3rd, 5th and 7th harmonic. Not ideal, but probably slightly better than the performance of the low dipole on 10-6-4m, until I can get my 4-6m Moxon rectangle assembled and mounted.

The 30m vertical could be expanded to other bands with parallel (band) elements. This antenna would most likely be used with the IC-7300, with higher power on 4 and 6m, and likely set to 5W on the HF bands. Spring is allowed to begin, but I will probably have to wait another month here.

First 10m QSO of the Year.

I said that 10 was a bit down yesterday.

Today I just left the RX on a "random" frequency on 10m CW.

Being in the other end of the living room I suddenly heard a CQ call, went o answer, and voilá:

First 10m QSO of the year, with 5W. No real DX, but nice to get 10 included in my 5W challenge.

The 5W of the year is now up to 80-40-20-17-15-10m bands, all with the low hanging dipole.

10m. A Bit Less Active.

 The last few weeks 10m has been a little less active, but with a few days of high activity.

Solar cycle 25 is going rather well. At the moment the solar flux average is ligher than the official predictions, and has been so since the rise of activity started. There are, of course fluctuations, but at present the flux stays above 90 SFU, with periods of flux above 100, up to a peak of around 130. 

It still seems to be above the forecast, and it will be interesting to see how 10m and the other higher HF bands - and maybe even 6m - will behave as we approach the spring equinox.

The 5W challenge is on track. QSOs have been made on the bands 80-40-20-17-15m, and no more qre needed to fulfil the January goal. I will still try to make some more this month.

Another Personal Challenge. QRP.

This year I will make an attempt to get 365 QSOs in the log, all with just 5W output or less - no matter the band.

The most used transceiver is likely to be the IC-705, but other transceivers, either with a 5W power limit or higher power transceivers set to 5W out may be used. e.g. I intend to get the IC-7300 up and running with a 30m vertical. This antenna will also work on 10-6-4m, so I can get some summer sporadic E, and maybe some other band activity going. 

This requires me to build a new vertical. It will be a ground mounted 30m quarter wave with a good amount of shorter radials on the ground. Other bands in between may also be added with extra (wire elements), e.g. 20, 17 and 15m.