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 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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
