Cloudlog Station Diary Hub

Well, the K's 2, so let's plump for there being a bit of Es today.

Woke up to mist and the first thing I heard on the Marine receiver this morning was Falmouth Coastguard. When I got to the shack, I tried a few CQs on 2m FT8 and it was nice to be heard by GM0HBK up in IO77, so the tropo is obviously good up and down the Irish Sea this morning.

Seeing the K had dropped to 2 first thing (it's 1 now), I wondered if we'd see some Es. Certainly this morning saw some quite intense Es on 6m including some quite short distances, so presumably the MUF went quite high as I was seeing stations as close as IN97 at one point. Mostly Spanish and a few French stations on 6m with CN8NS who's becoming quite a regular.

13z CWT was pretty poor to North America - couldn't work John VE3EJ! I listened for Jim K6AR, but he was obscured by loud EU signals, as was VK6T. Nice to say hello and congratulations to Doug KR2Q who was inducted into the CQ Contest Hall of Fame at Dayton last weekend.

Didn't make it to the shack until after Welsh class.

Doesn't look like 6m has done much today (which with the K at 4, would tie in with expectations). I can see there have been one or two decodes of French stations and similar through the day, but nothing sustained.

Heard HC8M on 15m mid afternoon but couldn't attract his attention - he didn't seem to be working many. I did work 3B9G on 17m though, which was a nice surprise.

Some 6m Es in the morning - and interesting at lunchtime. Saw EI4DQ calling W4AS for one period. Didn't hear him at all.

When I was working EA7L on the vertical, I did get a flag from NP4G at -15 which was interesting. Went onto the beam and CQed in that direction but nothing doing. A little later I did see KP4JRS calling VE2WX for one period. And that was pretty much it for the day on 6m - a few odd decodes afterwards but nothing substantial.

In the evening, I did a 'What's So Special about VHF' for the Appledore club. Hope they liked it. It was nice to see Terry G4CHD there. Terry used to teach the RAE course in Cheltenham in the early 1980s. I self-studied, but many, many amateurs in the Gloucestershire area owe their licences to Terry's tuition.

I stopped doing daily updates because I was. bit conscious I was flooding the Cloudlog feed with fairly mundane posts.

Reading the Cheltenham ARA newsletter today, Mark G4MEM very kindly mentioned that he'd been reading these posts. Thanks Mark! So, perhaps I should go back to slightly more regular updates.

Bit of a busy day and therefore not much radio activity. In the morning, it was time to write the VHF Column for PW and send it off to Don. After that, it was Bee School near Haverfordwest. An interesting afternoon, despite being stung! Ouch!

Got back and found RI0SP on 20m CW. He's in HR56 now.

Not much doing on 6m today, so far.

Bit of Es into Europe this afternoon when we got back from our Welsh lesson and then noticed G0GGG working (I think) K6ZZ. That caught my attention and I spun the beam around to North America. As it turned out K6ZZ was in the EM grid (EM78?). I didn't see much from him but W9OO was around, but didn't hear me. I did work Tim WW1L though which was good. Nice to see the band opening up to the west. I should probably leave the beam over there now.

In the evening there was some decent Es around to the south - nice to see old 6M CW compatriot, CT4KQ coming through on FT8. It'll be nice to work him again after all this time - I guess we first worked in the late 1980s on 6m CW.

A little bit more Es down to Italy on 6m this evening but perhaps the highlight today was working ET3AA on 17m CW for a new country. I'd heard ET3AA on 21MHz a little earlier - not too strongly but I found him on 17m with a good signal and after a few calls managed to get him in the log.

First 6m Es QSOs of the season for me today down to the south to EA and CN8.

It's May Day, so there are a bunch of '81' callsigns from Russia and Belarus this morning. Worked a few for fun.

Highlight of the day was working D60DX on 15m CW for a new country. Very happy about that one as I made a good few QSOs from there as D68C way back when. Looked at D60DX's QRZ page and the pictures looked familiar.

It’s been a busy week in the shack, or rather, behind the monitor getting the latest stable version of DXChrono Desktop ready for out the door. I’ve spent a fair bit of time "under the bonnet" on this one, focusing on making the map feel a lot more fluid and adding some of the integration features people have been asking for.

The biggest change is the map itself. You can now zoom in and out using the mouse wheel and drag the world around to see where the greyline is heading. I’ve also tweaked the Maidenhead grid squares; as you zoom in for local work, it’ll now pop up the 4-character squares (like IO87) automatically. It makes the whole experience feel much more interactive when you’re hunting for that next multiplier.

I’ve also added a couple of new logbook options. You can now link your QRZ.com logbook directly, so your recent contacts show up as markers on the map alongside Cloudlog. For those who prefer to keep things offline, there’s now support for local .adif files too.

Other bits and bobs in this release:

Watch List: A new widget where you can keep an eye on specific callsigns. If they pop up on the Cluster or PSK Reporter, you’ll see them in their own dedicated panel.PSK Reporter: Added some quick-switch buttons so you can toggle between "who hears me" and "who I hear" without digging through settings.Fixes: Sorted out some oddities with great-circle lines crossing the poles and made sure the Aurora overlay stays pinned where it should be when you’re zooming about.Going forward, the plan is to settle into a bit of a routine with a new stable release every Wednesday. It keeps the momentum going and means I can get fixes out to you lot a bit faster.

As always, you’ll need to download the new version from the website, extract it, and overwrite your old file. Just make sure you keep your config.yaml so you don't lose all your setup and API keys!

You can grab the update here: https://desktop.dxchrono.com

Full technical notes are over on the Changelog, or just hit the 'I' key in-app to see the new About box.

Didn't get much HF time during the day, although the conditions didn't seem that good. Nice sked with Roger GW5NF although the band was very noisy here (despite that I heard him on about 4W when he forgot to put the amp on!).

Pleased to work M7EMH in Gloucestershire on 2m FT8.

The 19z CWT was quite good to the west coast on 15m with K7QA and VE6RST big signals. Nice to work Jim VE7ZO this evening too - I can't always work him but he was louder this evening. 20m not so good tot he USA this evening as a couple of weeks ago.

20th wedding anniversary today!

Slightly nervous about whether I've solved the problem on the Alpha. I hope so. So far so good. Worked 3B9G on 10m CW at breakfast time.

Another misty morning here, so I started off on 2m with a nice easy QSO with M0JBM and then a little later with EI3EBB.

Most of the QSOs today on 2m - nice to work a few stations, nothing terribly distant. M0JDK in IO92 and M0JBM in IO81 the best. Did hear G4LBJ (JO02) and M1GEO (JO01) well this morning, but they couldn't hear me today.

A few UK/EI CW QSOs in the morning and then in the evening, some Florida QSO Party contacts on 20m.for a little DX.

From the east coast, 2m is going well. I was pleased to work Dan M0MST in the Cotswolds on 2m FT8. I'm guessing he was beaming east originally as when I called him, he came well up. Also nice to work TM8DW in JO00 on 2m. Not often I work that far on 2m with the vertical. Looking at the QRZ entry from TM8DW, it's a Marconi Day station, but more significantly, F4FET is involved, who always has a good signal on 2m.

Noticed last night as I was playing around that the DX Commander had an SWR of around 1.5:1 on 40m. Not the end of the world, but it's normally better than that and in case of QRO operation, it's better to keep the amplifier happy by reducing return power! When I went out on my rounds (chickens, Polytunnels, birds etc) I pulled the aerial down and had a quick look and the problem was what I hoped it was - the very top section had collapsed down a couple of inches. I extended the section, put the aerial up and the SWR is now as it usually is at just over 1:1.

I suppose I could super glue that top section. I've got clips on all the joints below, but this bit of pole is too small for one of the clips.

2m still seems decent although no DX here (on the vertical at least). When I got to the shack TX9W were on 20m FT8, but it seems they went QRT just as I came on!

HF again seemed poor! Some 2m tropo across the Irish Sea with some big signals fairly locally.

Pleased to work 3B9G from Rodrigues on 15m CW this afternoon. It's always nice to work 3B9 and brings back happy memories, well over 20 years ago of operating from 3B9C. Of course, that was the follow up to the D68C trip. I still need D6 from GW!

Pretty busy day, so didn't get much radio time until the sked with Roger GW5NF in the late afternoon. Good signals although the bands have been noisy today which of course was worse on phone than on CW.

The 19z CWT was better on 15m than I'd expected, given conditions through the day. Managed to work a few west coast North Americans including Jim K6AR on 15m and a couple of the other usual suspects. At the start, good signals from AA3B, N3RD and VE3EJ in quick QSOs before the contest started. 20m seemed poorer into North America than last week.

Justin G4TSH messaged to remind me of the 80m SSB session going on this evening, so popped on there once I'd had enough of the CWT and worked a handful of stations including Justin, Keith GW0ARK ,Roger G4BVY and Andy G4PIQ.

Some nice feedback from the talk last night. One of the guys had already got his Quansheng going on 2m FT8 and had a QSO with it. Fantastic!

Not a lot of time to look around the bands so far - Welsh lesson today and I've a VHF talk to give to the Yorkshire Mesh Radio Club tonight. I'm looking forward to that but haven't had a lot of time to prepare for it! So, there's been hasty updating of slides today when I've not been in Welsh.

After 2 months of development, I put DXChrono Desktop live and available for purchase today, which kicked my anxiety into high gear. But after some long testing with GM1TGY & GW4VXE, I felt it was ready for prime time, with landing pages built, Stripe set up as I decided to charge for it, and a custom-built licensing system on the work CRMs backend.

DXChrono Desktop brings all the features of the web version to the desktop, with better graphics, dx cluster, psk reporter integration, satellite tracking, and a ton more, all for a one-off fee of £15.00

If you're interested, you can find out more at https://desktop.dxchrono.com

The lack of 10m FT8 spots made me question whether the SDR/loop was working ok. It's perhaps worth explaining how this works. It's an indoor active loop given to me by John G8CQX. This goes into a SDRPlay RSP2Pro receiver running on an old laptop which, amongst other things, runs SparkSDR. SparkSDR is the nicest SDR program I know for decoding FT8 and FT4. It calls an instance of WSJT-X, so it decodes everything that WSJT-X would.

Anyhow, a quick test of the loop on 20m showed signals coming through and when I powered off the loop, the signals disappeared. So it's propagation rather than a problem - which I thought it probably was, but for so long, I have seen signals coming through on 10m FT8 regularly, it was unusual to see so little.

MM contest still going on this morning. I'd put the DX Commander back up this morning as the wind had really dropped over night. Tuned around 20m working a few stations that 'caught my ear'. Best DX was VK1A who sounded fluttery - not surrprising looking at the A and K this morning.

Conditions seeming very poor on HF again today. The K up at 5 won't help.

Made a handful of QSOs in the CQMM contest around lunchtime; EK/DL2JRM was about the only signal I could hear (barely) on 15m at one point.

The latest in the '145 Alive' series took place around lunchtime. I worked MW7ABS/P on Foel Cwmcerwyn not far away. Could hear a couple of stations further north in Wales - around Pwllheli but didn't get involved in calling.

Every now and again, the dash paddle won't send on the FTDX-10. Until this morning, I assumed it was something to do with the paddle - a bit of dirt got in the contacts or something. It happened mid QSO this morning leaving me sounding like I couldn't send! Played around a bit and couldn't see any dirt in the contacts. But it was odd, it felt like I was getting a bit of a dash and then it was stopping. Decided to switch off the radio and switch it on and - sure enough, back to normal. So it seems like a software glitch. I can see some reference to similar issues on the web.

There's a similar issue on the receiver of the FTDX-10. Once in a while, signals on the receiver suddenly sound all raspy. When it first happened, I thought oh no, what's happened. Turned the radio off and back on again and it was fine. Subsequently, I've found that all you have to do is to go to transmit and back again and signals will sound normal again.

I'm still very fond of the FTDX-10 - these issues only happen once every few weeks and as soon as you recognise them, it's easy to deal with.

QSO Summary

Last weekend was the RSGB FT4 Activity Day Contest (it ran over two days). This year, GM1TGY, as GM5G, took part running in the Multi-op two-radio category. This meant the main Kenwood TS890S had all the antennas and ran a Kenwood TS990 all the time on 40m.

Conditions on the higher bands were poor. 15/10m on Saturday never really opened, but 20m and lower were okay, though there were periods when we had just run out of people to work, so maybe a little more activity would have been nice. Sunday morning, however, was very busy towards Asia (Japan, China, Australia) on both 20m & 15m, and that kept us going along with 40m European stations until the end.

We did find that activity on 160m seemed low. I'm not sure if that was conditions, the times we went on the band, or some other unknown reason, but we could have done a lot better numbers-wise there.

Plotted QSOS