Cloudlog Station Diary Hub

It's been one of those weeks where you feel like you have been chasing your tail and not much is getting done; however, it has been reasonably productive. Work-wise, I have been trying to get a client's website finished, ready for launch at the end of March, but at the same time, I have been getting DX Chrono finalised

I've added a dedicated Special Event Station mode with custom features, added N1MM+ support so you can plot contest or DXPedition QSOs in real time, and fixed quite a few macOS bugs. Alongside that, I have been getting the website and documentation ready. I have decided to sell DXChrono Desktop for a one-off fee. I suspect some won't mind, and others will be livid that it's not open source and free, but it will help with the running contests of some of the background services and also helps me buy Molly pup more treats (She has an expensive jumper habit!).

Cloudlog-wise, not a huge amount has changed. Public Diaries have been well received, and today I fixed an issue with eQSL importing, as since I introduced batch importing to speed things up i broke a few things in the process, oops!

Thankfully managed 1 QSO RS-44 this evening, was hoping for some North America on this pass, but only heard two guys having a ragchew, also picked up 2 more on FO-29. However, I am looking forward to taking part in the BARTG RTTY Contest this weekend, especially after missing the ARRL DX SSB after ending up in the hospital.

Power interruption from 0930 to 1330 today, so not much radio planned until later!

Had a bit of a play in the 13z CWT as the power came back early. Conditions on the higher bands seemed poor - next to nothing on 15m. Nice to catch Jim K6AR on 20m though. Knowing Jim, that was probably long path! 15m brightened up in the late afternoon;AI5IN in Texas and Joe AI0Y in North Dakota.

Nice sunny day, so mostly outside doing mowing and strimming!

The 19z CWT was better than expected with some some west coast stations workable on 15m - curiously I seemed to be louder there than some of the US stations calling them. KH7X was around too, but in Arizona and not Hawaii! Another interesting QSO was with Adrian KO8SCA. I presume he's on the boat back from Bouvet so he'd have been remoting to his home station from the Southern Ocean.

Interesting to hear TX5EU on 15m around 2200z - they had a big US pileup, so didn't make any headway with that. Also CY0S opened up on 40m around the same time.

Propagation must be a little better this morning - the 10.101MHz RTTY was audible on the ATS-Mini.

Didn't get on to the air until I was back from Welsh in the afternoon. Conditions didn't seem great, but one or two interesting QSOs on the higher bands; FG/F5HRY on 24MHz, LB5SH/MM coming back from Bouvet to Cape Town on 28MHz.

I installed the latest WSJT-X Improved with FT2 mode added. Made a couple of QSOs, the first being J69DS. I don't really like the idea of FT2 as it throws away so much sensitivity, but the QSOs are certainly quick.

During the winter when the winds are high, I use a shorter vertical than the DX Commander Signature 9. Although the Signature 9 would probably cope - it flexes hugely and is anxiety inducing to watch in a storm. So, a couple of years ago, I decided to build an antenna which would cope with all but the worst winter storms.

I had a fibreglass pole which I could use and I decided to try running quarter wave lengths of wire up the outside of the pole, taping them on. I started off with quarter waves for 10, 15 and 17m. I used the lengths from the DX Commander User Guide on page 8 - I used the same lengths as on the Signature 9. Next, I added a wire for 20m and that too worked alright.

I wondered whether I could do something for 30m. as that's quite a useful band for working SOTA stations as well as DX! The element length for 30m was a bit long at around 7m and if I extended the pole to that length, it would start to be quite whippy in a high wind (which I didn't want as that was why I built the aerial in the first place!). So I decided to stick with the pole length of around 5m and run the 30m element back down the other side of the pole.

To my surprise this worked! The SWR is a little high at around 1.5:1 but it's quite useable. Does it radiate? It does! It's fine for semi-local QSOs around Europe and just recently I worked J51A with it. It does struggle on real DX contacts though, but it's better than nothing.

The only band I haven't mentioned is 12m. The curious thing is that one day I tried it to see what the SWR would be like and to my surprise it was ok and it's capable of working DX.

So, there are 5 lengths of wire on the pole. The pole uses plastic clips to stop the sections slipping down inside each other (DX Commander sell these). The wires are simply taped onto the pole. I crimped tags onto the ends of each element and clamp these onto to a bolt, where the feed can be attached. The pole sits on the same ground post as the DX Commander Signature 9 and uses the same set of radials.

I'm really pleased with how well this works and how it keeps me on the air in all but the worst of the winter storms.

I do want to credit Callum at DX Commander for the inspiration to build this really useful aerial. Thanks Callum!

Conditions definitely not great today - I checked the RTTY on 10101 on my little ATS-Mini around 0800 and it was barely audible! That's how bad it was.

Spent a little time revamping the 'storm' vertical as yesterday I'd spotted that one of the elements had become disconnected. I reworked the feed to clean it up and hopefully make it a bit more robust.

Conditions definitely poor! Spent a little while calling 3B8VV (G3WVG) on 15m for a while but didn't seem to get anywhere in the afternoon. Managed a few VE & W stations on 20m in the evening, but decidedly hard going. Worked PY1KO on 20m too, who was curiously fluttery - odd, given the path.

And another surprise - just before closing, I heard Darrel AA7FV on 18MHz CW. Darrel's in Arizona, so it was unusual that he was coming through, but there were practically no other signals on the band, apart from FT8.

Got on for the last 20 mins or so of the Commonwealth Contest - nice to work the usual VK suspects as well as Tony ZL2AGY. Conditions quite fluttery, although VL6T (VK6VZ) was strong with little flutter.

Bands seemed quite poor after we got back from a Mother's Day lunch up at Tafarn Sinc (car park very muddy and we got stuck and had to be pulled out!). 18MHz was interesting though and made a few nice QSOs including FG/F5HRY and then a nice chat with Peter W0SA in Minnesota. Peter's a retired doc from the Mayo Clinic and was running about 500W to a 43ft vertical.

Evening tune around was mostly on 20m. FH/UR9IDX was a bit weak and watery, but completed. Nice to work WB0RLJ from another POTA activation and Cathy W4CMG operating for the WWA-YL award.

Ten-Koh2 was finally released into orbit today, so I have added that to the OscarWatch TLE set at https://tle.oscarwatch.org/amsattwolines.txt

Doppler.SQF line to save the endless asking, which will start soon as it's turned on

TEN-KOH2,435895,145915,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,SSB Transponder

I believe it's just in CW beacon mode for now, so we will have to be patient before we can make QSOs via it

Fairly quiet Wednesday for me, we had some stormy winds overnight but no antenna damage, managed to walk Molly pup around the village in the dry but its been pretty wet this afternoon.

Before lunch, I fixed a bug in Cloudlogs automatic satellite status reporting to AMSAT-Status since they recently changed all the naming, hopefully that won't need doing again. I think Cloudlog is almost stable enough for a release on Friday

RS-44 was quite lively at 14:30 I managed to work HZ1BL, 4L1AX, ER1KW which was a nice surprise, I always do far better working west than east from here.

Weeks off to a good start. I added a few new features to the station diary in Cloudlog after getting up:-

Perm Links for each postSocial Media sharing buttonsFixed a caching bugWhen using image shortcodes, it uses the first image as ID 1 even if it's numbered differentlyAdded Facebook-style reactions for feedback on postsPlotted QSOs on a mapI monitored AO-7 this morning but heard no one, and although FO-29 should start being in full-time sunlight, it shows no sign of staying on. RS-44 this afternoon was quite busy; I picked up IK5BNG, whom I hadn't worked before.

21:24z FO-29 has finally turned on and stayed on for now, very quiet pass but managed to work David EA4SG, then CQ'd to myself for the rest of the pass. That being said, the satellite is loud and stable.

During the last two weeks I have been working on bringing DX Chrono out of the web browser and into a desktop style application, but it needed to be multi-platform and allow me to generate a custom interface (think game more than Microsoft Office)

TechnologyDX Chrono Desktop is a Python application built for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Raspberry Pi. The UI and rendering use Pygame (SDL2), with high-DPI support so the map and widgets stay sharp on Retina and high-DPI displays.

The world map is drawn with Pillow (PIL); you can use NASA Blue Marble imagery (downloaded via a small script) or a built-in procedural map. Configuration is YAML-based (config.yaml), and a tabbed in-app settings dialogue (Station, Display, Widgets, Cloudlog, DX Cluster, PSK Reporter, Satellites, Data) avoids editing the file for most options. Solar terminator (grey line) and sun/moon positions come from ephem; satellite orbits and footprints use Skyfield and SGP4 with TLEs from Oscarwatch.

Data is fetched over HTTP (requests) from NOAA for solar indices and band conditions; paho-mqtt is used for the live PSK Reporter feed.

FeaturesThe app centres on a global map with your QTH, grey line, and optional overlays: aurora (NOAA Ovation), MUF (Maximum Usable Frequency), ITU zones, and Maidenhead grid. DX Cluster connects via telnet to DXSpider or AR Clusters; spots appear as markers on the map with optional lines to show the path from the spotter to the DX station, along with a live spots widget, and you can open a command window (e.g. D) to send filters.

You can connect to PSK Reporter using the MQTT feed so you can see “who’s hearing me” and “who I’m receiving” as spots and lines on the map. Cloudlog integration shows QSO statistics (today, month, year, total), recent contacts in a QSO list (date/time, call, band, mode, country, grid), and a “Show QSO Map” view that plots those contacts on the map.

Satellite tracking shows amateur sats (e.g. ISS) and their visibility footprints from TLE data. Draggable widgets include a large UTC clock, solar data (SFI, sunspots, A/K-index, X-ray), HF band conditions (day/night per band), optional station info, Cloudlog panel, DX Cluster list, and MUF-at-QTH. Cities on the map can show local time. Fullscreen and windowed modes are supported, and the whole thing is suitable for a dedicated shack or kiosk display.

Wrapping upFair to say it's pretty feature complete, I have plans for N1MM+ UDP integration for showing QSOs as markers and also a special event station function, but more to come on that later.

The release date will be in the coming weeks. If you want to stay in the loop, you can join the DX Chrono newsletter https://hive.int.magicbug.co.uk/lists/join/dxchrono and be one of the first to download it.

It's a very quiet Sunday. I should be participating in the ARRL International DX Contest SSB. Still, after ending up in A&E on Friday night with a fractured collarbone after choking on dinner, I decided to sit it out. Today, however, I'm feeling a bit more human, so I've been coding, specifically working on the shack diary feature for Cloudlog originally suggested by Tim GW4VXE.

I did manage to have a QSO on RS-44 with HB9RG, who was operating in support of their current award. If you’re interested, more information can be found at https://www.amsat-hb.org/hb9rg_trophy. There has been plenty of interest from everyone regarding this event.

Just before bed, I picked up another handful of QSOs on SO-50, which is always nice.