Poor Radio Conditions and Space Shuttle visit to Stansted Airport

Not much happening on the radio at the moment. Conditions have been very poor with 40m almost unusable for much of the day yesterday and not much better on most of the other bands. I just hope conditions will improve soon. 10m has also been very poor. I monitor 10m using WSPR and most of the time it is only very local stations that I see, and hear my WSPR signal. Not good.

I have been spending time recently scanning all my old photo negatives. I have a very large collection going back to when I started taking photographs in the mid 1970's.

I found a series of pictures I took when an early Space Shuttle visited Stansted Airport in Essex in June 1983, 30 years ago this coming month. This was the Enterprise which did not go into orbit, but was used for a series of captive and free flight tests.

Stansted then was a relatively small regional airport, considerably different to today.

Following two photographs give some idea of the visit.