Radio and Weather Statistics for February 2014

February 2014 has continued wet with many floods across the country.

My radio and weather statistics for January are as follows:

Radio Operation

Total number of contacts: 34

Modes

JT65:  34

A poor month again for radio operation, not much time to get on.

Weather

Total rainfall for the month: 132mm

Average temperature: 6.6 degrees centigrade

Maximum temperature of 12.9 on the 24th February at 14.34
Minimum temperature of 1.7 on the 28th February at 00:57


The weather during the month has again been very wet and windy with a succession of low pressure areas running from the Atlantic across the country. As can be seen from the minimum temperature being above freezing point it has also been a mild month.

JT65 Activity on 10m

The 10m band has been very good recently with plenty of JT65 activity.

Have not had much time for radio recently, however did get an hour yesterday evening and put out a call on 10m using the JT65 mode.

Worked the following stations in an hour:

KI0QS
WB0IKF
W9TLG
LU4WAP
W9MDB
KM6CQ
KB1O
KF7GMV
N8BIF

Plenty of stations on from North and South America and very difficult to find any free space on the JT65 frequency.

Did not get a chance to try out SSB on 10m. The Windom antenna had blown down in the rceent strong winds, so the Inverted L which I usually use on the FT2000 was connected to the TS2000 which is set up for data modes.

QSL Cards from the Bureau

Received a batch of QSL cards in the post last week for my MQ5LMY and MO5LMY call signs celebrating the Queen's Jubilee and the Olympics in 2012.

 
If your call is amongst them, many thanks for sending the card. My special event QSL cards were sent to the bureau at the start of last year so hopefully you have received mine.

Radio and Weather Statistics for 2013

Well, the end of another year and some statistics from my radio operation during 2013 and from the M5LMY weather station:

Radio Operation

Total number of contacts: 978

Modes

JT65:  710
SSB:   229
PSK31: 39

Weather

Total rainfall for the year: 713mm

Average temperature: 9.5 degrees centigrade

Maximum temperature of 31.9 on the 13th July at 15:30
Minimum temperature of -4.2 on the 22nd January at 03:27

The weather at the end of the year has been very wet and windy with a succession of low pressure areas running from the Atlantic across the country. December alone had 105.4mm of rainfall.

January is starting the same with so far 9mm of rain.

JT65 Activity This Evening

I managed to spend some time on the radio this evening for some JT65-HF activity on 20m. Put out some CQ calls and worked the following stations:

DL7UM, KS3K, NW9T and 9Y4NW

9Y4NW in Trinidad and Tobago is I think a new one for me so many thanks for the call Neil.

I was called by KY7S in Seattle but unfortunately after the first call I could not decode anything more, so could not exchange signal reports.

No Wonder I Was Getting A Poor SWR !!

A week ago I tried to tune my FT2000 on 40m via the external SGC Smart Tuner but it would not tune up and the meter on the FT2000 was showing an infinite SWR, not good!.

This weekend I was able to get outside on Sunday despite really bad weather and this is what I found:

No wonder it would not tune up.

The cable usually breaks where it passes through the insulator at the 90 degree bend in the inverted L. As shown in an earlier post, it is this insulator which has been up for so long that the majority of the insulator has been engulfed in the branch. It was originally loose, held by some rope around the branch, this was 14 years ago when I first received the M5LMY licence which meant I could get on the HF bands.

Over those 14 years, the branch has gradually grown around the rope, then the insulator so that now more than 50% is buried within the branch. In another 5 to 8 years I guess it will disappear altogether.

The cable breaks at this point as there is no flexibility with the insulator so the cable is rubbing on the fixed insulator and wears through.

The weather yesterday has really bad. Raining for much of the day with some intense bursts along with thunder and lightning. The following is from my weather station, the red line showing rainfall:

In total today we had 22.4mm of rain.

A Day of Activity

It was grey and overcast here in the south of the UK yesterday so a good day to play radio.

It was Railways on the Air weekend so there were a number of special event stations to work. I managed to get 13 stations in the logbook.

I spent some time during the evening working JT65 on 20M.

The above is a snapshot of my screen showing an hour's activity during the evening. For this mode, I use my Kenwood TS2000 running into an M0CVO HW-40HP antenna. This system works really well on all bands from 40m through to 10m with the internal ATU on the TS2000.

JT65 is my preferred data mode at the moment. It supports long distance working with low power I get called by the type of DX that I could never work using SSB.

New QSL Cards Received From The Bureau

An envelope arrived from the RSGB QSL bureau a couple of days ago with a new batch of cards for contacts over the last few years.

I really do like receiving paper QSL cards, just does not feel the same with the almost instant Internet alternatives. Even when a card is received several years after the original contact it brings back memories of the time I made that contact and what I was operating.

The following are scans of the latest batch of cards. If yours is amongst them, many thanks for sending the card. You should receive mine as I automatically send a QSL for all new contacts and new bands.