Activity on 80 metres?

[Tyso_Bl]

Something has changed in peoples attitudes, society and culture, we all see the symptoms of it, the apparent lack of amateur radio activity is in my opinion only one small aspect of a much larger "problem" .Being clueless, incapable, and having no capacity for self reliance is not seen as being a problem or stigma that it might have been in the past. you won't have far to look to see evidence of this all around you.
I'm curious how amateur radio is perceived in other countrys and cultures. is it dying the slow death it is here?

In the meantime are we going to try and set up a informal vintage radio net on 80, or 40?

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Skywave

...occasionally fire up one of my SW radios to listen around whilst keeping myself busy in the shack-cum-workshop.

I can't help pointing out (tongue firmly in cheek!), that if all you license holders only listen and subsequently complain about the lack of activity, then the band will continue to decline.

The summer months are not good for LF during the day due to increased D-layer absorbtion, but mornings and evenings are still good. There is a morning AM net every day on 3615 with good inter-G propagation for at least an hour. I have a list of 50 stations who appear on this net from time to time and I don't think I have ever known it not to be active in the last 5 years ( and that's just AM on one frequency!). Similarly conditions are good for this NVIS mode in the early evening.

So come on chaps. Put down the soldering iron and pick up the microphone for a change!

[Tyso_Bl]

Originally Posted by Keith

So come on chaps. Put down the soldering iron and pick up the microphone for a change!

I'd like to suggest we do this on 40M, as its usually more open during the times we're around, with less QRM, either AM or USB for those of us who use use ex military gear, any thoughts?

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by Skywave

...occasionally, I fire up one of my SW radios to listen around whilst keeping myself busy in the shack-cum-workshop.

Originally Posted by Keith

I can't help pointing out (tongue firmly in cheek!), that if all you license holders only listen and subsequently complain about the lack of activity, then the band will continue to decline.

Which, on the face of it, is a fair enough comment . . .

Originally Posted by Keith

So come on chaps. Put down the soldering iron and pick up the microphone for a change!

. . . but in my case, the sequence will need to be to pick up the soldering iron first and then build something, then plug the microphone into it.

Al.

[Tyso_Bl]

Originally Posted by Skywave

but in my case, the sequence will need to be to pick up the soldering iron first and then build something, then plug the microphone into it.

Plug a what in to it?

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by Skywave

but in my case, the sequence will need to be to pick up the soldering iron first and then build something, then plug the microphone into it.

Originally Posted by Tyso_Bl

Plug a what in to it?

I might have misunderstood you here. Let me elucidate . .

A microphone. I will need to build the 'something' first - e.g. a transmitter - and then plug a microphone into it (the transmitter) in order to communicate with someone, using that transmitter and that microphone.

O.K.?

Al.

[dodgy-dxer]

Originally Posted by Keith

I can't help pointing out (tongue firmly in cheek!), that if all you license holders only listen and subsequently complain about the lack of activity, then the band will continue to decline.

Well said!

[G4XWDJim]

Originally Posted by Tyso_Bl

Plug a what in to it?

A key perhaps, or even a pair of test prods for the same purpose.

Jim

[Junk Box Nick]

Skywave post 80. Another nail hit directly on the head.

I was brought up in a house with no phone - not so unusual when I was a kid - and went a good bus ride to school from age 8. A meet up with school friends during the summer holidays meant a trip to the phone box, if that friend was fortunate to have a phone at home, or failing that it was arranged by exchange of letter - astonishing now I think about it! The common way to communicate with a youngster in a foreign land was to have a pen pal. With few children my age in the locality, radio became a window on the world and hearing foreign and pirate stations whistling through the ether was exciting.

However, radios were expensive items and we had just one in the house. I took the previously discarded broken valve set apart and got curious about all the parts inside. I then had a Philips Electonics Engineer set when I was ten and this was exciting because at last I had my very own working radio set. Even more exciting was finding amateurs on another simple homebuilt set connected to a bit of wire my dad strung up in the garden and listening to what were in reality pretty mundane conversations on 160 & 80m. Through basic easy-to-do yet exciting technology for the time I had an introduction to a hobby that fifty years on sees me posting here.

Today's youngsters, with their smartphones, ipods, text and facebook would laugh at the relatively primitive things that got me excited as a kid, just as I, as a modern kid who could make his own radio, laughed at the seemingly primitive activities my dad found exciting when he was a boy.

We shouldn't criticise youngsters because they are not following our paths - the world has changed.

We are all products of our time.

And (sadly or otherwise) our time has passed.

When I was at the Pye training school many years ago (Arbury Road Cambridge) there was an hour long segment on wiring plugs. I suppose I am qualified, no bit of paper though, this seems to be the overriding factor now.

Back on topic, most amateur bands seem a bit quieter than they where, however PSK31 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSK31 is very popular, always had a reply from a CQ (seek you).

[davegsm82]

No-one these days understands the concept of self-reliance, because everything is just too easy and it will all be ok, forever, won't it? If something catastrophic was to go wrong with the world then I fear most people would be lost.

Pretty much everything we do these days relies on a network of some sort, hosted by or for another party, i.e. Power, Phone, Internet, Landline etc, Even the SatNet we use for GPS can be 'frigged' so it's unusable by civilians (but not military). This is something completely out of our control and is not something you could even begin to replicate on a small local scale (you couldn't have a local internet for example). For me personally, I find it worrying (however unlikely) that someone could turn out the lights for whatever reason and leave us all in the cold.

This is why I believe we SHOULD retain a small amount of reliance on old technology, no matter how archaic it may be, voice communication is the one saving grace that should be retained in all circumstances, whether that be HF, CB or newer multi-GHz links.

Perhaps that's just me though...

Dave.

[GMB]

No, even the government thinks so.

I'm a member of RAYNET and we are the last ditch if all communications break down. We have aerials installed in many government buildings to save time setting up.

But you will usually see us providing safety communications for charity events and the like since total disasters are a bit rare these days. But it wasn't when RAYNET started, which by coincidence was almost on my birthday - when the great flood of '53 took out the GPO services leaving the radio hams to help the police with the rescues and handle distress traffic from ships when the coast radio stations got flooded too.

Up to that time the government always thought they didn't need any backup.

[Ian - G4JQT]

Does anyone have a favourite home-brew circuit for use on 40, 80 or 160m?

I'm assuming valves, AM/CW, but it need not be.

I collected quite a number of FG Rayer/RA Penfold circuits from old mags, and sent copies of them to Viking Communications (I think that's what they were called) who, about 15 years ago wanted to develop and supply nostalgic valve amateur radio kits. A brave idea, but nothing came of it, presumably it just wasn't cost effective with such a relatively small niche market. I can't even find a cached version of their website now.

Anyone wanting to get 15 watts on 160/80m might as well just build a Chinese copy of the Codar AT5 as it was just an aggregation of designs that were being published at the time, and unless you want more power or additional bands I can't see how it can be improved.

Ian, G4JQT

[G6Tanuki]

The Codar AT5 is one of my favourite "idea-sources" - it incorporated a lot of cunning (and a few less-good bits).

The idea of the variable-capacitor for the VFO going 'all the way round' so 160 and 80-metre band scales could be provided on a single tuning-dial.

The use of a centre-tapped modulation transformer so the magnetism from the DC components of the PA and modulator-valve cancelled each other out (like a push-pull audio amp) let them use a really small transformer.

The cunning way that adding a diodeand resistor to the on/off/standby switch flashed the neon power-indicator when on 'standby'.


Not so good - the 'compromise' L/C ratios in the pi-tank antenna coupling.

If I was building an AT5-alike these days I'd probably still use valves for the RF side, but one of the cheap-and-cheerful audio-chips for the modulator (TDA2020?) . I'm told that people have had success using these to modulate valve PA stages up to 15 Watts or so using a backwards-connected "100V Line" audio matching transformer (which usually have 4/8/16-ohm speaker windings for the audio 'input' and a multi-tapped primary so you can get the ratio right for the PA impedance).

[Ian - G4JQT]

The AT5 neon-bulb modulation indicator is a simple design, and good in theory, but can have an effect upon the modulation it's monitoring. There are better ways.

I agree that the mod transformer and tuning capacitor are quite neat ideas.

Ian

[GW3OQK Andrew]

On many Sunday evenings beween 7 and 9 I put my vintage gear on about 3.54 or 7.03. I often have a qso with MW0LUK. I'll try and do it more often so listen for a chirp if you fancy some CW, but not this weekend.

This weekend I'm off to play and sing Bluegrass with friends at a farm with a brewery in West Wales. I'll also be visiting the wonderful Internal Fire Museum to see, smell, and hear those magnificent vintage machines running. http://www.internalfire.com/

Having heard some AM ops on 3615 take 15 minutes per over I have not been encouraged to join in. I can imagine them switching to transmit then relaxing warming their feet over the HT rectifiers under the bench while giving their monologue. 40m seems a better band for inter-G working to me.

73
Andrew

[trh01uk]

I agree with David G4EBT that amateur radio is dying down, and that accounts for a large extent for the lack of activity. I have long since given up being fascinated by the ability to propagate a radio signal from A to B, and keep my amateur licence purely for testing purposes. Having said that, I have not had any need to run such a test for several years now.

However, band conditions will be a factor, and there are various observations that confirm that. In general as the sun comes up the attenuation in the D-layer of the ionosphere increases. And this attenuation is proportional to the inverse square of the frequency. So if you half the frequency, the attenuation increases four times.

What we are seeing on 80m is heavy D-layer attenuation, which means that only very powerful stations are going to be able to get through. The answer to this is to go up in frequency, and someone does note that there is more activity on the 40m band.

There is of course an upper limit for high angle skywave (inter-G) contacts, and that is the maximum usable frequency.

There are numerous web resources for predicting the best frequency over any particular distance, for various locations. Here's one for London: http://www.ips.gov.au/HF_Systems/6/7/1. Currently that one is showing that 4MHz was optimum for contacts up to 200kHz until about 0730UTC. At present its suggesting 5MHz. And another chart shows an MUF around 6MHz.

As usual 5MHz (60m) is the best bet in the daytime for inter-G. I used that day in day out on the old CCF nets in the 70s. It never failed over several years - though of course it might well not work at the bottom of the sun spot cycle.

Richard

[Ian - G4JQT]

And here for G0KYA's excellent propagation maps based on 100 watts into a dipole from the UK. As you step through the hours or bands you can see where you're signal is likely to 'land'.

Very interesting, although cannot show Sporadic-E.

Ian

[ex seismic]

As usual 5MHz (60m) is the best bet in the daytime for inter-G. I used that day in day out on the old CCF nets in the 70s. It never failed over several years - though of course it might well not work at the bottom of the sun spot cycle.

And it still is! I worked all over the country one evening this week on a 5 MHz net using 30w.

Gordon

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

but one of the cheap-and-cheerful audio-chips for the modulator (TDA2020?)

Would remove...

The use of a centre-tapped modulation transformer so the magnetism from the DC components of the PA and modulator-valve cancelled each other out

And need a step up transformer, a big MOSFET would be good for the modulator instead.