Foundations of Amateur Radio

A week ago I unexpectedly had my gallbladder removed. As emergencies go, I was lucky to be in a major metropolitan area with a remarkable hospital, supported by a group of humanity whom I've never much interacted with in my life. The staff at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital were without exception amazing, from the orderlies to the nurses and everyone behind those, I interacted with about fifty people directly during my stay and every single person had a smile to share and an encouraging word to give. As life experiences go it was as uplifting as I've ever had the opportunity to celebrate. Sure it hurt like hell and there were things I'd rather not have to try again, but on the whole it was, if not pleasant, at least memorable. Recovery is going to take a little while and I understand my voice is expected to return to normal in a few weeks having been intubated for most of a day.

Half an hour after being discharged from my five days in hospital I was faced with a choice. Produce nothing for my weekly contribution to our hobby and face the risk of an astronomical bill from my hosting provider because the script that I wrote didn't foresee that there might be a time when I was unable to provide content, or produce something that, to be sure, was lacking in every way, but at least know that there wouldn't be a surprise waiting on my bank statement next month. So, my inadequate production saw the light of day. For that I apologise, it should have been silence.

During the week I returned to my shack and had a look at my beacon. As you might recall, I've been using Weak Signal Propagation Reports, or WSPR in my shack for a while. According to the logs the very first time was in November of 2017. At the end of last year I took delivery of a ZachTek desktop WSPR transmitter which has been reported on air over 16 thousand times since. I've only been using the 10m band and it's been heard as far away from me in Western Australia as the Canary Islands, the home of Johann EA8/DF4UE and Peter EA8BFK who between them reported my signal nearly 90 times. It's remarkable to note that this is a distance of over 15 thousand kilometres, on the 10m band, using only 200 mW.

During the week I made another milestone, a report in the opposite direction, across the Pacific Ocean to mainland USA. While that didn't break any distance records, it was a thrill to see a report from the Maritime Radio Historical Society, logging WSPR signals using KPH.

Other things to note about these reports are that its been heard across 81 different grid squares, by 144 different stations from all directions of the compass.

During my hospital stay and since, I've come to appreciate setting little goals. Little personal achievements that in and of themselves are not meaningful to anyone but me, and in some cases, my medical support team. It reminded me of a time when I attempted to achieve this in amateur radio, making a contact every day. Looking back over my logs I can tell you that I've not managed to maintain that, though, technically, on average, given that I host a weekly net and there's generally more than seven people who join in, I could claim an average of one QSO per day, but both you and I would know that I was stretching the truth somewhat.

It occurred to me that my signal report by KPH could be considered the beginning of my new 10m adventures. Much of my start in this hobby was during the previous solar cycle and the 10m band featured heavily in much of my activities, especially since you can get on that band with the very minimum of antenna, a quarter wave on 10m is a 2.5m whip and that can fit even on my car and it did, for years.

When the solar cycle eventually wound its way down, the 10m band was quiet for much of the year with the odd spot to whet your appetite, but rare enough to have little in the way of ongoing contacts.

As far as I'm concerned, 10m is back in play and it's my personal special band, so I'm setting myself a little challenge for the month of November and you can join in, open to anyone who wants to play. There's no prize, no scoreboard, no accolades, no nothing, other than the personal satisfaction of achievement.

Here's the challenge. How many kilometres per Watt can you achieve during November? To explain, my beacon uses 200 milliwatts, so any distance is multiplied by five to get the km/W number. If you use more than a Watt, you'll need to divide your distance by the number of Watts you use. As I said, this is a personal challenge. I'm not going to adjudicate, there's no rules to break, no one to tell you that you're cheating, it's just between you and your WSPR beacon.

For now, my record is 75630 km per Watt. I'm going to take the opportunity to consider what I might do to improve on that. Perhaps if I reduce power I'll still be heard in the Canary Islands, but I'll have more bang for my buck. Time will tell. Feel free to share your own achievement, or keep it to yourself, entirely up to you.

In case you're wondering about the capacitor thing, a gallbladder is like a bile capacitor, the analogy came from a story I wrote whilst in hospital, it might even see the light of day...

I'm Onno VK6FLAB