Motivation, Net Adversity & Contests at the Urinal

Some days it's hard to stay motivated. 

Probably that'll be the case today. It's Friday. I have a brand new smoker in the garage waiting to take outside, complete with bags of charcoal, cherry wood and a slab of baby back ribs, and I plan on having them ready for lunch on Saturday. I need go to the supermarket later and collect some apple juice, BBQ sauce and beer. Priorities.

I've done a bit of SSTV this week though it's been fairly quiet, and certainly nothing going on during the day on 10m. In the late afternoon it does start to fire up.

 

These were received but never got a response from the sender to my replies.

I replied to this one, and it appears that my replies were received, but the responses he was sending unfortunately kept dropping out on me.

He did however post what he received from me:

Definitely time to be on the look out for a new vertical. 

A little later on, I received:

I didn't receive a response to my reply, and by then it was time to knock off for the evening.

I had been trying to juggle some SSTV around the idea of joining the local 80m net.. given I have no PTT control on my SSTV setup, I was sitting there with one hand on the button whilst listening to another radio. I heard the number of people on whilst hearing my son insisting that I come read him a story, and reading won. Way too many on for me last night, and not a lot of motivation to sit there listening to it. I haven't jumped on a net yet. I really should do that one day. Still for what I did hear, I heard a lot more than I used to. 

I've ordered some ladderline. The dipole strung up between the flagpoles has a bit of a droop, and it isn't at all helped by the balun strapped in the centre. The original dipole just has a plate that the poles connect to and a socket. I've got the balun taped to it, with the poles looped through the connectors. Fairly redneck but it's worked. I noticed when around the corner that I can't see the centre of the antenna.. it's just below the roof line. A quick check with a measuring stick, and  it seems to be sitting at about 5m from the ground. The flag poles are up around 7m. The antenna isn't pulled right up as it causes the poles to flex a lot. Still, that's a lot of drop. If I can get that closer to 6m, it'll be an improvement. The hole flagpole change has already proven the gains to be made by clearing the roof.

I'm hoping pulling the balun off and running ladderline will cut the weight so it doesn't drop so much in the centre, and let me get a bit more tension on it without turning the flagpoles into boomerangs. The centre point has a timber fence under it, so I can attach the balun to it to keep it above the ground, and I can run the coax from there along the garden bed back to the house. It might work. Or maybe it won't. Dunno. We'll see.

In other news, I joined an FT8 group this week. Excuse me in advance.. but there really are some wankers in this hobby. The group periodically gets drowned out by a small number of twats who think it's completely acceptable to throw 1000 watts at a mode that uses "weak signals",  who love to point out the very fact that it is for "weak signals" rather than "low power". 

I had an argument with one twat who upon me pointing out that I've managed to be heard in nearly every continent at 10 watts, posts his PSK report saying that I couldn't beat him - as he has literally the entire map covered with reports of receiving his signal. I'm not sure where the challenge is in pumping 1 kilowatt into what turns out to be a basic antenna that effectively the whole planet can hear other than to see how many people you can simultaneously annoy by drowning out their signals. 

He was right - I can't beat that. At least not that many continents or receivers at the same time. I don't want to. I don't see a challenge in it. My car will sit on its speed limiter until it runs out of fuel if I can find enough road for it. It'll quite happily go past its 240 km/hr speed limit if the limiter is removed. It'll even get there faster than about 98% of cars on the road. Woo. I've never done that. I don't need to. I know it's there. I know it can do it. I can't think of too many times the conditions have been ideal for it, and the gear is more capable than the idiot driving it. Just because I *can* does not mean that I *should*.

I appreciate that there are times in this hobby where power is useful, and I'm all for using the power you need to pull off the contact. What I fail to see the point in is throwing out stupid power on a mode that handles weak, low powered signals perfectly well all because that ridiculous power *might* somehow magically compensate for challenges caused by propagation, and do so without concern for anyone else who might be trying to use a mode that is growing in popularity.. and can get quite congested.  

I recall reading in numerous places that FT8 was always intended for low power use and that it wasn't necessary to push 50+ watts into it... That's one of things that drew me to it. 

These small number of wankers become really quite self entitled on the subject - just because they're allowed to use that kind of power, they will and they couldn't care less what anyone else thinks. Or if it adversely effects anyone else.  You can guess their nationality based entirely upon their attitude. Still, the subject has rapidly become more toxic than politics.

Yes, it takes some time and effort to get around the globe on FT8 on low power. Playing with antennas helps (especially verticals). Working out the timing, conditions and which band gives you the best outcomes helps. I can pull contacts from Japan all day. My bloody log is full of them. A contact 17,000km  away in Canada? Now that's a contact that requires some effort. Been there, done that. On a signal that was mostly being picked up 700-800km away, then magically landed in North America. That's actually exciting. It's interesting to see how the signal is propagating. Seeing it be received almost everywhere - that happens too. Interesting and can yield contacts from places I've never worked before, but some days being able to pull off a contact from a far flung location when the waterfall is a wall of yellow, orange and red is awesome. Huge amounts of traffic, much of it using much more power (and probably better antennas), and still getting the job done. I might not get a hundred contacts in a night, but the handful I get I've had to put some effort into. 

All that said, I really should get back into FT8, but SSTV has been occupying me more. I know I can DX with FT8. The results I'm getting on 10m for SSTV however give me something to procrastinate about. I don't know how much of what I've been doing is limited by power. The most frequent sender at the moment is also running 10w from some distance. I don't receive him as well as he does me. Still, I do need to do something with that vertical.