Fighting for power...

The thing I love about 40m FT8 early in the morning is how much traffic there is.  The thing I hate about 40m FT8 early in the morning is how hard it is to work. The waterfall is pretty busy, and it's full of some strong sigs. Then there's me. At 10 watts. 

 

Honestly, I'd given up trying. I rarely get anywhere. The last couple of mornings have had some improvement on this though. I might get one in over an hour of trying. As long as it's a "hard" DX, I don't mind.  I seem to be making it up into Japan this morning, and I've had a call from Estonia, but I don't appear to be able to get back to them. Still, one must try. 

Last night on 15m, whilst on a Webex for the local club's general meeting - something I rarely remember to go to, to the point no one could recall that I am actually a member (and have been for over a year.. thank you COVID-19), I managed to work Brazil. To be honest, that was pretty cool for me. I've always struggled with South America. 

I'm not sure if that was just a fluke, some benefit of the new antenna or what. Overall, though I'm struggling to see any disadvantage so far from the old radial-less EFV compared with this new vertical dipole (lack of 80m and resonance on 40m withstanding).

Last nights signal reports. Reasonable enough for 15m. No worse than what I've seen before with the old vertical.

Jumping on last night's Webex though was good - I realised this blog has at least one more reader than I realised it had, bringing my expected total to... 1.

It does also remind me that I'm still on the "younger" side of the typical age for a HAM around here. That's about the only thing that still makes me feel in any way.. young..  Still it was good to see faces and have some folks hear my callsign. 

Given the stormy weather yesterday, I decided it was time to print up a rain cover for the antenna cables going through my window. I really never did much with it beyond putting it in, locking the window in place then walking away. 

Probably not award winning by any stretch, but functional and of course avoids me running coax through the ceiling and down through walls near some fairly industrial computing gear. It also saves a few metres of cable.. or how I think about it.. how much cable loss I can avoid. At 10w, every watt lost matters. 

 

This is the shield I designed - intended to slot over a couple of screws and be lifted for easier access. It's only really intended to deflect rain away a bit. I've designed it this way though to avoid impeding the cables too much, and to ensure that I can actually check for any unpleasant surprises before I lift the lid.  Unfortunately that side of the house tends to have a bit of junk floating around, as well as a 1000L IBC I use for salt water for my reef aquarium, and is gated off to keep the dog and kids out and away from the antenna feedlines. I've also been aiming to making it as something of a "shade house" but have never quite gotten that far. The most appropriate measurement metric down there is "Redbacks per square inch".

I hate spiders. 

The actual print finished this morning - it was mostly fine but the printer seems to have experienced a layer shift near the top. It still seems solid enough, but it's not perfect. I suspect I need to do some research about what maintenance I clearly have neglected on the printer. 

I did just notice that the database on my image gallery had broken to a point I couldn't repair it and had to recover from backups. Hopefully in an hour or two the scripts I run that export new SSTV and eQSL images will upload the missing content and get it all back as it should be.