Daily Archives: 4/7/2009

WSPR-ing on 40m 17m now…

Today is a special event day, where those of a WSPR bent move from their 30m haunts to other bands. I’ve shifted operation over to the 40m band, and quickly netted a spot from DH5RAE (my first ever spot from Germany). Who knows that other stations will hear me? Stay tuned.

Update: Wow, had some great overnight spots. Was picked up by German hams DG5VO, DG0OKW, and DH5RAE, my first South American CX2ABP, Japanese station JA5FNX and VK-land hams VK6BN and VK6WS. (VK6WS recorded my band as 80m, but that seems to be a simple mistake). VK6WS would be a new distance record for me, narrowly edging out my previous spot from Antartica, DP1POL.

As part of my tinkering last night, I got the “hamlib” rigctl library compiled and working on my macbook. Now, it’s much easier to change frequencies of operation. In fact, I can do it entirely remotely, and ultimately will be able to shift beacons to alternate between bands and the like.

For the rest of April 8 UTC, I’ll be operating on 17m and see how that works out for me. I’ll then resume normal operations on 30m.

Update2: Here is my updated “spot” map, including last night’s 40m operation.

world

Some WSPR updates…

First of all, starting within the next eight hours or so, my WSPR operations will shift over to 40m for a Wednesday “Special Activity Day” (check out wsprnet.org for details). During that time, my grabber will likely be imaging a part of the 40m spectrum which will likely have little/no activity, so it might not be that interesting. At some point after that, I’ll likely try to shift over to 17m when conditions favor it. The beacon will return to operation on 30m by Thursday, April 9 UTC.

Next, I’d like to note that I’ve had some nice propagation on 30m, including three distinct times where openings to Australia seem possible, and my first spot from Finland, courtesy of OH3QN.

I’ve also added a Cluster Map to find out where people are accessing my grabber from. Here’s the map from today:
qrssinfo-world

Very nice!