North to Alaska! (WSPR chatter 3)

Last edited: 30.04.2018

What a pleasant surprise this morning to see that my 200 mW WSPR signals on 20m had been spotted by KL7L in Alaska!

I used my QRP Labs U3S transmitter and a sloping dipole cut for resonance on 20m.

This is WSPR DXCC entity 68 for me.

KL7L hearing PA7MDJ

KL7L is operated by Laurence Howell from his receive facility at Hart Lake Fishook (grid BP51ip) near Wasilla. about 50 miles north of Anchorage. Laurence seems to be very active with VLF, LF and MF receiving experiments, for which the Hart Lake QTH seems to be the ideal location.

In this article Laurence reports on his reception in Alaska of the VLF signals from the SAQ Grimeton transmitter in Sweden. You'll also find some photos there of the KL7L shack, the VLF antennas used, and the view from Hart Lake looking North over the Pole towards Europe (imagine, that's where my tiny WSPR signal came from!)

View from the KL7L Hart Lake receive facility looking North over the Pole towards Europe (imagine, that's where my tiny WSPR signal came from before being picked up by the antenna of KL7L!) (source)

Here you'll find a YouTube movie where Laurence shows a huge homebrew VLF receiving loop. More interesting YouTube videos from KL7L (user "hellozerohellozero") can be found here.

Homebrew SDR Tuning Knob Unit

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This is my latest little homebrew project; a tuning knob unit for my SDRPlay RSP1A software defined radio receiver. The project was inspired by the article "Wireless Tuning Knob" in the April 2018 issue of the excellent Practical Wireless magazine.

To make an easy to use tuning knob for your SDR receiver, the PW article suggests using the inners of a cheap wireless computer mouse, removing the mouse wheel, and connecting a rotary encoder instead. Then a tuning knob can be attached to the rotary encoder's shaft, and voila!

And that's exactly what I did, except I did use a wired USB mouse, not a wireless one, as I didn't want the hassle of having to change batteries all the time. The result is shown in the photos below. It works like a charm!

US Naval Hospital Ship USNS "Mercy" (WSPR chatter 2)

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The USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) is a US Naval Hospital Ship, and is currently in the Indian Ocean participating in Pacific Partnership 2018, a Disaster Preparedness mission.

Pacific Partnership is an annual deployment of forces of the Pacific Fleet of the US Navy in cooperation with local governments, military forces, and various humanitarian and non-governmental organizations. Pacific Partnership was conceived "To Prepare in Calm to Respond in Crisis" following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster.

The USNS Mercy is homeported in San Diego, California. She was originally built in 1976 as an oil tanker. In 1984 she was converted to a hospital ship and in 1985 was launched as the USNS Mercy. The Mercy class hospital ships are the third largest ships in the US Navy Fleet by length. During the Pacific Partnership missions the ship offers humanitarian assistance to the countries she visits.

The USNS Mercy off the coast of Dili, Timor-Leste (source)

Good news to the radio amateur is that the Mercy onboard has a ham radio station, callsign K6MRC. During the Pacific Partnership 2018 mission K6MRC has been sending WSPR signals which have been received around the world, including at PA7MDJ in the Netherlands. As soon as I found out about the WSPR station aboard the Mercy as soon as I could I started a monitoring session on 20m with my SDRPlay RSP1A receiver and a 20m sloping dipole antenna. The first two spots that were made included K6MRC! According to the information contained by the WSPR signal, the power used was 10 Watts and the location of the ship was in grid NJ46 in the Indian Ocean halfway between West Sumatra and Sri Lanka.

On the wsprnet.org blog on April 22nd, 2018, K6MRC wrote the following:

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WSPR Around the World - By Ship!

Using WSPR to make contacts as we sail on our humanitarian mission - Pacific Partnership 2018 - has been both fun and challenging! Finding the right bands at the right power at the right times of day and night produces way different results. I have been able to tune our system to almost NO power and we are still reaching every continent on the planet. I hope everyone continues to upload their spots and make contacts as it is exciting to see how we can make this radio technology work! 73's!!!
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Unfortunately the past two days, the WSPR database has shown no more WSPR activity coming from the ship. The last spot was made on April 25th 08:08 UTC. Let's hope the Mercy WSPR beacon will return on the air soon.

PA7MDJ receiving K6MRC

Reception of K6MRC at PA7MDJ with SDRPlay RSP1A receiver and WSPR 2.0 software

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Mercy_(T-AH-19)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Partnership

St. Brandon - How beautiful can a check mark be?

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St. Brandon is an archipelago located about 430 km northeast of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. St. Brandon (also known as the Cargados Carajos Shoals) actually is a coral reef consisiting of about 20 to 50 (depending on who you ask and on seasonal storms and related sand movement) sandbanks, shoals and islets. It's measuring 50 km from north to south and about 5 km in width. There are 5 island groups and 22 islands and shoals are named. The archipelago is low lying and prone to substantial submersion during severe weather. The archipelago has a small transient population, mainly fishermen, of about 63 (a census of 2001, according to Wikipedia). The archipelago is quite elusive, and even on the internet, the information found isn't in abundance. In my The Times Atlas of the World compact edition, the archipelago isn't shown.

St. Brandon (3B7) forms a separate DXCC entity. It shares the same entity with Agalega Island (3B6) and together are known as the DXCC entity Agalega & St. Brandon Island.

Between April 5th and April 17th, 2018 a group of 8 French hams went on DXpedition to the South Island of St. Brandon. The callsign of the DXpedition was 3B7A.
Before the 3B7A operation, St. Brandon was #27 on the DXCC most wanted list of Club Log and the attention for the DXpedition and the pile ups were huge. The last DXpeditions to St. Brandon were in 2007 and 1998.

The QTH of the 3B7A DXpedition on St. Brandon. Photo courtesy of the 3B7A website. Check the site for more stunning photographs!

During the DXpedition I had little time to spend on the amateur radio hobby, and soon the end date of the DXpedition came in sight. I had managed to hear them on 40m CW one night with very good signals, but the pile up was huge (probably extending over a range of more than 10 kHz), so I decided to call it a day, as I was also supposed to make an early start the next morning at my QRL. Then on the 14th I heard them on 17m CW with fair signals, but unfortunately I again didn't manage to get through the pile up.

I thought my chances of working them on 17m CW would be fairly high, but although I do get my HyEndFed 40/20/10 tuned for this band, ofcourse it isn't optimal, the antenna being designed for 40, 20, and 10 only. So in the morning of April 15th I quickly made a dipole wire antenna and cut it for resonance at the CW portion of the 17m band. I lowered the HyEndFed and raised the dipole, and I anxiously awaited for 3B7A to get on the air again on 17m CW. But instead they were active on 17m in SSB only. But lo and behold, with the dipole I could also here them in SSB (I checked, I couldn't with the HyEndFed)! I tried to get through the pile up, but to no avail.

I wanted to work St. Brandon so much, and I was so disappointed I didn't manage to put them in the log. I had read on their website that the team would leave by boat for Mauritius in the morning of April 16th, so I knew no other chances would be there anymore. It surprised me, because the DXpedition was announced to last until April the 17th.

But then on April 17th, I had just arrived home from work, I checked the DX cluster and saw that 3B7A was still active on 17m SSB! It turned out that not the whole team had left St. Brandon; two of them, F4FET and F4HAU, had stayed behind and would follow later. They would leave the island by boat on Wednesday morning, April 18th, and until that time would remain sporadically active from the island.

Ok, this definitely was my last chance! But it has been a while since I worked real DX in SSB (most of the DX I work is in CW these days). The solar minimum had sort of slowly made me believe that in times like these it's impossible to work (or even hear) real DX in SSB with just a wire antenna. I quickly connected the 17m dipole though and heard the weak SSB signals of 3B7A. I turned on the pre-amplifier of my rig to it's highest stage. The noise level went up accordingly but with some tweaking of my FT-991's noise reduction, a workable signal came out of the speaker.

3B7A was listening 5 up, which was a sign that apparently the pile up wasn't as big as during previous times, during which the DXpedition was listening 5 to 10 up. I could also tell by the way the operator was calling that the pile up was not big. So I started "shouting out" my callsign, and at one point I heard the operator coming back with a nice French accent "Mike Delta Juliett". Yesss! Please don't loose me now! It took some calls, but then finally the operator had my callsign complete. I did it! Thank you 17m dipole!

Less than a half hour later the 3B7A DXpedition made their last QSO and went QRT! I'd made the contact in the nick of time! The last part of the log wouldn't be uploaded to Club Log until F4FET and F4HAU would be safely back in Mauritius, so my patience was again put to the test, but today I checked and seeing the result I thought to myself: "how beautiful can a check mark be?"

Results for PA7MDJ in the 3B7A log in Club Log. The notice about the last two days missing in the log had not been removed yet.

St. Brandon is DXCC entity 220 for me.


See also:

http://www.saintbrandondx.com/en/
https://dx-world.net/3b7a-st-brandon-dxpedition/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Brandon

WSPR chatter

Last edited: 10.7.2018

Inspired by fellow ham, WSPR enthusiast and blogger PE4BAS, I've decided to compile my own personal WSPR DXCC list also, i.e. a list of DXCC countries where my 200 mW WSPR signals were spotted. I started WSPRing (on and off, not continuously) with my QRP Labs U3S in the late winter of 2017, and so far have reached a total of 63 countries with it. My WSPR DXCC list can be found here, and can be accessed at all times from the "Pages" section in the bar to the right.

For each month I download the complete WSPR database CSV file from wsprnet.org and import it in Excel to analyze my WSPR spots. The CSV files are too large to be used directly in Excel though, so I first break them up with the use of a little program called CSV Splitter from Polderij IT which can be downloaded for free. If you need some help with this I'll be glad to help out.

So what else is out there on the WSPR front and HOT to report on?

Well, the Canada C3 icebreaker expedition ship Polar Prince after a succesful circumnavigation of North America has returned in its home port of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia on Canada's east coast. During the voyage from Canada's east to west coast via the Arctic, the ship could be tracked by its onboard HF WSPR beacon with the callsign CG3EXP. Later on, after the C3 expedition had successfully ended, the ship's WSPR beacon continued transmitting with the callsign VE0EXP, and the ship could be followed on its voyage back home, down the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and up the Atlantic Ocean.
I've done several blog entries about the C3 expedition, the Polar Prince, and its WSPR beacon, and you might be interested in reading them; just follow the "Canada C3 Expedition" link under "Tags" in the bar to the right.
I've been able to catch the WSPR beacon of the Polar Prince on the 40m band on many occasions, from its voyage up Canada's east coast as well as for a large part of its leg through the Arctic. During the leg through the western part of the Arctic and down Canada's west coast I was unable to receive the 200 mW beacon, as were most of the other European WSPR monitoring stations.
But I had set my goal to catching the Polar Prince at least one more time, on its way back while doing the Panama Canal transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean! And I succeeded!
With my homebrew magnetic loop on 40m I catched the Polar Prince while it was west of Middle America, while it was waiting to enter the Panama Canal, and inside the canal itself! I caught the Polar Prince in grid locator FJ09dc in the early UTC morning of December 28th, 2017. This grid put the Polar Prince inside the Panama Canal close to the city of Gamboa. Below you'll find a photo of the canal at Gamboa. Gamboa originally was built to house the Canal Zone personnel and their families during Canal construction.
The Polar Prince WSPR beacon since the start of the C3 Expedition in June of 2017 has been on the air uninterrupted! Well almost, as during a port visit of the ship in Halifax early on in the C3 expedition, a visitor had been fiddling with the buttons of the QRP Labs U3S WSPR beacon and failed to return the U3S to its correct settings. This was soon resolved though. Another interruption occurred on the ship's return home. On January 4th, 2018 the Polar Prince suddenly dissapeared from the WSPR radar. The ship was crossing a severe storm in the Bermuda Triangle (!) when the signal got lost. Antenna damage was the suspected culprit. Later it seemed the U3S had fallen of its shelf, resulting in the power chord being unplugged and the VE0EXP beacon going off the air! But, as mentioned before, the VE0EXP beacon transmissions resumed, and can still be heard from the ship's homeport in Lunenburg, and hopefully we might be able to track again on the WSPR HF subbands the icebreaker on one of its next voyages.

Grid locator FJ09dc

The town of Gamboa and the Panama Canal (source)

PA7MDJ hearing VE0EXP Polar Prince during its Panama Canal transit

In the early morning of April 6th,2018 on the 30m band I finally also managed for the first time to be spotted by GM0HCQ/MM aboard the Royal Research Ship James Clark Ross in the South Atlantic. Last summer I was already spotted by the James Clark Ross on its Arctic voyage (read about it in the blog entry here). This time the James Clark Ross was located in the South Atlantic very close to the island of St. Helena. It's currently returning home to England from its tour of duty in the Antarctic. I had hoped to be spotted by GM0HCQ/MM earlier in the Antarctic season from Antarctic waters, or more recently from the highly fascinating and utterly remote Tristan da Cunha Island, but that unfortunately seemed to be out of reach for my 200 mW WSPR beacon and mag loop setup.

GM0HCQ/MM hearing PA7MDJ

GM0HCQ/MM hearing PA7MDJ at 0130 UTC. I was right on the edge there with -30 dB. This is a period of 24 hours; in that period I was the only PA-land station heard; not bad for a homebrew indoor magnetic loop!

The James Clark Ross in Antarctic waters (source)

James Clark Ross Radio Officer Mike Gloistein GM0HCQ keeps an online daily log on his website on http://www.gm0hcq.com/index.htm. The April 6 St. Helena update can be found there also (including photos).

The photo below is taken from the GM0HCQ daily update of April 6th and shows St. Helena appearing ahead of the JCR.

In other news, a new kid on the block is DJ0HO/MM (no qrz.com registration) which the last couple of weeks has been making spots on the HF WSPR bands from the area near the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. I haven't been able to find any information for this WSPR monitoring station other than that the callsign belongs to a Dr. Walter Jörg Hofmann which seems to be the owner / skipper of a sailing yacht. So most likely DJ0HO/MM is located on this yacht. It's quite late in the season for a sailing yacht to be in Antarctic waters (remember, it's autumn there right now, and the Austral winter starts on June 21st), and I wonder if  Dr. Walter Jörg Hoffman is planning on doing an Antarctic winter over. I haven't been spotted yet aboard the yacht, and although it's going to be difficult or maybe even impossible, in the true ham spirit I won't give up and will keep on trying

Addendum
DJ0HO/MM is the German icebreaker and polar research vesssel Polarstern. For more information see my blog entry here.


See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamboa,_Panama

Next research campaign at HAARP due this April

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The next research campaign at HAARP is due this April. Between April 6th and April 14th, hams and shortwave listeners might get another chance to pick up the signals of the HAARP research facility located in Gakona, Alaska. See also my blog entries of January 29th, 2018 and August 18th, 2017.

Assistant research professor Chris Fallen, KL3WX, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute on March 29th twittered the following:

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I must stay at @UAFairbanks for much of the @UAFHAARP campaign April 6-14, but will continue to tweet selected experiment freqs and modes when available. Have not forgotten about earlier QSLs (mea culpa!) and am working on a better system moving forward.
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Follow Chris Fallen on Twitter for the latest updates.


The following news about the upcoming research campaign recently appeared on the ARRL website:

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HAARP Facility to Resume Ionospheric Research this Week
04/02/2018

Alaska’s super-power High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitters in Gakona, Alaska, will fire up again for the spring research campaign April 6 – 14. University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Space Physics Group researcher and HAARP Chief Scientist Chris Fallen, KL3WX, told ARRL that more than 40 hours of “externally funded” experiments are in the queue.

“Scientists from US universities and government labs will explore the physics of scintillations, magnetic field-aligned plasma irregularities, artificial and natural atmospheric airglow, stimulated electromagnetic emissions, plasma waves, and radio-enhanced ionization,” Fallen said. “The HAARP transmitter is still at 80% net power, but by summer we expect to have the final ‘column’ of transmitters restored, bringing the array back to 100%.”

For his part, Fallen said he still has some time remaining on his National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study artificial airglow, but added that this is “a tough time of year in a tough year of the solar cycle” for such experiments. “It will not be dark enough in Gakona to observe artificial airglow emissions until 10 PM at the beginning of the campaign and 10:30 PM at the end of the campaign, due to the rapidly lengthening days in the Land of Midnight Sun.”

Fallen said that due to weakening solar activity, the critical frequency of the ionosphere’s F2 layer (foF2) is relatively low during the day, peaking at a little more than 4 MHz above Gakona in the late afternoon, and falling rapidly in the evening. “This limits the time available for experiments, since airglow is usually only created when the HAARP transmission frequency is near or below foF2,” Fallen explained. “The lower limit of the HAARP transmitter is approximately 2.7 MHz, and so we can only expect perhaps 30 minutes or less of usable airglow experiment time each day.”

Fallen said he is considering his options and plans to continue “bundling” amplitude modulations in the airglow experiments of interest to hams. His previous airglow experiments were accompanied by tones and music to illustrate the Luxembourg effect and slow-scan television (SSTV) images in Scottie 1 format.

“In future experiments, I want to try sending text and images using one of the MFSK modes,” Fallen told ARRL. “Several hams have requested I try the smoking hot FT8 mode with HAARP. Since that is a mode primarily designed for two-way contacts and makes use of time synchronization to help achieve amazing efficiency, it is not yet clear to me how to best do this with HAARP which currently has no receive capability.”

Fallen said he has to be at UAF for much of the April campaign but will be at HAARP toward the end. He plans to tweet selected transmitter frequencies and other information throughout the campaign from his personal Twitter page. HAARP’s official Twitter page will share photos and other information of general interest, “such as what the HAARP dog is up to,” Fallen said.

Operation of the HAARP research facility was transferred from the US Air Force to UAF in 2015.
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