Don't know why I didn't write about this when it happened.

August 9th, the daily Sunspot Number (SSN) was 382. That seemed enormously high. I couldn't remember a single time when the SSN was that high. So, I did some digging.

I downloaded all the SSN data, converted into an Excel spreadsheet and did some analysis. The SSN hasn't been that high since 1991. That's 33 years ago!

The SSN has only been this high a total of ten times in my lifetime (since February 1961) -- Five in 1979, Twice in 1989, and Three times in 1991. 

Of course, none of this compares with Cycle 19, where daily SSN values were well over 500 for many days. But those values all happened 1956-1959, well before I was born.

Cycle 25 is shaping up to be much better than Cycle 24, which was really lousy, and possibly better than Cycle 23.  The smoothed SSN has already exceeded the maximum value for Cycle 24, and it is far from over. 

We've already seen a huge change in the bands in the last couple of years. 20m is open 24 hours, and 15m much of that time. 12 and 10m is open every day. I'm hoping we might see some 6m F2 openings. Enjoy it while you can. We should have two more years of these conditions before the cycle starts back down.

A50-3S standing tall and straight next to the house.

Never the less, it worked well. I worked a few Europeans and several South and Central American using this antenna.

Still, it needed a bit of work. A one-piece mast would be better, and I could straighten out the reflector when I swapped masts. A bead balun at the feed point wouldn't hurt either. 

So, I researched these. You would not believe what a 20 foot piece of 1 1/2" 0.058 wall aluminum tubing goes for these days. A few years ago, I purchased a 12 foot piece of 2" diameter 1/4" wall 6061-T6 tubing for my gin pole. It was about $150, which seems right for such a substantial piece of metal. 

But 20 feet of the thinner mast? They quoted me $500! If I went with the 1/4" wall, well that was manufactured with a different process -- extruded instead of rolled, so it would be $250. Ridiculous. There had to be another solution. 

I did have 20 feet of mast in two 10 foot pieces. This was from an earlier experiment. I had an old Butternut  HF4B that I had rebuilt, and was hoping to erect in Fulton County. I bought two pieces of Rigid Metal Conduit (RMC) for this purpose. 

EMT and RMC are easily found at your local Home Depot. But it isn't exactly what you would call structural. EMT is design to bend. Easily. I have had some success using it as masting for very small, light antennas. The two pieces I used on the A50-3S lasted for over eight years, plus the several years holding up a 19 element 2m boomer Yagi. RMC is more substantial, and comes with threaded couplings to connect them together. 

Two pieces of 10 foot RMC was $30 a pop, so this wasn't a cheap experiment. Even with the coupling tightened all the way down, the 20 feet of mast had a substantial wobble in the top section. I tried inserting a solid piece of HDPE. That helped, but not enough to hold up the HF4B. 

It occurred to me that this might work with the A50-3S, even with the wobble. The A50-3S is held upright by a wall bracket at the eve of the house, well above the wobbly union. I just needed the vertical support, and not so much lateral rigidity. Besides, I already had $60 invested.

First order of business was to find the doggone things. I put them away three parsonage moves ago, and had hidden them well. They were hiding in my basement. After that, I had to locate the piece of HDPE, which I found in another box. 

It all came together this week. My youngest daughter Lauren helped me to lower the existing A50-3S and mast to the ground. Off came the antenna and the feed line, and the old mast was disassembled and put away. Then I coupled the RMC together with the HDPE stiffener and taped the coupling joints against any water intrusion. With the A50-3S mounted on the new mast, the reflector was aligned with the rest of the elements. 

For a balun, I used five snap-on ferrite beads. I measured these at about 100 ohms resistive at 50 MHz. Five conveniently fit on the 9913 coax from the driven element to the mast, so that is what I used. 

A50-3S facing South East.

The antenna is easily Armstrong rotated from the base. Eventually, I'll mount a rotator on the top of the railing and retire my arms.

Thanks to Roger, EI8KN for sending on details of the activity of the 7P8EI team on the 50 MHz band.

6m operation from Lesotho – 7P8EI

From the 19th March to the 31st March 2024, I was fortunate to be part of the thirteen-strong EIDX Group dxpedition to the Kingdom of Lesotho. The callsign was 7P8EI; incorporating the usual Group suffix. We had approximately ten days of operating from the Molengoane Lodge, Nazareth, Lesotho. The locator was KG30VO.

The HF stations achieved around 53,000 contacts during the ten days.

We only had a basic setup for 6m consisting of an IC-7300, running around 60 watts to a Diamond HB9CV. No rotator. Software was MSHV.

We experienced TEP (Trans-Equatorial Propagation) openings on 24th to 27th March, and again on 29th March.

573 contacts in total were made consisting of 481 unique’s.

Thirty-five DXCC were worked, with the majority being in Europe (98%) with Italy the highest country (28%).  Seven stations were worked in Africa, and five in Asia.

Only one G station was worked – G7RAU. Dave must be very happy!

The openings did not extend to EI unfortunately.

Roger Greengrass EI8KN / G4NRG

Thule roof rails increased my VHF antenna mounting options on my Subaru Forester.

The post Roof-racking VHF antennas on SUV appeared first on Ham Radio . Magnum Experimentum.

A3S/A743 on tower, A50-3S nearby.

It was a good move. I worked 48 states, plus 39 countries using that antenna, despite feeding it with 120 feet of RG-8X which likely adds 3 dB loss.

In July 2021, I asked the SEDXC email reflector for advice on how to work Europeans on 6m. I heard others working them, and even heard a few myself. For the most part, however, I could not hear them, or I couldn't get them to hear me.

The first piece of advice was to get a better feed line. RG-8X is not a good choice for VHF, especially with over 100 feet. The second bit was to mount the A50-3S a little higher. It's taken me a year and a half to get there. I've finally taken the first step.

The first question: where to put the antenna? The mount in the yard used a mast concreted into the ground that originally supported a Cushcraft R7000. I considered moving it to my 50 foot tower below the Cushcraft A3S/A743. The option allowed for easy rotation, and would have been convenient. However, with antennas in close proximity at five feet away, I believed there would be too much destructive interaction. I needed a mount point further away.

View of installation.

How to mount a mast to the house took a bit of figuring. I used a small 6" wall mount on the eave of the house, just below the gutter. This gives the mast enough distance to clear the gutter. The bottom of the mast sits in a pole mount on the railing of the deck blow. The mast is the same 19 feet using two 10 foot pieces of rigid EMT I used to mount the antenna in the yard. 

Erecting the antenna was a little bit of a challenge. I used a rope and pulley hooked on the wall mount to raise the mast into position, then lifted the mast up on the railing. The weight of the rigid EMT made this harder. 

Reflector askew

The mast bracket is not cinched on the mast, to allow for rotation. Jam nuts are used to keep the bracket U-bolt from loosening.

The result has the antenna around 27 feet (8m) high, next to the house, fed with about 50 feet of 9913. This should be a substantially better than out in the yard.

I plan to replace the mast with some aluminum tubing, as well as adding a rotator, which should put the antenna a couple of feet higher. That will also give me an opportunity to straighten out the reflector alignment. 

In the meantime, I'm ready for this year's Es season in plenty of time.

Sometimes experiment pays off. You never know until you try.

I was reading an article about remotely controlling computers over the internet. It occurred to me that if I could do this, it would be easy to operate FT8 from my Gwinnett QTH when I was at the Fulton QTH. Although I have rigs in both locations, Gwinnett is where I have the K3, and can operate on 6m. 

I started to research solutions. I found a product called RealVNC that can be licensed free for non-commercial use on up to five computers. Comes with a separate server and viewer product, and it works on Macs as well as Windows, Linux, even the Rasberry Pi. 

You have to create an account on their web site, but the installation was easy. I have a MacBook Pro hooked to the K3 at the Gwinnett QTH. I installed the server there. Then I installed the viewer software on a couple of Macs, and one Windows computer. 

Making the connection from Viewer to Server requires 2-factor authentication, so it is pretty secure. 

This software worked great. I was easily able to connect to the MacBook Pro and use WSJT-X. The K3 has to remain turned on, and I have no way to remotely change antennas, so I left it switched to the 3-element 6m beam. I also have no way to rotate the antenna remotely (it uses Armstrong rotation...), so I left the beam pointing SouthEast. I was hoping to pick up some propagation to the Caribbean or perhaps Central or South America. 

The first week of this experiment bore fruit the next day. I was in Fulton county, but checking I lucked into an opening to South America, where I worked two stations in Chile and two in Uruguay. Two new countries and four new grids! The next day, there was a powerful, but brief opening to the Cayman Islands, and Belize.

While one cannot predict 6m propagation, remote operating gives me a tool so I don't miss out on openings while I'm away from the Gwinnett QTH. 

This is only Level 0 of Remote Operating. I can only do FT8, and I can't change bands. That's next, I'm working on an automatic antenna switch driver to choose an antenna by the band selection of the K3.