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.

As part of a challenge for 2024, I've decided to see how many QRSS signals I could capture on the 28 MHz band during the year. On the 8th of May, I got a screengrab of the QRSS signal 'HK' which was sent by the IW0HK/B beacon near Rome in Italy.

Usually, nearly all of the QRSS signals on the 10m band are on 28.1246 MHz and the audio of the signals is about 400-500Hz below the WSPR signals. In this case, the IW0HK beacon was on 28.322 MHz.

In the image above, the fuzzy part of the signal is when it was sending the callsign and locator of the beacon in normal morse code. The QRSS 'HK' part is sent after this.

The beacon runs 1-watt into a vertical five-eight wave antenna.

The map above shows the path and the distance was about 1800kms. The signal was almost certainly via Sporadic-E and it's pretty much the ideal distance for that mode of propagation.

In summary... That brings the QRSS tally so far for 2024 up to 20-callsigns & 10 DXCC.

I just put up a Fritzel MFB-13, it was generously donated to me by PD9RD. The MFB-13 is a folded back rotary dipole for 10m/15m/20m. The width is only around 2 x 2.1 meters (so total length around 4.2 meters). It’s got a “double” (10m/15m) trap in both elements, while the element length is not even a quarter wave for 10m it’s a compromise on all bands but I’m hoping the directional effect and the height will compensate for that.

The SWR is very acceptable on all bands. Lowest SWR is a bit low on 10m and 15m but way below better than 1:1.5 on the entire band. I’ve tuned the end rods for 20m to have the lowest SWR in the middle of the band and despite of the two traps acting as loading coild on 20m the SWR is better than 1:2 on the entire band and seems to work fine on 14 MHz as well.

I haven’t put it on a rotator yet, it’s now pointing in NE / SW direction and I’ve let WSPR with 1W band hopping 20/15/10 since yesterday afternoon and, results are not bad at all:

Maybe this afternoon I will turn it in N/S direction to see if the picture looks very different.

73 Pleun

 10m remains very active, this is todays activity at 2 different times.

Around 10:30z:

Around 13:55z:

Further details about FT8CN see my Blog https://g1kqh.blogspot.com/2023/02/ft8cn-new-free-android-app.html