Here It Comes!

On November 16th, 2020 the reported sunspot number was zero.  Since then it has rocketed up to an astonishing 83 as of November 29th.  The sunspot number wasn't forecast to hit that level until 2023 but, ready or not, here it comes: solar cycle 25.  The starting date of a solar cycle is actually determined retroactively and a few months ago it was determined that cycle 25 really began a year ago in December 2019.  For hams, though, the real beginning of a new cycle is when the solar flux starts getting high enough for the upper HF bands to open up and starts generating stronger signals than we are used to on the middle bands.  I had noticed quite a few times recently that the 12m band was open, mostly to the US west coast and Asia.  Last Friday, however, even 10m was open and I made my first new contacts on that band since 2015.  Just for fun, I even made a series of QSOs that started on 10m and progressed through each band all the way down to 160m (I didn't have any luck on 60m, even though I was hearing a few weak European stations).  A couple of days before that I had worked a guy in Washington state on 40m FT8, off the back of my beam, only running driver power (15 watts) and I got a report from him of +23dB.  I was seeing him at +31!!  I can see how the effectiveness of the FT8 mode may soon become somewhat degraded as more and more powerful signals are crammed into such a tiny sliver of spectrum on each band.  Some expansion of the FT8 sub bands seems very likely in the coming years.

Ol' Sol has unexpectedly become quite active!

Its not all fun and games, though.  The more active the sun becomes, the more it tends to disrupt propagation for high-latitude stations like mine.  The more active part of the cycle is marked with lots of minor disturbances that stir up the aurora and generally degrade propagation.  Now the increased solar flux is making for stronger signals that can more easily break through the disturbed conditions.  On days when the absorption is low and the flux is high (like last Friday) radio conditions here can be outstanding.  There is also an increase in major disturbances like the little M-class solar flare that we saw this past weekend. I saw icons and colors on my propagation monitoring software that I haven't seen for years as the D-layer absorption spiked here and both the x-ray flux and proton flux climbed off the bottom of the scales where they've generally been sitting for the past few years.  I blogged about how this tends to degrade the signals here back at the beginning of the last cycle and the details haven't changed at all.  See here and here.  An active sun makes for some very interesting effects up here in the polar region.

Colorful, isn't it?  :(

When the last solar cycle was winding down in 2015 I put a lot of effort into getting my station ready for the sunspot minimum and it was well worth it. I received my 5-Band DXCC award by finally working the necessary number on 80m and I'm even up to 72 countries worked to date on the 160m band.  Now, with the changing of the radio seasons upon us, I'm thinking about putting up antennas for the high bands again.  I don't know yet how the coming of the new maximum will change my operating habits but it always has before.  I don't expect that this time will be any different...

Marine Mobile

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of camping out on the water in our family's big cabin cruiser.  My dad would bring along a Heathkit receiver that he built and while we relaxed and fished he would listen to interesting stuff like hams and marine HF-SSB ship-to-shore traffic.  I would marvel at the fact that we were on a boat out in the middle-of-nowhere in the Arctic and listening to cruise ship passengers phoning home from the Caribbean.

After languishing under a tarp at my dad's place for 20-odd years, the old boat eventually followed me home and in 2015 I did a complete restoration on it.  Ham radio was in the plan from day-one.  During the refit I made sure to install all of the antennas and cabling that would be required.  The HF antenna is a 19-foot long two-piece fiberglass vertical mounted on the gunwale with a counterpoise of 2-inch aluminum foil tape run along the inside of the hull right at the waterline.  On the roof I installed an MFJ-1436 tri-band whip for VHF/UHF and 6m.  I used the aluminum tape again under the fiberglass to form a suitable ground plane for the whip which I intended to use mostly for working satellites.  Summers up here are quite short and it was already August that year before the boat was finally ready to go in the water.  The installation of the radios had to wait until the next season.

Back on the water after all those years.

My plan for the radios got somewhat complicated.  What I really wanted was an SDR version of my venerable old Kenwood TS-2000.  My Kenwood was gathering dust, having fallen victim to the dreaded "ceramic filters failure", and there was nothing available in my price range that did 100-watt HF, full-duplex all-mode VHF/UHF for satellites, and was SDR-based.  The closest I could come up with back then was a Flex-1500 QRP radio with an HF amplifier and transverters and amplifiers for VHF/UHF.  I'd mount all the gear in a portable travel case and bring along my laptop to operate with.  To make it all work the way I wanted would take a lot of homebrewing.  The HF part was easy, or so I thought.  In the junk pile I had an old commercial HF transceiver.  I pulled the 100-watt amplifier off of it and added connectors and a T/R relay.  Since I planned to operate into a non-resonant antenna, I bought a cheap manual antenna tuner which would also take care of harmonic filtering.

The VHF/UHF part was even more complicated.  The little Flex radio had a separate transverter output so I built a pair of switchable transverters and brick amplifiers for each band.  Since I needed full duplex for satellites, I opted for a separate receiver using an RTL USB dongle built into the transverter box.  With everything bench tested in the shop and mounted on a plastic board in a carrying case I was ready to go.  Or at least I thought I was.  I took all the gear and put the VHF/UHF whip on my truck to see how it worked.  It didn't.  I couldn't seem to hear anything.  I pulled out my Arrow dual-band yagi and that seemed to receive ok but, despite my best efforts at shielding when I built the transverters, there was significant desense when I was transmitting on the opposite band.  I had a FunCube Pro SDR dongle which I pressed into service to replace the RTL stick (thereby bypassing the 10m IF chain) and it worked but obviously some re-engineering was needed.  With the 2017 boating season fast approaching I decided to just focus on getting the HF setup going.

As I mentioned before, the summers here are short.  If time and weather cooperates I can maybe get the boat in the water a dozen times between mid-June and Labour Day.  Over the next couple of summers I'd bring the radio case and the laptop out with me every once in a while but getting it to work on HF proved surprisingly frustrating.  The manual antenna tuner was very finicky and the laptop running the PowerSDR software would frequently lock up from RF on the USB cables before I could get the tuner adjusted.  I'd spend a half-hour or so and then give up until next time.  More ferrites.  Different cables.  Oops, the amp blew up, need another one.  Maybe an auto tuner?  Nope, won't tune with so many unattenuated harmonics.  Oops, blew up another amp. After the summer 2019 season I officially gave up.  That winter, I sold off the Flex radio and the auto tuner and decided to just fix up the old TS-2000 and use that.  A handful of new ceramic filters and a couple hours of delicate solder surgery was all it took.

With the repaired TS-2000 in the boat this summer, I got the HF working right away in June.  I had initially assumed that the auto tuner in the radio would be able to load the big fiberglass vertical but alas it would only tune up on 30m.  Before the next trip I put the old manual tuner from the previous iteration in and was then able to operate across the HF bands.  I also gave up on the big laptop and opted to use the Pipo X8 that was already mounted on the dash.  The little nav computer was a bit slow but would run WSJT-X without much difficulty.  I still wasn't having much luck with VHF/UHF though.  The MFJ antenna didn't seem to work at all.  After checking all the cables I started to think that there might be something wrong with the antenna itself.  Since by this time it was long out of warranty, I decided to just buy a new one.  At the same time, I also opted for another automatic antenna tuner.  The manual tuner did work but was still finicky and the longer this project dragged on the less patient I was becoming.  After scouring the marketplace I found that HRO in Anaheim had stock on both an MFJ-939 auto-tuner with the Kenwood cable AND a replacement antenna.  Being so close to everything finally getting sorted out, I also opted for express shipping.  Even here in the far north, Priority Express mail from the USA gets here in about a week.  HRO shipped them out the same day and I followed the tracking as the package passed through LAX and landed in Vancouver two days later.  Then, nothing.  No more tracking updates.  USPS said it arrived in Vancouver, Canada and Canada Post said it was waiting to receive it.  I thought maybe it fell off a truck or something!  After 21 agonizing days (yes, THREE WEEKS!) Canada Post finally received the package and sent it to clear customs.  It was out of customs the same day and arrived here a week later.  I have no idea what it was doing all that time at the airport in Vancouver but I did see anecdotal reports of mail backed up at the border for weeks on end so I was just happy to have it eventually arrive here intact.

The HF station mounted at the helm.  The radio on the left is a marine VHF.

I installed the new tuner right away (works great!) and a couple of weeks ago I got around to replacing the VHF/UHF antenna.  Unlike the HF (which only works on the water), I could do this part in the driveway.  Armed with my SWR meter, antenna analyzer, cables, and the HF/VHF/UHF triplexer, I pulled the boat out from under the carport and put up the new antenna.  After checking everything and hooking up all the cables and the triplexer, I made a satellite contact on AO-91.  After four years of monkeying around I finally had it all working!  I gathered up all of my tools and test gear, closed up the boat, and put it back under the carport awning, eagerly anticipating the next boat trip.  I paused as I walked into the house and a sinking feeling came over me.  I went back outside to look and, sure enough, I forgot to fold over the antenna after I was done and broke it off backing under the carport. $@#%!^@#$!!!

Actually, this story does have a happy ending.  All that broke was the brass NMO mount and I was able to quickly rustle up a replacement and install it.  I loaded fresh Keplerian elements into Orbitron and set up WiSPDDE to handle the radio tuning.  In between fishing and relaxing last weekend I made over a dozen satellite contacts as we swung on the hook in a beautiful local lake.  Life is good!

DX Year in Review

I suppose I could have just left the rest of this post blank.  For the first time since I was licensed (and active) there were no new DXCC entities worked in a calendar year.  Ducie Island in 2018 was the last one.  Things are looking up for 2020, however.  Preparations for the expedition to Swains Island in March are proceeding apace and has now been joined by a surprise announcement of a trip to St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, also in March.  And maybe, just maybe, this will also be the year that the Rebel DX Group makes it all the way to Bouvet Island.  Time will tell...

In the meantime I've been chipping away at 160m and picking up the odd one here and there on 80m.  I just noticed recently that I'm only about 50 away from the DXCC Challenge award for working 1000 band/country slots.  Not quite sure how I managed that but I guess they do add up over time.  To that end, when nothing else interesting is going on I'll watch 40m and pick up new ones there if they pop up.

Hopefully I'll have more to write about in next year's review!

73 and good DX


Update: Since I wrote this less than two weeks ago BOTH Swains Island and St. Peter St. Paul Rocks expeditions have been postponed or cancelled!  I will surely be stuck at 321 forever :(