Greenland

Worked the rare 38 division (Greenland) this evening.  Thank you to 47DX101 Mr. John and the DX club for the special activation from Greenland.  John has been operating from Greenland since mid July and today (25/09/2011) is the last day of the activation.  More information on the Delta Xray club site.

John outside the Royal Danish Navy Guard office in Mestersvig, north east Greenland

Lift off!

 

After some recent very strong solar activity in the direction of Earth, solar cycle 24 has finally kicked in big time!

The summer season of  sparodic e propagation has given way to some very good tropospheric propagation.   Over the last week on most days it's possible to work South America, Asia, Australasia, Caribbean and North America.

Hello US of A.

Birth place of our hobby and home to many a fine station.  For me and I guess most UK operators, North America is the 'icing on the cake'.  It's always a pleasure to listen and talk to the 'yanks' and I hope as the solar cycle progresses there will be many more opportunities.

27.385 LSB seams to be a good spot to work DX for USA, for some real fun listen to the 'Super Bowl' on 27.025 AM (Channel 6), 10-4 Rubber Duck!

How to add 11 meter cluster spots to your own website

If you want to add the 11 meter cluster spots to your own website, copy and paste the following HTML : -

For last 20 spots from the CRX Node 1 cluster : -

<iframe frameborder="0" height="333" href="http://www.crxcluster.com" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.crxcluster.com/dxclusterframe.php?format=html&items=20" width="482"> </iframe>

and for the cluster spot map : -

<a href="http://dxcluster.crxcluster.com/img.php?id=YToyOntzOjI6Im10IjtzOjM6Im1hcCI7czo0OiJkYXRhIjthOjM6e3M6NjoiYWN0aW9uIjtzOjIxOiJnZXRMYXN0RHhTcG90c1BpY3R1cmUiO3M6MjoiaWQiO047czo0OiJ0aW1lIjtpOjEzMTYyMTEyMDQ7fX0=" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://dxcluster.crxcluster.com/img.php?id=YToyOntzOjI6Im10IjtzOjM6Im1hcCI7czo0OiJkYXRhIjthOjM6e3M6NjoiYWN0aW9uIjtzOjIxOiJnZXRMYXN0RHhTcG90c1BpY3R1cmUiO3M6MjoiaWQiO047czo0OiJ0aW1lIjtpOjEzMTYyMTEyMDQ7fX0=" width="445" /></a> 

and if your a user of Ham Radio Deluxe software, the dx cluster connection details are : -

this should also work for other software that is DXSpider compatible

Blog update - Cluster Dashboard

Some major updates to the cluster page : -

• Added a real-time UTC clock
• Added world time clocks for some major cities around the globe
• Removed all but one cluster spot list - most of them now share the spot data
• Added DX spot map from CRX Cluster Node 1
• Page will now auto refresh every 60 or when you hit the refresh button

and of course I've called it Cluster Dashboard as that seams to be in current fashion to call overview type pages with charts and graphs on.

The Cluster Dashboard should prove to be a useful page when keeping an eye on DX conditions on the 11 Meter band.   If there is something you would like on that page please let me know.

NEIM1031MKII DSP Audio Filter - Again

Well the BHI NEIM1031 MKII that I was very happy about in this post unfortunately developed a fault. The noise cancelling function would intermittently switch off and the output from the unit would sound like the filter level was stuck at full, giving a very metallic sound to the audio. Phoned up BHI Ltd and spoke to Graham who was extremely helpful. Posted the faulty unit to them and they ended up sending me a new unit. Graham initially mentioned it might be a dry solder joint but after inspection looked like a component failure, 'a very rare occurence' said Graham, 'we don't get many faults on these'. So I am now very happy again with my noise filter and after spending a few weeks without it I released how much difference it makes, especially with stations that have a low signal in the background static, definitely does make the difference between able understand them or not. I highly recommend this unit for anyone without a built in DSP on their radios. Many thanks to Graham at BHI