WSPR - first steps

Triggered by an article in one of the ham magazine's, WSPR (pronounced as WhiSPeR) took my attention. This digital mode isn't used to communicate, but developed for doing propagation research. With as little power possible you send and a recieve signals containing your call, grid location and used power in dbM (in my case PD0JDF JO22OI 37). A few moments later you can check the results on an website.

Again the Internet gives you the start by offering much info about the topic. The program used is downloadable here. After installing, setting up your rig and a bit of finetuning in receiving the incoming signals, your on. WSPR is cycling through transmitting 1 or 2 minutes and receiving the next 5 or 6. The received signals appears in the waterfall.  When gathered and undecoded, the results are uploaded onto a database and on the WSPR website you can see the results on a global level. Its very important to have your computerclock at the exact right time, for this purpose are different programs, this one works fine also under Windows 7.

I turned my rig to 14.096500 MHz (20m is my favorite band) and pulled power back to 5 Watts. This is the minimum on my set. After setting the clock, installing the software and hooking things up, nothing happened! After a doublecheck, I realised I just had to be patient. The program was waiting to start at an exact point in time. After a couple of minutes things were going to happen. The program was receiving signals on the 20m band and at the end of the cycle it started to transmit for a minute. This was followed by a period of standby and the cycle started again and again.

After a couple of houres cycling through sending and receiving signals I visited the main WSPR website at http://wsprnet.org/ and pointed direct to the map section filling in my call. What then happened, exceeded my expactations! The map showed als the station who had spotted my signal and uploaded it to the WSPR database! Spots from Canada till Australia with only 5 Watts!

A couple of weeks ago I increased the height of my wire antenna. This was done to lift the antenne between the houses and to increase the upbeam angle. Zooming in on the map to a closer look on Europe, I noticed that the nearby countries were better reachable than before. On 20 meters I didn't had a lot of transmissions with German stations. The map is showing they are now 'in reach' instead of hopped over.

WSPR - I'm sure i'll going to have a lot of fun using it. 

Building a ZS6BKW

Inspired by the fun of constructing a G5RVjr antenna (see 'Enough for  G5RVjr'), I tried my capablilities in selfmaking an other antenna with good experiences of fellow amateurs, the ZS6BKW antenna. Again, all info was in reach on the Internet, what would we do without it? This antenna is based on the G5RV antenna and designed by Dr. Brian Austin, ZS6BKW.

 
Because my leftovers were implemented in the G5RVjr, I had to order some parts. After receiving the parcel  with the Lizte and open line (called kippenladder - chickenladder in Dutch), a rainy afternoon was the moment to put thing together to something called a antenna.

After constructing the parts, I hooked the antenna up the atticwindow and the other side downwards to the garden shed. A quick stroll on the bands showed reasonable results so this antenna is on the list to take with me on my holiday.

Birthday present

One of the things I got as a birthday present (and one which I am very happy with) is the HyEndFed Multiband antenna develloped and made by Rob, PA3EKE and Ron, PA3RK.

After hearing some great stories about this wire-antenna on the local repeater, I was very interested and visited their website. My antenna situation is simply said not very good, my selfmade wire dipole antenna is situated in between houses wich results in overseas connection only when there are openings.

After getting this antenna, I couldt wait to place this antenna next to the existing one and connect it to my rig, a Yaesu FT-950. Altough I don't own expensive meters and other gauges, I immediately experienced a remarkable difference. Less noise, more signals! While tuning in on DX signals on different bands, switching between this HyEndFed and my own antenne shows a increasment of 2-3 S points!

Although the 20 meter band is my favorite, I am glad this antenna is a multiband. For this reason, the antenna is equpped with a little coil. On 10, 20 and 40 meters SWR is very good and tuning is not necessary. Even on 80 meters, it works perfect with a litle tuning. All parts are very neatly assembled.

Is my selfmade a quality lacking antenne, or is the HyendFed a very good one. I think I am alllowed to believe the HyEndFed is a very good one. Altough my old and reliable selfmade antenna gave me enough DX-satisfaction, its has to make place!

If youre looking for a great antenna with good results I can recommend this one, give these guys a visit on their website.