Just out of interest, I looked up last month’s edition and saw the read counter was over 200, so it seems someone is reading this stuff! Many thanks also for the kind comments from Berni, however in my view this sort of input is just part of the club’s activities. I am only following on from those who used to do this years back!
The month got off to a quiet start as I was spending a lot of time trying to get the log program to work properly. After a week of struggling I found the fix, just two mouse clicks!
Again, many thanks to Berni for his help with cleaning up some of the remaining minor niggles. Now I have my full logbook back.
So I eventually managed to make an upload to ClubLog. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Logbook Of The World, that seems to have been subject to some sort of crash! At the time of writing it's still offline.
Note: The ARRL 'HQ-based systems' were this month hacked by bad actors, and many of their services have since been taken offline as a precaution against further loss. You should know however, that if you have an account with the ARRL (for LOTW for example) then it is highly likely that all of your data, including your personal data, has been stolen - https://thecyberexpress.com/cyberattack-on-arrl. This is at least the second time that the ARRL has been hacked, as a major security breach was also reported in 2014 - https://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-investigating-web-server-breach). M0XYF
In the meantime, I worked a heap of USA counties and some interesting islands. At the end of the first week I found and worked RI1ANE down in the Antarctic on 10 metres, AN-016 for IOTA and the last continent for WAC on FT8. On the 28th I managed to contact FT4GL on Gloriosa Isl’ for one of my rare (these days) ATNO. To finish off the month I got 4X2DS from 440 metres below sea level!
On the evening of the 10th we enjoyed an almost total blackout, but the Aurora here in mid Sussex was really spectacular. I recall cycle 19 in 1956 with the full curtain display, after that cycle 22 in 1990 - not so bright, but enough to overcome the Sodium street lighting.
This time in cycle 24, almost the full works, with green displays from the whole of the northern horizon up to overhead with a small display south of here over the channel. Radio contacts during this period were very few, but Bogota seemed like a local contact!
One major advantage of the digital modes is the computer’s ability to display the actual propagation in nearly real time. On 15 metres the main routes are the greylines, both morning and evening. So last thing at night for me China, Indonesia, and Australia are common contacts.
Next time as I run up to 40 years of 'ZCS' operation, a little history.
Enough for now, so 73s
Chris G4ZCS