A weekend variety show dedicated to ham radio and FUN! If you don't like fun, stay away! This morning we had an awesome guest talk about the past, present and future of the space programs: Stephanie Osborne. Take a look: If you like this kind of thing, be sure to check our our past episodes and guests here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL01YuCls6edbioyWv-nRtIY_fCEQLSKMB
Where was the coffee ?? ...no bean recommendations, no coffee-grinder recommendations, no brewing style, no mention of espresso or any other variant of coffee, no coffee machine manufacturer recommendations...nada...zilch...zero...nil Apart from some dude with a coffee sign behind his head and another dude sat above him sipping on an iced Latte (i presume) there was just no coffee to be had full stop I came for the coffee...later realised i'd been snagged by the "click-bait" title and came away with zero coffee for my efforts...that's one hour 30 minutes of my life i'll never get back
This was an amazing stream. I hope she returns for more. I too agree that terraforming is a bad idea. That's where reavers come from.
Hope is lost, when we go into a maximum of Suns minimum for several decades. My hope was, that the heavy activity during the turn of the millenium will come back. QRP is now only for to use in the Greyline or with Sporadic E, when this all will come true.
Depends on the antenna for to use. But when there is not enough space to put the right one on top of the roof, its getting critical. Not everybody is able to use the right antenna for the low bands.
It is discouraging: 1) the SFI dipped to an historical low for Cycle 25 this week, below 69. That is close to the very minimum we saw at the last quarter of Cycle 24 . IOW, the poor propagation continues despite the true onset of Cycle 25. We should have seen a rise happen --clearly-- last Winter: now we will be lucky to see improved conditions, if at all by this Fall. Here's hopin'! 2) the adoption of FT8 now dominates HF and VHF ham bands. In the VHF contest last week a vast, vast majority of the contacts were FT8. This means 'direct' operator modes are being abandoned to the point of questioning their future viability. This is clearly prevalent on HF, not just VHF ; 3) IF prop picked up significantly, then SSB and CW would clearly be more used on the HF bands. But right now, we are 'talking about radios on streaming video' rather than USING the radios to yack. Who can blame 'em? No one's fault, but it is a shame: what gets us 'radioactive' again depends clearly on Cycle 25. 73 Chip W1YW
I've been enjoying the Coffee and Ham Radios series, keep it up! Just my opinion and based only on my experiences, but I don't think it is all that dire. I'll admit conditions are not fantastic but they are certainly good enough to make plenty of regular contacts. I currently only operate phone and have enjoyed playing radio through the bottom and continue to do so every chance I get. My best DX contact I've made was just last year and that was somewhere around the bottom of the last cycle. Just to be clear I don't have some big gun station either. Many might even think my station would have a tough time making contacts at the top of a cycle never mind the bottom lol. I personally think some give up too soon after a little effort and retreat to a more efficient digital mode because it's almost guaranteed that you'll make some contacts. I'm not knocking that either as I'm tempted to give FT8 or some similar mode a try just because it's something I haven't tried yet. I'd suggest checking some spotting pages (POTA, SOTA, and any other OTA etc.) and tuning around to those frequencies to see what stations you can hear. There's good activity daily and especially on the weekends. That should give you an idea of what is going on with the bands and give you an opportunity to make some contacts too. Anyway, I'm enjoying my on air time and I hope to hear you all out there!