Found it!

The source of all my Faros problems.....The netbook itself. I hadn't actually checked the obvious and that was what it was. The noise generated by the netbook was stopping it from finding signals in all the noise. Hence the 100% QSB. When I disconnected and unplugged everything the noise level dropped massively and that was the end of the problem.

Trouble is I sort of need that to run the program. Oh well, I suppose I can try and run it under wine with Linux and put it on the RPI as that makes little or no noise. I feel some hours being used up ahead!

The Joy of Stats

There was a programme on BBC4 the other night called the 'Joy of stats'. presented by a light hearted professor, it gave a run down, very briefly, on the use of statistics and the relevance as well as the way they are used nowadays. Including Google's translator system.

Whilst its undoubtedly not a new thought, the amount of data generated by services like WSPR and DX cluster could feasibly be an alternative method for generating almost live propagation prediction. I'm not a great user of these services as I quite like having a twiddle to see 'whats out there'. I can see a use for this data. At one point I tried to do some data analysis on the 3 years worth of information I have gathered from listening (through Faros) to the IBP beacons. Not having either a clue what to do with it I could do little else but generate a few graphs that presented the data in a slightly different way. Not much use either. The stock presentation is great. but a correlation between what is heard and what the sun is doing and what you are expected to hear from the likes of VOACap is interesting to say the least.

There is clearly scope for using this data to give an alternative view for prediction. The model would no doubt be complex and likely to be as reliable as other mathematical models. My experience with commissioning a and running mechanical based simulation is that if you get 60% accuracy then you're doing well. Still worth trying another angle, not least of which just for the sheer hell of it.

Veering into 'off topic'-ness as this is I still see the draw of modelling and simulation. Even though I know its rarely as accurate as we'd like it to be. I do seem to stray into areas which i don't have the required skills, so excuse the babble and be thankful I don't do this every day :-D

SDR station update

Some time ago I set myself a task of turning my current beacon monitoring station into a low cost SDR based system. The idea has developed over time and the lack of simple low cost SDR receivers (I mean less than £100) meant that the only option was a Softrock kit.

At the time the only option was a TXRX kit that was fixed onto one band. A long wait after first thinking about this later and the HF lite kits came out. This allowed a receiver only to built. Next up comes the electrically switched BPF add on.

These kits seem to come in two flavours and as I type there aren't any available from tony's website.

So that's the rf side. On the computer side I have been looking various different options from ultra low power drain mchines like the fit pc through to the cheap atom based netbooks or even the original eeepc.

Obviously funding plays a large part in this and as a result that may force me down one particular route but I'd really like to go through the fit pc route as they claim to draw less than 10 watts which makes battery power fed from solar top up.

Still I'm a way off doing that but as the masters course comes to an end I may have a little extra time on my hands. Perhaps the xyl will present me a list of jobs to do instead!

Spots

Have there been some sunspots or something?

All of a sudden over the last few days the Faros station has started reporting some signals. After being quiet for a number of weeks with little spotting going on something has happened to spurn it into action, Good news anyway. I might have to get the HF vertical out this evening and put the 6m Yagi to bed until next season.