Hi all.

I might be speaking out of turn and I am sure this will not be taken well by "some members" but the recent posts about the postings on this group has made me revisit the stats I have been keeping on the group since I first joined in 2011?, I have also gone back over the stats since the group was first started in 2008.
Below is the average number of posts per day each year since the group was first started.

YEAR	Post Per Day
2008	6.5
2009	14.4
2010	16.5
2011	12.9
2012	9.1
2013	6.1
2014	4.3
2015	5
2016	2.3
2017	1.1
2018	1.7
2019	3.5
2020	3.2
2021	6.4
2022	5

Most days I get more than this number of emails which are "spam", is on average, 5 - 6 emails a day too much to handle? The group offers a number of options, including daily digests and the option to not get any emails (and read the post direct on the groups page).




This graph above shows the total number of posts per month each year, again since the group was first started. Some forums I am a member of have more than 100 posts a day or week, let alone a month.

Over the past year or so I have reduced my activity on here and sadly also in the Ultralight DXing hobby in general. At times I feels like I am "talking to myself" and unless you are going to remote locations for DXing (which sadly I have neither the time or money to do), it feels like your loggings don't matter. While to some people logging the same stations again and again might be "boring", it is what I enjoy and I like comparing signal levels of the same stations at different times / locations and at different times of the year.

The last few months have seen me really take a step back and not be anywhere as active on here. I was hopefully last week, when I finally had some of my backlog of work cleared, some projects finished and my personal life back to "normal" that I would be able to pick up this hobby again. It was very interesting that one of the first messages I received when I came back was about the postings on here. I am not sure of the history and what has happened while I have been "away", but clearly enough members have an issue with the postings for it to be raised.

Maybe the group has grown and split to such an extent that we need to have an "extreme" group for those who only want to know about the more "serious" DXing and a less formal group for people (like myself) that just enjoy using Ultralight radios, even if the DX we receive is not that amazing.

I will do what I do and enjoy the Ultralight DXing hobby for what it is to me and what I like about it.

Paul




 

Robert,
Please post your designs and developments to all of us here.

FB is a vulnerable  issue, but maybe we should consider it...

Your experience  will be invaluable to the Group!

Michael UK

On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 2:20 PM Robert Conboy <robconboy@...> wrote:

I don’t find reports of loggings in this and other mwdx groups, like on Facebook, very useful to me personally, beyond learning what is possible. But others do so I’m fine with it. Also, who else can appreciate a rare catch but another dx’er?

"There are too many posts about X and this list is supposed to be
about Y!" has come up on, I believe, every list I've been on since
1991. I've checked with all the relevant authorities and have been
able confirm, along with my own observations, that every system used
to read email has the capability of deleting messages. The method is
simple - if there is a post that you don't find interesting, you
simply hit a key, touch a spot on your screen, or in some cases
verbalize a command to delete the message and, Voilà! The message is
gone. No need to remark on it or complain about it, just delete and
move on. As Robert says above, not for me but others may be
interested and I'm fine with it.

If there are posters that you don't like (and believe me, across the
dozens of lists I'm on I have quite a killfile! :-) ) you can filter
out posts from particular people.

The really super important thing about this, though, and the secret
really, is to NOT ANNOUNCE IT TO EVERYONE. Just delete, move on.

Over 10 years ago, I met Richard Allen at the OKC Train Show (another
affliction we share) and we started to talk about radio for some
reason and he told me all about this Ultralight thing. I was
skeptical but intrigued. I joined the Yahoo Group (I said it was
years ago) when I got home and ended up getting a PL606 not long after
confirming that Mr Allen was not delusional. :-) That lead to more
MWDXing, which lead to reading about and joining IRCA which lead to me
doing a column in DX Monitor which (indirectly) lead me to doing a
column in LWCA's The Lowdown and on and on ...

The message you delete may not be of interest to *you* but it's
probably of interest to *someone* ... so just silently delete the
stuff that you don't care about and *move on*. Silently.

--
Peter Laws | N5UWY / VE2UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!

On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 12:20 PM, Robert Conboy wrote:

What I find most useful, is when I get an idea from what someone else has done, or when someone asks a question/has a problem that I know a good answer to / solution for.

 

The biggest revelation I learned came soon after joining this group: 

 

Others had discovered and experimented with “ferrite sleeves” around the same time I was, roughly 18 years ago. It never occurred to me that the concept was innovative, nor did I know anyone who would have appreciated it at the time.

 

I particularly like the direction Gary took his basic design: evolving it toward portable practicality and lower cost. Doing so made it more accessible to others and has advanced the state of the hobby. 

 

My designs were done in isolation from any dx community and evolved in a different direction. High cost and high complexity, with housings, vernier dials, low noise amps, contoured feedback networks for regeneration,  and powered by lithium batteries.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your comments.

It's always very interesting to have different hobbyists go in different design directions when tweaking an antenna for maximum performance. The FSL antenna has been a classic example with all kinds of shapes, sizes and components used over the past 12 years.

After Graham Maynard published his "ferrite sleeve" article: in 2011 (along with some rather dubious scientific claims) there were three of us in the Ultralight group which took the concept and ran with it, finally constructing huge "gain monsters" of limited practicality. My own contribution to this wacky challenge was a building a 17 inch (43cm) diameter monster FSL which cost $1K+, weighed in at 38 lbs. (17 kg) and featured 129 Russian surplus 200mm x 100mm ferrite rods. The antenna provided plenty of DXing gain, but essentially was a vanity project, since almost nobody else could afford to build one.

Shrinking the FSL down to a practical size really made the antenna more popular, accessible and more fun to use-- and now, even I routinely use the 6" and 8" models during ocean beach runs instead of the 15" and 17" monsters. When the DX propagation is there a 6" or 8" FSL will do the job-- and when the propagation isn't there, you are wasting your time even with a 17" monster.

73, Gary