News archive April 2022 - Koos van den Hout

After breakfast we went on a lazy visit to Akureyri. We walked a bit around the city and my wife and son went to the Akureyri Swimming Pool. I walked around town a bit. I soon noticed a big antenna setup on a house suggesting I found the home of a radio amateur. I later confirmed this.

Nice design for an electricity substation in Akureyri

It was a nice and sunny day so walking around Akureyri was really nice. I walked a bit in the direction of the mountains and later along the harbour. It was a bit too early in the season for lots of activity on the water. The flags about the winter sport area in Akureyri were still up. When we asked about it the tourist information told us the wintersport resort had just closed the slopes one week earlier. Even with the sun and the nice temperatures we could see lots of snow on the higher mountains. The end of the wintersport season was also visible in another way: we saw quite a number of snowmobiles being moved on trailers.

Evening over the bay at Akureyri

In the afternoon we picked up some groceries at a supermarket in Akureyri and went back to the apartment at the other side of the bay and made and had dinner in the apartment and enjoyed an evening with great views.

After a second night in the Sauðafell Guesthouse it was time for breakfast. We talked a bit with Berglind around breakfast and she told us she has several guests who returned after earlier visits. We immediately understood why people want to return to Sauðafell Guesthouse, it is a wonderful place, great views, nice location for several trips and a great hostess.

Sign einbreið brú

Einbreið brú (single lane bridge) with gravel road

We were planning to go to Akureyri this day. This was partly over unpaved roads with gravel. We both had the idea to take a picture of a gravel road with an 'einbreið brú' sign and bridge. People who drive in Iceland will soon learn about the 'einbreið brú' or one lane bridge. While driving on one of the gravel roads we indeed saw this scene as expected and stopped to take that picture. This is our idea of 'peak Iceland'.

Officially you are not allowed to stop on the road for pictures, you always have to park in a safe spot and assume other traffic may show up. We saw no other traffic at all.

Our place for the night was an apartment on the other side of the bay where Akureyri is. So we had to drive through Akureyri and took our time to shop for our evening meal and breakfast, and we walked around the city centre. We found it very amusing there was a car with license plate 'MARIA' parked near a church.

We even came to the town square we remembered from our visit in 2006. Back in 2006 we were on an evening walk in Akureyri and on that town square we saw the way young people have fun on a Friday evening in Akureyri: they get a big fourwheel drive car and drive in circles through the city while playing music on the car stereo and looking at the other cars and the people in those cars. As we went to our apartment at the end of the afternoon we weren't able to see whether the local youth still does this.

We arrived in the Sunnuhlid houses apartments and after having dinner we enjoyed a magnificent view over the bay near Akureyri. With the distance from Akureyri it was good to have done shopping for dinner.

We woke up at the time arranged for breakfast and our friendly hostess Berglind from Sauðafell Guesthouse (booking.com link) was busy making breakfast available for us. When we told her we wanted to visit the Snæfellsnes peninsula she explained about places to visit and things to see on and around Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Birds nesting around Snæfellsnes peninsula

Parts of this peninsula have cliff coasts where birds nest in the cliff rocks in the weirdest corners. We visited several of these cliffs which had viewing platforms allowing safe viewing by visitors without disturbing the birds. Although most of the birds seemed aggressive enough to fend for themselves and capable of letting people know when they got too close.

This coast is also dangerous for ships so we saw several lighthouses and remains of ships that got wrecked on this coast in the last century.

Driving along the coast of Snæfellsnes we passed the village of Hellissandur where I noticed a huge tower, the Hellissandur longwave radio mast which is the antenna for the RÚV program on 189 kHz. I'm the kind of person to note things like this! The building for the transmitter had the RÚV name in big letters on it.

At Svöðufoss waterfall drones are also forbidden

Svöðufoss waterfall

Snæfellsjökull with snow cover

Snæfellsnes is also known for having Snæfellsjökull, a glacier in a national park. We didn't visit the glacier but we did stop at Svöðufoss waterfall where we were able to take pictures of the Svöðufoss waterfall with Snæfellsjökull behind it. It was great weather for pictures and warm enough to be outside with just a jacket.

Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall

Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall

We went on and also stopped at Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall which was again very nice to look at.

For dinner we went to Stykkishólmur where we found Narfeyrarstofa restaurant which had really nice food and drinks.

After dinner we returned to the guesthouse and enjoyed the majestic view.

We woke up in the Hótel Laxárbakki and made breakfast. After breakfast we packed our stuff and got going again.

Our main activity for the day was a visit to The Cave which is an underground lava tunnel.

We read the description of how to get to the cave and this was 'follow route X and follow signs to the cave'. The detail was that 'follow signs to the cave' was over quite a length of winding and not very wide gravel road so we were happy to have a four-wheel drive car. There were some steep grades in the gravel road which made driving interesting, especially with an automatic transmission. Thankfully this was an automatic transmission with an override so we could keep it in the same gear on a steep downhill.

We were greeted at The Cave by our guide who was a geology student from England. He was very good at explaining everything and answering questions from the people in the group. His level of knowledge was clearly far above the standard explanation of everything, but he was good at explaining things at multiple levels. This made for a very interesting tour with lots of nice details.

It was quite cold in the cave. There was snow in the opening and cold air from outside flows in. The opening is a collapsed part of the lava with stairs to get from the surface to inside the tunnel. If the collapse hadn't been there or hadn't been in just one place this lava tunnel would not have been open for visitors.

After the opening came a few turns and a part where the floor of the tunnel rose to quite close to the ceiling. The effect was that all moisture in the cold air formed interesting ice sculptures in this part, and there was almost no ice after this point.

At the far end of our tour into the tunnel was a viewing platform. The tunnel continues but without walkways and lighting, so the rest of the tunnel is only available to researchers. Our guide turned off the light for a few moments so we could see how dark it really is inside the earth.

On the return trip through the tunnel we saw the next group come in. The two group guides keep contact via radio to make sure the groups pass in a safe location.

After the tour we had a late lunch and went on. We visited Barnafossar falls which are very special: due to the volcanic terrain an entire waterfall grows out of the side of the mountain. The water gets into the lava easily since lava is very porous and at the side of the lava near the river there is just water flowing out of it at all levels, creating a wild river. With the explanation how this is possible from our visit to The Cave this was a nice place to visit and see for ourselves how nature and recent geological history interact here.

Our place to stay for the evening was Sauðafell Guesthouse (booking.com link) which is a renovated 19th century farm house. The house is in a valley with one neighbouring house visible, but at a distance too far for walking. The other neighbours are further away, one in the next valley and one across the river.

This guesthouse is on an active sheep farm. So farm life continues during your stay and it's a great way to experience daily life on a farm in Iceland.

We were greeted by the very friendly hostess Berglind and she directly assumed we drove over the paved road to get to the guesthouse because our white car was still white. The other nearby road is a gravel road and with some rain in the air and dust from the road white cars don't stay white.

In the evening we cooked our own dinner in the kitchen and cleaned up afterwards. The guesthouse has a nice kitchen and living room for all the guests. We decided to stay two nights so we could drive around Snæfellsnes peninsula the next day and return to the guesthouse the next evening.

For an evening walk we walked up the hill next to the guesthouse. Eventually we ended up at a height of about 343 meters with a great view all around.

We woke up in the Eldhestar Hotel, had breakfast there and packed our belongings to keep going.

Strokkur geyser

Geysir area

Our plans for this day were a few of the 'standard' tourist attractions of Iceland: first the geysers at Geysir where the 'original' geyser named Geysir isn't very active but the next one Strokkur is active with large eruptions of boiling water. Strokkur erupts every 6 to 10 minutes, which is very tourist friendly. This is all part of an area with high geothermal activity, so there are also other hot springs and pools with boiling mud. Since this is a huge tourist attraction there is also a gift shop and restaurant nearby. I was used to signs asking you to not continue on outside shoes in Iceland, but the door to this gift shop and restaurant had a request to not walk in with crampons. I would consider it a very bad idea to walk anywhere without snow on crampons, but maybe other people didn't consider this.

For lunch we stopped at a campsite that was officially closed. It was a field with a small wooden building with a covered table. The only thing that made it look 'closed' to us was the fact that the doors of the toilets on the other side of the wooden building were locked. Otherwise it was a very minimalist camping with just a field and a toilet building and a table. No power outlets, no swimming pool. I assumed there was a place with clean drinking water but I didn't see it.

Drones are forbidden at Gullfoss waterfall

Gullfoss waterfall

The other attraction in that area is Gullfoss waterfall which is a very big waterfall. Being there in the month of April was a bit early so it was quite chilly. The view at Gullfoss is amazing. To make sure everybody gets to enjoy views like Gullfoss waterfall and Strokkur geyser there were signs forbidding drones. I agree with forbidding drones at places like this. First of all drones make a really annoying sound. There is a reason drone video never has original sound: you don't want that sound, it's just a high-pitch whine. And the second reason to forbid drones at a site like this: there are lots of ways for drones to crash in a place like this. And having the natural beauty of a place like a huge waterfall or a geyser spoiled by heaps of drone remains would be annoying too.

Huge trucks in Iceland

Huge trucks in Iceland

The parking lot at Gullfoss had a number of big four-wheel drive or eight-wheel drive cars with special installations for driving on rough terrain. Those probably drive tourists around Iceland and mostly stay on roads!

Waterfall at Þingvellir

We also visited the Þingvellir which is now a national park. It was the site where the parliament of Iceland came together every year from 930 until 1798. It's a valley and it's directly on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge so you can see Europe and North-America drift apart. It's both a historic site and some beautiful nature. There is a path to walk along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and in some parts there are walkways over it because the ground keeps subsiding.

After all this we drove on to our hotel for the evening: Hótel Laxárbakki which is on the ring road. This was more of an apartment with a small kitchen than a 'hotel' room but we got used to this in Iceland. We had dinner in the hotel and had a nice evening walk along the river that flows right besides the hotel. The ring road was now two lanes over a bridge, but the old one lane bridge Einbreid brú was still standing. But it looked too old and unmaintained to walk over it so we just had a look at it.

We woke up in our nice hotel and my wife took the car to get things for breakfast. This sounds completely strange for someone living in the Netherlands but Iceland has a bit of urban sprawl so bigger supermarkets are located on the outskirts of cities and the distance between our hotel and a reasonable supermarket was a bit too far for walking. The hotel had no own breakfast options, but they did have a room with a toaster, an electric kettle, plates, cutlery so enough place to make our own breakfast.

There was a bit of shelf space with a sign 'leave something, take something' which reminded me a lot of a hiker box as described in the stories I have read about hiking on long-distance trails like the Appalachian Trail. This hiker box had one thing I was interested in: instant coffee. I like some coffee after breakfast in the morning and this was my option to get something resembling coffee.

After breakfast we packed our bags and left. We re-packed a few things because we went from 'packing for in an airplane' to 'packing for day-trips' so the pocket knife could be somewhere ready for use and the hiking poles were unpacked and put in an easy to reach place in the car.

Our main plan for the day was to visit the Fagradalsfjall volcano. This volcano erupted during 2021 and this was one of our main reasons for visiting Iceland again.

We wanted to visit this volcano either in the first few days or in the last few days of our stay in Iceland. The weather forecast for this day was really nice so we planned it this way. And the weather was indeed nice and sunny.

Fagradalsfjall volcano

This is a very visitor-friendly volcano: it is about an hour driving from the Reykjavik / Keflavik area, it has nearby car parking and after that it is a relatively short walk to get to an area with volcanic activity. We saw no hot lava streams but a very large area covered with lava cooling down. Smoke plumes and some burning vegetation showed that the lava was still warm and hot in some places. We hiked the main path along the lava flow which went mostly up and gave great views of the lava field. Eventually we reached a point with a good overview of the place where the eruption happened. Somewhat further there was also a place where we could get to the edge of the lava and touch it. The solidified lava still felt warmer than the surrounding area.

Fresh lava has interesting qualities. It has very sharp edges and with the lava exposed to the air solidifying first there are usually tunnels inside fresh lava, leading to collapses. Two good reasons not to walk on the lava, it can be dangerous.

Lava at the edge of the eruption of Fagradalsfjall volcano

The car park had paid parking. But in a very icelandic way: there were signs with a QR code for a parking website where you just entered your license plate details and the type of car and paid online with a creditcard. This is not a problem at all because mobile coverage including data in Iceland is very good and they are used to paying almost everything with debitcard or creditcard.

While walking the path along the volcano I noticed I recognized certain views from the videos we watched while following the news about the eruption. It's funny to recognize a remote area from videos watched at home on the couch. The views were amazing, especially with the nice weather and I came to the conclusion that this kind of spectacular view of pure nature and geology was exactly why I came to Iceland.

Hveradalir Geothermal Area

After the visit to the volcano we drove in the direction of our hotel for the evening. We made a stop at Hveradalir Geothermal Area which is an area where the geothermal activity is easy to visit. This includes the smell that comes from hot sulfur exposed to water and air. This is the same as the smell from rotten eggs so you have to endure this to get a good view of this special area.

The hotel was Hotel Eldhestar. The drive was partly along the Iceland ring road (road number 1) which was in the process of being upgraded to 4 lanes with a median in some areas. This was quite a change from what we remembered from driving on the ring road in 2006. At the hotel we also had dinner. One feature we liked about this hotel is the hottub: we soaked in it for a while after dinner.

We filled the two week holiday in April/May with a trip to Iceland. My wife and I have visited Iceland before, and this time our son visited Iceland for the first time in his life.

The first day was filled with the interesting project of getting to Iceland. Because we didn't want to add days of sitting on a ferry to the trip we booked tickets with Iceland airways and rented a car to pick up and return at Keflavik airport.

Our plans for Iceland were a general idea to drive the ring road also known as route 1, beginning with going North from the Keflavik/Reykjavik area and generally keeping to the ring road in clockwise direction.

The easy way to get to Schiphol airport is by train. Our flight was leaving at 14:10. This Sunday was right after the first problems on Saturday with long waiting times at Schiphol so we made sure to be really on time So we had breakfast and left after that. Train connections worked as planned.

We just had to drag the luggage from the house to the station and in most other places luggage carts were available. We had two duffel bags with us, and payed the fee for the luggage with our booking.

At Schiphol we searched for our check-in desk and saw it behind a long line of people. The mood in the line was positive and we slowly moved towards the check-in desk where our luggage was accepted swiftly. The next line was for the security checks (I could write a huge rant about this security theater) which was long. It's almost an "Efteling" experience with "there is a waiting time of 40 minutes from here" signs. Eventually we made it through the checks and the people manning the security checks weren't too grumpy this time. By the time we were at the security checkpoint our water bottles were empty and we refilled them after the checkpoint.

After the security check and long distances walking through hallways in Schiphol we had about 20 minutes left before boarding the flight started.

Boarding was fine. We had seats really far in the back of the plane but I was able to get my legs in the space available. The unexpected bit to me was that the seatback in front of me had an entertainment screen. I expected those screens to only be available on longer flights. So I came prepared for the flight with new books on my e-reader but I also was able to watch some episodes of The Muppets a series I didn't know existed!

The flight was fine. The interesting change was from around 22 degrees Celcius in the Netherlands to about 14 degrees Celcius in Keflavik! So it was chilly when we got out of the plane. We picked up our luggage and .. took it easy. We expected more delays in the airport so we had the pickup of our rental car planned for later in the afternoon. This means we had some time left before we wanted to get in line for the desk at the rental car company. We used that time to sit down and get something from Joe & The Juice at the airport.

Eventually the time came to get moving. We walked over to the Hertz rental desk and everything was prepared for the car rental. We booked a "Skoda Octavia with all-wheel-drive or comparable car" in advance and they had a Toyota RAV-4 automatic with all-wheel-drive available for us. Which was fine with us. Everything was organized perfect so we showed drivers licenses, added the second driver and insurance against broken windows and got the extended instructions on driving in Iceland. Keep the maximum speed, switch on the headlights and taillights when driving and make sure to arrange payment for the toll-tunnel on the Iceland ringroad beforehand because the rental company adds a serious fee when they get billed.

We walked with our luggage to the car. It had one feature that took a bit of getting used to: an automatic rear door which wanted to be opened and closed with button presses.

We had a room arranged for the first night in Keflavik in the Hotel Núpan Deluxe. It was easy to find in Keflavik and we checked ourselves in. We found a nice restaurant Kaffi Duus with a good view of the harbour of Keflavik.

In the evening we walked along the main street of Keflavik to get an idea of the place and see the options for getting something for breakfast the next morning. Temperatures were really lower than we were used to in the Netherlands so we made sure to wear extra layers!

A notable and rare country in the log today: Iran. I've seen Iranian calls on the air a few times but it is rare. Today I saw EP2C on the air in FT8 in the 17 meter band and got the contact.

Confirming it is the next step: they have a QSL manager so I'll have to pay a few euros to get a paper card. Although the call seems active on Logbook of The World.

I installed Grafana from their debian repository, so I get updates via the normal apt update / apt dist-upgrade process. Since upgrading to version 8.5.0 the alerts were all firing because of 'DatasourceNoData' errors. According to Alert Rule returned no data (after upgrade to 8.5.0) #48128 other people are seeing this too.

For now I downgraded to version 8.4.7 where things work fine and I'll see if a newer version shows up.

In October 2018 a morse course started at my local radio club under the leadership of Ab PA5ABW. Around March 2020 the people still going strong practising morse thought they had a chance of passing the morse exam in Belgium. But that pandemic happened, borders closed and gatherings of radio amateurs were impossible.

Why go to Belgium? The Dutch telecommunications authority does note whether you have 'CW included' or 'CW not included' but there is no exam possibility in the Netherlands. So in the past doing the exam in Belgium, presenting the certificate to the Belgian telecommunications authorities to get it converted to a certificate the Dutch authoritities accepted and converting that certificate to a Dutch 'CW included' note was the way.

When there was an option of a Morse exam in April 2022 in Belgium again there was a note the Belgian telecommunications authorities were not willing to do the 'conversion' for foreign radio amateurs who weren't living in Belgium. This seemed to kill the route to get the much coveted 'CW included'. After writing an article about this a suggestion came to 'skip' the Belgian telecommunications authorities and present the Belgian certificate to the Dutch telecommunications authorities. Later there was news from the Veron amateur club: Morse examen doen in België voor een ‘CW included’ aantekening kan nog steeds with a statement from Agentschap Telecom (Dutch telecommunications authorities) stating they would accept the certificate from the UBA club in Belgium at this time.

So when that became an option we registered for the exam in Belgium and kept practising. Personally I had to change to using actual pen and paper and not a keyboard because the exam would be using paper!

Between October 2018 and April 2022 we practised for about three and a half years. That means I practised morse in one way or the other for almost every day of the week.

The three of us went to Diest last Monday and all passed the test. On Tuesday I sent scans of all the needed documents to Agentschap Telecom to get those three letters removed from the amateur radio license document, going from "CW not included" to "CW included".

Years and years after writing proposals to start doing something with IPv6 at work I noticed the first systems actually having IPv6 connectivity in production networks.

Finally getting there! I wonder when workstations will start having IPv6 connectivity.

As noted before Brazil was a rare country for me on 10 meter until a few weeks ago but it got easier to get those contacts with the 10 meter band getting better due to the changing sunspot cycle. I changed this even more yesterday with a morse contact with PY2ZEA on the 10 meter band. I heard him calling and getting a lot of short contacts into Europe. At first the signal started fading into the noise but about 20 minutes later it came back slowly and with more calling cq for new contacts.

I gave it a try and on the second attempt he got my call correctly and we exchanged some messages. More than just a signal report and a call, I told in morse that this was my first morse contact into Brazil.

Last weekend was the EA RTTY Contest 2022 edition. At the last moment I decided to participate because I appreciate the contests organized by the Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles.

Conditions were good: I made contacts on the 20 meter amateur band Saturday afternoon, on the 40 meter amateur band Saturday evening and even got contacts on the 10 meter amateur band on Sunday morning. Hasn't happened a lot in the last few years: contest contacts on the 10 meter band. Including a contact with a station in Brazil which was a bit remarkable: I had my first contact with Brazil on the 10 meter band only 2 weeks earlier! For most Dutch amateurs Brazil is 'easy' DX, but my antenna points mostly to the East / South.

In the end I made 135 contacts which is a nice score for this contest.

In 2020 I built an igate: a device for receiving status packets on amateur frequencies and got it succesfully receiving packets and publishing them to the APRS network.

Since then the hardware has been in a corner of the radio shack receiving packets, building a good coverage of received packets and doing fine.

Today I noticed in Razzies April 2022 a Dutch-language electronic magazine of the Radio Amateurs Zoetermeer a nice mention of 'my' igate:

De enige gateway die dapper stand houdt is PE4KH-10: nota bene een iGate naar ontwerp van onze club: een RAZ iGate...

or translated: the only gateway still standing strong is PE4KH-10: notably an igate made to the design from our club: a RAZ igate.

It's nice to get this mention! The hardware is in the corner of the shack just doing its job and nothing else.

Gisteren en vandaag zijn dagen met sneeuw. Een van de gevolgen is dat er ook sneeuw ligt op de zonnepanelen. En dat heeft duidelijke gevolgen voor de opbrengst.

Wat als eerste opvalt is 31 maart, een enigzins donkere dag met wat natte sneeuw in 's ochtends vroeg. De opbrengst van die dag is ongeveer net zo laag als 1 maart. In de tussentijd zijn er in maart veel dagen geweest met een goede opbrengst van de zonnepanelen.

En nu vandaag 1 april heeft het in de avond en nacht gesneeuwd en blijft die sneeuw liggen op de panelen. Dan komt er erg weinig licht door! Pas om 12:00 begon er iets uit de omvormers te komen.