XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
EI7GL....A diary of amateur radio activity
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3155 km opening on 144 MHz between Australia & New Zealand - 28th Jan 2022
Posted: 29 Jan 2022 12:02 AM PST
https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2022/01/3155-km-opening-on-144-mhz-between.html
28th January 2021: There was another 3000km+ opening on 144 MHz between Australia and New Zealand when Peter, VK5PJ in Adelaide received the WSPR signal from Bob, ZL1SIX.
The two WSPR decodes are shown below and the signals were pretty weak at
-19 and -20dB. UTC (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W SNR drift km
2022-01-28 01:06 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK5PJ PF95mk 144.490537 10 -21 0 3155 2022-01-28 01:12 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK5PJ PF95mk 144.490537 10 -19 0 3155
The map above shows the WSPR signals heard on 144 MHz by VK5PJ over a 24
hour period. Most of the Australian signals are tropo but the 3155km
distance was really something else.
Remember, 3155kms is the distance between Ireland and Newfoundland across
the North Atlantic.
Propagation??... It's important to note that VK5PJ was the only station in Australia to hear ZL1SIX on 144 MHz that that. i.e. none of the closer
stations near the south-east coast heard him. This does suggest that
Sporadic-E was the main propagation mechanism.
One single Sporadic-E hop might account for a maximum of say 2300kms but
not 3155kms. What makes up the difference?
The map above shows the tropo prediction from Pascal, F5LEN and it suggests that there might have been some tropo ducting over the Tasman Sea.
It's possible that the western path of the 3155km path was due to
Sporadic-E and that coupled into a maritime duct for the remainder of the circuit to New Zealand.
A second option was that it was due to chordal hop Sporadic-E with the
signal going between two Sporadic-E 'clouds'. This does happen at 144 MHz
but it is relatively rare.
It's impossible to know for sure what the propagation mechanism was but the probability of a combined Sp-E / tropo duct opening is higher.Link...
1) More examples of long distance paths can be found on my 144 MHz page.
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A snapshot of conditions on 28 MHz - 28th Jan 2022
Posted: 28 Jan 2022 11:58 AM PST
https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2022/01/a-snapshot-of-conditions-on-28-mhz-28th.html
Friday 28th January 2022: As an experiment, I left my radio on 28.074 MHz
to monitor the FT8 activity and to see what the current conditions on
10-metres are really like. The results are shown above and they show I
heard 181 stations in 35 DXCC countries.
Every day, I listen for WSPR signals on 28 MHz and I know that I'm not
seeing the full picture due to a lack of stations. FT8 is quite simply the
best way at present to see what the conditions on a band are like.
In terms of DX, it's always nice to hear Australia on 28 MHz and I logged a total of 15 on FT8.Txmtr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC) VK1MA 10m FT8 17437 km 09:31:29
VK3MH 10m FT8 17420 km 10:19:14
VK3TU 10m FT8 17408 km 11:00:44
VK5PW 10m FT8 16800 km 08:35:44
VK5GR 10m FT8 16794 km 09:45:59
VK5ST 10m FT8 16787 km 10:20:14
VK5NEC 10m FT8 16784 km 08:41:29
VK6APK 10m FT8 15125 km 09:42:59
VK6IR 10m FT8 15097 km 10:57:44
VK6RK 10m FT8 15064 km 11:07:44
VK6DW 10m FT8 15061 km 09:45:29
VK6OZ 10m FT8 15056 km 10:44:59
VK6BAS 10m FT8 15037 km 10:41:44
VK6JJJ 10m FT8 15037 km 09:28:59
VK8TH 10m FT8 14349 km 10:20:14
I also heard the VK8VF beacon in Darwin on CW on 28.268 MHz.
Spotter Freq. DX Time Info CountryEI7GL 28268 VK8VF/B 10:13 28 Jan 22
IO51TU<F2>PH57KP Australia
It's also worth noting the signals that were missing. There were hardly any stations from North America and there was nothing from Japan. The solar
flux on the day was 107 which is still pretty modest.
Back to WSPR tomorrow 👍
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