Winter - a good time for some VHF DX?

My last band report covered up to 11 December. The month after that is usually a quick decline into winter conditions. Not this year. 

The "month" from 12 December 2024 to 14 January 2025 (the FVM calendar is currently on a 33 day cycle) saw 116 QSOs to 86 squares in 28 countries with a best DX of 8620km. Nae bad? 

That was:-

70 QSOs to 25 DXCC on 6m (best DX 8620), 

10 QSOs to 4 DXCC on 4m (best 1583km),

32 QSOs to 13 DXCC on 2m (best 2811km), and,

4 QSOs to 3 DXCC on 70cm (best 408km).

Sadly, nothing on 23cm, or HF.

Let me detail how this unfolded. 

On the maps, golden pins are 6m, red pins are 2m and purple are 70cm. 4m ones do not have coloured pins, but you cannot identify them in the crush anyway.

12 December. The regular 50MHz Nordic Activity Contest coincided with the run up to the Geminids meteor shower. The result of this was very strange conditions. There was enough ionisation during meteor bursts to provide brief openings using FT8 mode. However, often these periods were not long enough to complete a QSO. Thus lots of stations were calling me and replying, but not many were actually having QSOs. I managed to work five SMs, three OHs and one YL. I had lots of attempted QSOs which failed. 

This was a very strange experience during which I called CQ or I answered CQs but many of these efforts were wasted. This made the ones that worked all the sweeter. It was hard work but great fun and I would like to try it during a shower again. I suspect that a different mode (MSK, Q65,... ???) would work better, but I had to go with the rest of the pack. I guess that FT8 was in use so that the EU contest mode could be used, ensuring six figure locators for the NAC.

13 and 14 December. This was the Geminids in full stream. Using MSK144, on 50MHz I worked SM, OH, and OZ, while on 70MHz I reached several OZs and DLs.

After a ten day gap when I only worked three stations on 2m, there was a pleasing tropospheric opening on 25 December. On 144MHZ I worked three Fs, and OZ1IIL, while on 432MHz I reached EI4ACB 

30 December. There was a good opening into North America on 50MHz, with me working 16 stations.

1 January. On this day there was a splendid auroral opening. I worked 18 stations, ten on 50MHz and eight on 144MHz. All of these were on the Q65 mode. There was some grumbling on the KST chatroom that Q65-30C is better for 2m contacts, and I am inclined to agree with that, but the 15B submode was the one mostly in use.

Auroral contacts at GM4FVM on 1 January 2025

As usual, click images to enlarge if you need to.

Best auroral DX was on 6m where OH2BYJ was at 1572km, while on 2m SO3Z was best DX at 1297km. Once again on Q65 mode I have had far better results than I used to have on SSB or CW. Not only is the DX further, there were more contacts in more countries. 18 QSOs in 11 DXCC must surely be my best performance during an aurora.

2 and 3 January. Perhaps unusually for me, I decided to try my hand at 2m operations during the Quadrantids meteor shower, in addition to the more usual 4m. 144MHz went quite well with three contacts in LA, OH and UA, with RA1WU in KO47 being the best contact at 1853km. 70MHz was pretty good with best DX being S20OR in JN76 at 1583km. Although only eight QSOs I reckon this dual band approach worked out pretty well. I think that I might spend more time on meteor scatter in the future.

6 January. Now this was a surprise. I was about to leave the house on some sort of domestic errand when I worked VO1AN on 50MHz. Then suddenly TI2AA appeared and I worked him for a new 6m DXCC (number 125). Sometimes things like this happen and I am never ready for them. It is only by chance that I had the rig turned on and the antenna pointing in the right direction. Unexpected things happen in this hobby. 

Contacts at GM4FVM on 6 January 2025

11 January. On this day there was a general Es opening on 50MHz. I am not sure if this was "Winter Es", in which case it was later than usual, or just a random opening. Anyway, I worked 14 DXCC to get my 2025 list going nicely.

Contacts at GM4FVM on 11 January 2025

13 January. Tropo conditions were raised to the South West on this day, even though a windy weather system to the North West was stopping a widespread opening for me. On 144MHz I managed to work CT9ACF in IM12 on Madeira. I e-mailed Steve and he confirmed that the contact was complete. That is DXCC number 42 on 2m. Quite a few stations worked Steve during this opening. The hilly path to CT9 is rather difficult from here (Cheviots, Pennines, Snowdonia etc...) so I was especially pleased with that.

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So that is a month at a time of year when most VHFers are winding down.

Contacts at GM4FVM, 12 December 2024 to 13 January 2025

I daresay some will be fretting now that this chart does not show much evidence of worldwide F2 propagation. I was not getting in to Asia, I was not making progress on 23cm. Hold on. Those are your concerns. I was very busy, it was all interesting and we have to work the propagation we are given. And that suits me just fine.

If the next month is half as good I will be happy.

Or even the next 33 days.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Wonderful year of 6m DX - well not quite what it seemed

I read "2024 - worldwide F2 DX on 6m". Not here anyway. Good, yes. Very good, at times. But worldwide? Certainly not from here.

First, welcome to the New Year. This cheery thought is illustrated by the murky view out of the shack at GM4FVM.

Sleet on the window at GM4FVM on 1 January 2025

Anyway, back to amateur radio.

In 2023 I worked 84 DXCC entities on 50MHz. In 2024 the total was 89. This does not look like a transformational year for me. It is "good" though?

Straight away we run up against what constitutes "good" DX with radio. Do we mean more contacts, better distance, new DXCC ... ? This is an issue I have raised before. I have no answer.

[Time for some clarity here Jim]

I have tried to look for signs that there was any worldwide F2 DX at GM4FVM.

For this purpose I have come up with some sort of algorithm which would distinguish between what happens during a "normal" year and one like 2024 which is near the solar maximum. Actually, I made several scans of the data to screen out different types of propagation and measures of "good DX".

It seems to depend on which part of the world I was looking at too.

As part of trying to work out what makes a "good" contact I looked at North America

Contacts in North America on 50MHz by GM4FVM

I worked more stations in North America in 2024 (141) than in the previous 5 years combined (107). Is that "good"? Yes. Does it show worldwide F2 propagation? Not in my view. That is because though there were more contacts they did not seem to be at greater distances.

To examine this I established what areas I could work into during the years before 2023 when I could safely say that those were not F2. Then I superimposed results from 2023 and 2024 that showed that only one contact out of 199 was further than earlier years.

The QSOs themselves happened in the periods late May to early September, with a later burst in November and December, pretty much the normal pattern for multi-hop Es.

Does the analysis of the figures for this one contact look like the arrival of worldwide F2 to me? No.

Of the 141 contacts in 2024, all of which were welcome, I reached dozens of new squares. However these squares were filling in gaps between squares I had already worked (presumably on multi-hop Es) in previous years.

The map of my squares worked on 6m in North America shows that I have filled in many gaps, but the range has not increased.

Squares worked in North America by GM4FVM

A different way to look at this map is from the viewpoint of squares not worked. The range of squares worked has not been extended into the Rockies or the West.  I did not reach more than 15 US states west of Vernon in Texas. I never got to the Rockies. I did not work the West Coast. In Canada, I have not even worked Ontario, never mind anywhere further West. Surely if there had been an F2 opening to North America it would have been to those places.

The lack of an opening to the West extends well beyond the North American mainland. I have never worked Hawaii, nor any Pacific Island short of Japan.

Others may have worked across the Atlantic during F2 openings. I cannot say that I did.

Moving on to the rest of the world, lower activity levels make it harder to be certain of the various patterns. However, I found the following situation:-

South America

Most contacts in May and again in late September. Distances worked were much the same but number of QSOs was down. Overall performance was worse in 2024 than in 2023 by a factor of about 3,

South Africa/Indian Ocean

Contacts were in October/November. Once again distances worked were much the same but number of QSOs was well down. Overall performance was worse in 2024 than in 2023 by a factor of about 6,

Japan/China/Korea

Contacts were in June and July. These were much the same in 2024 than in 2023. No change there.

South East Asia and Australia

This area was new to me October to December in 2024. I had not had any 50MHz contacts there previously. As a result this was spectacularly better in 2024 than at any time previously.

================================

Having thought long and hard about all this, the only direction in which I seem to have seen F2 propagation is to SE Asia and Australia. Even then progress in this direction seemed to depend upon there being openings to Scandinavia at the same time as Scandinavian stations were working the DX. In other directions there was no sign of such long distance paths.

2024 has been very good. But the only reason why my 50MHz DXCC counts were higher than last year was because of the openings to SE Asia and Australia. Without those openings things would actually have been worse overall.

Not quite the rosy picture others seem to be painting. Perhaps it is just me...

Happy New Year everyone, and I hope that 2024 brings you health and happiness.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

A good tropo opening to the East

The Hepburn Tropo map (link on the sidebar) suggested that 10 December might be pretty good for tropo...

Hepburn Tropo Index 10 December 2024

As usual, click to enlarge images if necessary.

10 December was indeed a good day for the higher bands here, and conditions were still a bit enhanced until early afternoon on 11 December. I saw good conditions after that, but mostly for stations further south than me. From here there was nothing much to report later on as the high pressure slipped off to the east.

I had the first contact which indicated things were looking up on 9 December when I worked LA9AKA at +07dB. Once things began to get going the next morning I had 64 more QSOs on 144, 432 and 1296MHz.

On 144MHz I had 20 contacts, best DX being to UA1WCF in KO55 a distance of 2034km. This turned out to be the first time I have worked UA on tropo. Previous contacts on meteor scatter and moon bounce might have been greater distance, but I do find it satisfying to work long distance on tropospheric propagation. The contact with YL2LE was also my first into Latvia on tropo. I increased my total square figure by three squares.

144MHz contacts at GM4FVM 10 to 11 December 2024

As usual these days I tend to leave 2m behind and head for 70cm during a "lift" in conditions. I had 40 contacts on 432MHz, including to three new countries - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Best DX was to LY2WR in KO24 at 1726km. These are not quite distance records for me on this band, but they do show that I have never done so well due east from here. My best distances are to the south. That makes this a good opening for me, adding eight new squares too.

432MHz contacts at GM4FVM 10 to 11 December 2024

1296MHz was also productive, especially at the start of the lift. Despite only making four contacts, I was happy to reach two new squares in Sweden. Best DX was to SM0DJW in JO88 at 1242km. I reckon that I could have done more on 23cm if I had tried more modes and if I had done more listening. The big limitation on 23cm for me is the lack of activity that I can find. I stayed on the KST microwave site for the duration but most contacts do not seem to be made that way. More work is needed if I am to make 23cm as productive as it can be.

1296MHz contacts at GM4FVM 10 to 11 December 2024

That was a good opening in a direction where I had previously had fairly poor results. Another missing area is south east into the Alps and central Europe. I hope that someone is listening up there and can organise one in that direction next.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

The "New Normal?" Not for long I think.

Looking at the three days 2 to 4 December 2024 I had contacts with six stations on 6m. But what contacts! 

Best DX was VK6TM (OG65, 13871km) who I found calling CQ with no takers, so I called him. I have worked him before and I usually do not call again so soon as it takes up a space for someone who needs to reach him. However, as he was calling CQ and not getting any response, why not? After all, 13871km is a long way for VHF.

4S7KKG (MJ98 8671km) was in the same category. Although I had worked him a month ago he was not getting any replies when I heard him this time.

Also in there were:-

9V1XX (OJ11, 10870km) - New square and new DXCC on any band (Singapore)

A65BR (LL75, 5654km) - New square. I already had the DXCC (UAE)

A41NH (LL93, 6076km) - New square and new DXCC on 50MHz (Oman)

VU4A (NK61, 9234km) - New square and new DXCC on any band (Andaman & Nicobar Islands)

Now, the idea of working Singapore, Oman and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands would have been laughable to me last month, never mind during the last sunspot maximum. During the last sunspot maximum I saw some more Es but nothing like this.

Of course the last sunspot cycle was pretty weak, but even then using a mini-beam on 10m I was not working anything decent towards the Pacific, Arabian Sea or Indian Ocean. Although I had 6m at that time I was not even trying for DX outside Europe ... there wasn't any that I could hear.

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM 2 to 4 December 2024

This 6m bonanza is not to decry the 12 contacts I had during the RSGB UKAC 2m FT8 contest during this period. Nor the nice QSO today with GM0HBK on 70cm. Those were all pretty good, but 300 - 600km is not a patch on 6,000km. Or 12,000km. Or more? There is something about world-wide DX that is hard to resist.

Hey, it won't last. While I suspect that developments like FT8 and greater understanding of TEP and Es will keep 6m alive during the next solar minimum, 50MHz conditions like this unlike to last beyond the maximum. 

When is the maximum of this cycle? Have we passed it? Who knows.

Enjoy these conditions while you can.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Winkling out those hard to get squares

Counting Maidenhead grid squares is widely done by VHF/UHF amateurs. To some extent this is because "countries" in the DXCC sense do not accurately measure your performance on the higher bands. 

For example I have worked Northern France on 23cm. After that how do I test my gear? If I make an improvement all I could then do in country terms is to work France again. Even if I reached the Mediterranean coast it would only count as one DXCC entity. On the other hand if I improve my set-up and I work a square in France much further away than the Somme in JO00 (say as far as the Var Valley in JN33 - 1500km instead of 700km) then the squares show the progress while the DXCC list does not.

I might point out that although I would love to work into the Var on 23cm, it would take a very big improvement to make it that far. You never know though.

Some people work to collect summits, others islands, and others again count prefixes. I count squares. Or rather I look at the totals to check my progress. So far 942 on all bands, 620 on 6m, 296 on 4m, 251 on 2m, 106 on 70cm and 37 on 23cm.

Being lazy by nature (or so my school teacher told me) I do not actually count square totals. Gabriel, EA6VQ does it for me thanks to his excellent VQLog software. Once I enter a callsign into VQLog it tells me if I have worked that square before on that band (or other bands). 

If several new stations call me, I will often choose to reply first to the ones who give their square in their reply. So anyone using "Tx 2" (replying with a report and not their square) goes to the back of the queue. For people I know well then the locator is not needed, but for new calls the square matters to me. I see other square hunters doing the same thing, which is a good reason for using Tx 2 sparingly. Of course if you want to use Tx 2 in any situation that is up to you, I do not make the rules. However, I do decide who I reply to so those who give squares obviously get my attention first.

If I get a chance I hunt out a new square. The last two new 6m ones were hard to reach in different ways. EA5V is in square JM09. On the six figure notation he is at JM09ax, which is right in the corner of his square. The point about this location is that it is in a very small patch of the Spanish mainland and most of the rest of the square is in the sea. Only the north of Ibiza is in that square, and I have never worked anybody in the north of Ibiza. I had never worked anybody in JM09 square until now.

DXMaps seen at GM4FVM on 21 November 2024

There are quite a few square like this which have very little land in them. IM56 is another one with just a tiny sliver of Portugal in it ...

IM56 square as seen on DXMaps

Local amateurs do activate IM56 square from time to time. Needless to say I do not have that one yet.

The second new square could hardly be more different from working EA5V in JM09.

On 20 November I worked XV3T in Vietnam on 6m. This is the first time I have worked Vietnam from here on any band.

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM 20 to 21 November 2024

So that produced a new square and a new country. It represents a square which is also difficult to work, but for entirely different reasons. JM09 is quite close (1772km) but there is very little activity. OK33 is far away (9934km), there is not much activity, and it takes remarkably good propagation to reach it.

The thing about squares, which is also true for DXCCs, is that they all count. They might vary, but these two difficult ones just add two more like any two easy ones. 

Once you reach 620 the rest are all pretty difficult.

That activity map above looks a lot different from the last posting when I had worked 195 stations in eleven days. Things were even worse than that map shows. In the eleven days after the last posting (8 November) I worked no stations at all. I was away for a large part of that time, but it is not all DX at GM4FVM.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

195 Contacts in 11 days

I concede that 11 days is an unusual time period. It is however the time between my last post here and 6 November when I tallied up the figures.

So here goes with the contact count - 

3 on 12m, 1 on 10m, 82 on 6m, 1 on 4m, 75 on 2m, 31 on 70cm and 2 on 23 cm.

It seems like the going was easier if I put it that way. It looks impressive on the map (or it does to me anyway):-

Contacts at GM4FVM 26 October to 6 November 2024

Click to enlarge the images if you need to.

96 squares, 28 countries and best DX to VK6LX in OF88 at 14630km. 

On 6m there were quite a few new DXCC entities and squares in there too. Burkina Faso (thanks Richard), Philippines, and Indonesia were new ones, and I worked another territory in VK in the shape of Northern Territory. Lots of new squares were worked, including two watery ones thanks to UT1FG/MM. My last reported total of 584 squares has rocketed to 618 in those 11 days.

This is a good time to be on 50MHz. We must be somewhere near the peak of the sunspot cycle. It certainly looks as though there is "F2" propagation to the east, though it only happens when there is Es around too (perhaps this is coincidence?). To the south and west this is less clear as this looks like what - up until to last year - everybody called multi-hop Es.

Thanks to a high pressure system arriving over the North Sea, VHF/UHF conditions have been pretty good too.

70MHz+ contacts at GM4FVM 26 October to 6 November 2024

The coloured pins represent 70MHz none, 144MHz red, 432MHz blue and 1296MHz purple.

We have had a high pressure for the past few days which, as I write, has just started to fade. This means that I am pretty active right now. Since completing this report I have already worked into Australia, South Africa, Sir Lanka and India again for new squares on 6m plus an increasing bag of contacts on the higher bands.

Please excuse me, I need to be off to work some more.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

VK on 50MHz and the vagaries of VHF DX

Recently a nearby (30km distant) station worked 3B8 on 50MHz when I could not even hear the 3B8 station. Something about this reminded me of a simple fact about the 6m band. You can be right beside somebody working a DX station and be totally unable to work the DX yourself. You certainly cannot work it if you cannot hear it, and even if you can hear it maybe you will not get a response.

Of course this happens on other bands, but rarely does 30km separate you from a contact. 

And then there are the times when you know from PSK Reporter that you are reaching the DX but they are not replying. When it comes to data modes like FT8 it is likely that the software is deciding who to reply to based on which station it decodes first. You could be the loudest station on the band and be so far down WSJT's list of the next station to work that you will never get a QSO.

These facts do not help me when I think about 3B8. I still have not worked it, and that is also a fact.

And then there is no DX while I am away. Recently I have been in Orleans in France.

GM4FVM with Meteor IPA, pontificating in Orleans

And then even more recently I have been in GI where I met that doyen of dx-peditions and moonbounce, Richard, GI4DOH

GI4DOH's reaction on hearing about GM4FVM's technical progress over the past 45 years

On my QRZ.com page there is the photo of FVM and DOH when they both had hair (45 years ago).

Anyway, the point is that when I am away I am not working DX. So add together the unheard DX, the non-replies and the time when I am away I should not be surprised that places like 3B8 are hard to work on 6m.

Here my beloved statistics come to save me. Various factors cause the chances of me working specific DX to be low. But however low a probability you have, provided it is not zero, there is always a chance that you will work that DX. And the more often you try, the better your chances are.

And thus today I finally worked VK on 50MHz.

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM on 26 October 2024

This does not really fit the category of an opening as the mapping software shows operating time of 0 minutes. That was it - QSO started 09:30.00, QSO finished 09:31.30. 90 seconds, no later QSO to create an operating period. There was another VK6 on who I briefly tried to work in the hope of reaching another new square. Then it dawned on me that I was competing with other amateurs who may never have worked VK, so I let that go.

So for this single contact opening the best DX was VK6NH in OG65, 13871km (a record of course!), new DXCC on 6m (115) and new square (584).

It was very nice to get a very quick LoTW confirmation of the contact though at the same time I got an eQSL confirmation of my 23cm contact with LY2WR. The 6m contact is 8 times further, an excess of more than 12000km. I find it hard to say which I am more moved by, though I suspect that the 23cm contact is the more surprising. Certainly when I started out on both of these bands I never would have expected either contact.

There really is nothing I did which influenced whether I did or did not work VK this morning. Main factor is that I was listening on the band, not gallivanting in GI or F. Then I was in early and was the second GM VK6ND worked. 

The propagation gods were kind to me. Was that Es linking into TEP or F2? My guess is that it was Es linking into TEP because I was hearing LAs and OZs via Es at the same time. I sent my cluster report without a propagation tag (i.e. "unknown") and DXMaps tagged it as "F2". I asked somebody who knows a lot more about propagation than I do and he said that he didn't know and he reckoned nobody else knew either.

Lots of other European stations were calling and did not work VK. Usually it is me in that position. They are probably thinking about how to improve their station to raise their chance of reaching VK, but I think that "chance" is the operative word there. Luck comes in here or, as I tend to put it, chance.

Anyway, if chance prevents me from working 3B8, it has allowed me to work VK6.

That'll do I guess.

After all, if it was simple we would not do it. [You mean if it was simple YOU would not do it, Jim]

73 Jim

GM4FVM