What a week

 In the last week I missed two 6m openings to Japan and one to the USA. Did that matter?

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM 9 to 15 July 2024

I will leave you to judge that for yourselves.

While I missed several openings, I was present for three fairly good major ones plus several smaller ones.

On 10 July I worked N4TB and later VE9HF in what seemed like "one-offs". Then at 16:15 the band opened and I worked four W stations in 6 minutes.

On 11 July the 6m band opened to the west at 13:52 and I worked 14 North American stations in 32 minutes.

On 12 July the propagation favoured the east in the morning with me contacting JR7VHZ and five others between 08:12 and 08:20.

On the morning of 13 July I was still looking eastwards and netted EX8MEM and UN8GEQ. EX8MEM was a new DXCC and at 5432km quite a nice catch. UN8GEQ is good DX too, and further at 5541km.

By the 14th I was back on evening duty and 6m obliged by opening at 16:29. I contacted 15 North American stations in 29 minutes before an enforced tea break. After tea I fitted in four more before deciding that the Tour de France highlights was more important than radio. Returning as late as 19:53 I reached KP4AJ, KP4SX, PU4DEE and PY2XB. PU4DEE was the best DX of the week at 9790km. 

What type of propagation was PU4DEE? No idea. Too far for multihop Es? Wrong time of year for TEP? F-layer? I am beginning to think that multihop Es can do a lot more than I used to believe.

There was still time to work JA7WSZ on the 15th.

Apart from all that superb activity most of the time nothing much was happening. There were long periods of blank screen. Patience is a virtue and all that stuff. The statistics on the Log Analyser are perhaps a bit misleading. I reckon that my time actually working stations was about three hours at most. Even then I missed three good openings. 

I am not one for being on the bands calling CQ all the time. If that works for others, fine, but my methods are different. I do not call CQ constantly but I do call often. My "Watchdog" on 6m is set for three minutes. That is the length of time my CQ might last, and often it is shorter. I seem to do OK despite what I must miss.

My success on 50MHz is something I could never have imagined ten years ago. I am not doing much different from then, my power is now not much more than before (remember the 500W Gemini amp, now long gone?). My antennas have been 5 element for years. I have been using the same radio for eight years. True, I changed the coax a few years ago, but for some with a slightly lower specification.

It cannot be what I am doing. It has to be conditions, which have been so good I can hardly believe it.

57 contacts (50 of those were beyond 3000km), 41 squares, 11 DXCC, and all in a week on VHF.

Enough of this. Time to get operating again before it all disappears.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

China on 6m and Iono to Sweden on 2m - Summer is here!

Today I have worked one station. Thankfully that one station was in a new country on 6m. BA4SI produced DXCC number 111 on 50MHz. He is in square PM01 at a distance of 8928km. 

I did work China before on 6m, but I could not count it as a new country. The previous QSO was mixed up and I did not receive my report directly, though I did receive RR73. The WSJT-X log did show a report, but I decided not to claim it. Enough information was probably exchanged but I waited for today's contact with a different station to make things certain. I reckon that I had better to do it correctly with a clean contact before claiming it.

FT8 contact between GM4FVM and BA4SI on 28 June 2024

Earlier I was hearing several Japanese stations, but they were not hearing me. Another time maybe.

Enough of 50MHz. Conditions have been pretty good at times on 144MHz too. 

On 23 June I worked three SM stations on Q65 on 144.180MHz. This was clearly Ionoscatter as each contact was perfectly stable but weak. The tell-tale streaky patterns on the waterfall gave the game away as Iono. The DX was correct for Iono at 1204, 1218 and 1253km. I then moved to FT8 on 144.174 where there was lots of calling and replying but no completed contacts. This often happens during Iono openings. I then worked OH6KTL on FT8 in KP02 at 1504km. This might have been Es because he appeared suddenly, was pretty strong, and disappeared similarly quickly.

Ionoscatter is interesting but I only have 200W and a 9 element antenna on 2m which may be a bit on the low side. I can hopefully rely on superstations at the other end. 

24 June started with some tropo propagation on VHF. I worked OZ7UV on 2m and then OZ2ND on 2m and 70cm. Nothing was heard on 23cm. I tried the 23cm beacons with disappointing results. After that the tropo faded and I watched as a large Es patch developed over France and Spain

DXMaps "MUF Sp-E" chart on 24 June

This patch was just too far South for me, as the 1000km ideal spot for DX needs to be over IN87 to work for me in this direction. Instead I could only observe the action as stations in the South of England (who of course I could hear) worked into Madeira, Morocco and Algeria.

After several hours of nothing in particular happening up popped EA5AJX in IM98 at 1930km. There was just time to work him before he faded out. I like to see the red squares on the DX Maps Es chart as that means 2m is likely to be in the action, but of course the Es also works below that maximum frequency. I also worked EA1BYA on 70MHz.

144MHz contacts at GM4FVM 23 to 27 June 2024

There has been some high pressure around generally and I was very pleased to work LA6GKA on 144MHz on 26 June at 17:09 with +09dB reports both ways. The tropo openings along the path to Norway from here are often very localised but also quite long lasting. It can be frustrating to hear each other calling CQ for ages and not working anyone. But of course there is not much activity around here, and the same seems to be true of South West Norway. 

Although I heard SM0KAK again today on Ionoscatter using Q65, no contact resulted. There is still time this summer to have some more contacts on this unusual propagation mode, plus lots of time for more Es and tropo. So we hope.

It must be summer. It is sunny, 13C, and the wind is gusting at 59km/h. Tomorrow night it is predicted to be 12C, with 7C for the next two nights. After that it is likely to be positively roasting at 8C. The heat pump maybe decide it is time to come on now that the nights are drawing in again. Got to keep the frost off the radios.

Whatever the temperature in IO85, propagation has taken a sunny turn. And my usual sunny disposition has returned.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Propagation giveth ...

Propagation giveth and propagation taketh away. 

In the 21 days since my last posting here I have worked 220 stations. That is about 11 contacts per day.

That hardly describes what has been happening. I do not make 11 contacts every day, and it would be boring if I did.

Instead what happens is that there are hours of nothing happening followed by short spells of intense activity. The radios are on for most of the day while I come and go from the shack while building a Metcalfe cardboard kit. Each time I return I take massive punts on whether I need to be in there or not.

For most of the time the screens and maps are blank, or filled with "local" traffic. Some of this local traffic has to be of interest to me. Some of these people want to to work IO85, though it is not a rare square. To keep me active in these areas I try to keep my annual DXCC list ticking over. This involves me chasing countries in Europe and all over the world. Places like Guernsey and Wales can be as hard to work from here each year as some more exotic "once in a career" places.

So I keep active but there are still long very quiet gaps. 70MHz can be particularly quiet, but then it is only on 70MHz that I really see Sporadic E in action. 4m also keeps me on track to working 144MHz Es. Without 4m Es I would never be ready or pointing in the right direction for 2m Es. Having said that, I have missed all the 2m Es this season, though not for radio reasons.

I am not complaining about the quiet periods. I just want to make it clear that it is not a free-for-all at this time of year. I am happy - if I wanted 20m activity levels I would go on to 20m. No chance of that happening, is there?

For a lot of the time, DXMaps can look like this:-

70MHz DX Maps seen at GM4FVM with  no activity at 10:27 local time on 16 June 2023

Not much point clicking on this image to enlarge, but you can if you like.

It can be like that for long periods. 50MHz might show more activity, but often nothing reaching GM4FVM. It is amazing how small the DX searchlight can be, and how it seems to shine somewhere else.

Some things seems fairly certain. When dealing with a random feature, like where the DX stations are to be found, these factors seems pretty constant. The basic rules (excluding tropo) are:-

1) wherever DX is workable is now, it will not be soon

2) whatever happens this morning will not happen again the same way this afternoon

3) whatever happens today will not happen the same way tomorrow.

So whilst this means that if things are good now you cannot count on that later, at the same time if things are bad now they will be better later. The thing you don't know is how long "later" might be. That what creates the frustration fun.

The opportunities are generally divided into morning and afternoon sessions, and these are repeated tomorrow. So there are gaps overnight and around the middle of the day. At peak summer you get third evening session.

With tropo you tend to get a morning session and then later afternoon into evening and especially around and after sundown. Tropo openings can last for several days. This year tropo openings have been rare anyway. The much more stable pattern on tropo only goes to show how different Es, TEP and 50MHz F-layer propagation are by comparison.

With Es, TEP and 50MHz F-layer there is nothing you can watch for like a pressure chart as with tropo. you just have to take your chance. It opens unpredictably one minute and closes the next. There are websites promoting ideas like thunderstorms and "favourable jet streams" but these always look backwards after the event. They can predict nothing meaningful, only try to explain what you have already missed. At this point of scientific knowledge we are basically on our own with these propagation modes.

So here is what it has looked like here from one extreme to the other:-

a) Days when nothing much happened.

30 May radios on, me in the shack, no contacts at all

6 June radios on, me in the shack, also no contacts at all.

31 May one QSO - mind you it was a nice one to PY2XU on 6m.

7 June was not entirely without result. One contact all day - Jeff G8SEI on 2m. Thanks Jeff.

8 June had no 70MHz activity except D4L, a new DXCC.

11 June also just one contact - 4Z5LA on 6m. 

b) Days with sudden bursts of contest activity 

5 June had the 144MHz FT8 UKAC which produced 13 contacts into 5 DXCC in just 47 minutes.

12 June included the RSGB UKAC 432MHz FT8 contest - 15 stations in 61 minutes covering 4 DXCC.

c) Days with sudden bursts of activity on 50MHz

1 June - I worked seven in US and Canada on 6m in 21 minutes.

2 June - I worked 6 stations in Japan on 6m in 66 minutes plus a new country in the shape of 4L4LW.

15 June Two contacts all day and then a sudden opening produced 9 QSOs into USA in 38 minutes.

d) Days with sudden bursts of activity on 70MHz

29 May - 11 QSOs  which took 86 minutes to reach 5 DXCC and UN7MBH was good DX

3 June - 21 contacts in 10 DXCC in 80 frantic minutes.

Conclusions? No, more doubts.

There is a difference between quantity and quality. 8 June did not produce much activity, but it did provide D4L as a new one on 4m and J35X and J88IH for two new ones on 50MHz. Three new countries across two bands is worth waiting the whole day for. On the other hand, waiting all day when nothing happens is very frustrating. Is a burst of activity lasting an hour or so which produces no new DXCC better?

I don't know the answer to that, but I press on. When you see my charts with lots of contacts in various directions you might think that I am busy working DX all the time.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Three weeks work went into this one, even if the statistics ignore the start period and the end period when nothing was worked.

50MHz contacts over 2000km at GM4FVM 29 May to 17 June 2024

There may have been a lot of unproductive time but I reckon that it was worth it.

70MHz contacts at GM4FVM 29 May to 17 June 2024

70MHz has been pretty good really. I have noted several stations I did not hear last year, but who are familiar from earlier years. I think last year must have been pretty poor. So, a bit less silence than last year.

As for prospects for later this year --- who knows but my experience is that the two weeks after the solstice is better than the two weeks before. Let us see.

So far today I have worked ... nothing. Still it is only 14:43. You just never know and the 23cm UKAC this evening might be full of DX.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

May's bountiful gifts continue.

No, not Theresa, I mean the month of May.

I have been musing lately over the early arrival of various forms of multi-hop Es.

Three days ago I asked this question in an email:-

That is another day in May for transatlantic propagation, when in every other year apart from this one it started in early June. Will the same thing happen with the Japanese paths, which so far only occur for me in July?

And today guess what? A 6m opening to Japan.

The event kicked off with me working RO1M, 1956km away in KO59. Now that some more Russian stations are operating on 50MHz they do provide a pointer to when the band is open further East. They produce a lot of new squares too. Then I started hearing JA.

DX Maps on 50MHz at 08:27 on 29 May 2024.

This map looks pretty good but as usual these openings are often scrappy. I worked two stations JR1LZK and JA7QVI. Best DX 9164km. I also had another possible QSO which was a bit doubtful and I await confirmation. I am not complaining about working two, but I did hear a lot more.

JA on 6m in May is certainly an unusual event at GM4FVM. In fact, JA at 6m at any time is an unusual event GM4FVM.

Perhaps even more surprising was that several stations in GM were hearing a VK station later. Indeed a number of stations in these islands worked into VK. I did not even hear that station. Not that I am bitter about it of course.

Grrr.

There was a general Es opening and I was particularly busy on 70MHz:-

70MHz contacts at GM4FVM on 29 May 2024

Click image to enlarge if needed.

12 contacts on 4m in a morning is not at all shabby. Of course the best DX was to UN7MBH in LO51. That was my best DX on 70MHz so far this year at 3480km and my first contact into Asia on 4m in 2024.

The opening extended to 144MHz, though I did not manage to work any DX. I heard stations from Sweden and Kaliningrad, but neither of these produced a contact. I was heard in the Baltic and as far away as 2450km into Russia, but sadly nothing resulted. 

As I write this, the opening is still going on at 14:46. Although it has lost that initial power, it is producing good DX on 4m and 6m. Usually the double peak nature of Es means that morning openings rarely last into the afternoon, and afternoon ones rarely start in the morning. If both periods are involved the two openings are usually in different directions.

So there are you. Quite a morning. JAs on 6m in May, VK heard by almost everybody (not me), good opening on 4m and I was widely heard on 2m.

Whatever next.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Es underway and Transatlantic propagation sweeps South.

For this posting I am going back to consider my QSOs over the past week. The week before I was sailing down the Rhine, and the photo shows myself and Mrs FVM enjoying Strasbourg in a typical pose of our various outings.

FVM and Mrs FVM enjoying the Strasbourg streetscene.

We are back now and that week away has allowed the Es season to really get underway.

After a slow start, 70MHz has at last picked up.

70MHz contacts at GM4FVM from 21 to 28 May 2024.

Why do I spend my time on 4m when 6m was absolutely buzzing? Well, 4m is harder to do. The contacts require more work, you need to try to follow the propagation. A lot of the time you call and hear nobody. Who said amateur radio should be easy? Anyway, by the leisurely standards of 4m, 13 QSOs in 12 squares and seven countries is pretty racy. Best DX was SQ8AQX in KO00 at 1644km which is pretty good I think.

On 6m during the same period I worked 49 stations in 43 squares representing 21 countries. So more than three times the number of QSOs and three times the number of countries on 6m compared with 4m. Every QSO is interesting, otherwise neither the other station nor me would bother. However, for hair-shirt types like me there has to be more than churning them out.

If we look instead at 6m QSOs over 2250km we begin to see some more details. First of all, there are some. It is still only May and early in the season. In this category (6m over 2250km) I had five contacts.

50MHz contacts over 2250km at GM4FVM from 21 to 28 May 2024.

The reason why I chose the lower limit of 2250km is that the generally accepted limit for single hop Es is 2000km. I have had a few at 2100, so 2250 seemed like a safe bet. Beyond 2250km any Es is likely to be double hop propagation. So I was a bit surprised to see two contacts into Ukraine turning up on this map at 2264 and 2377km.

Anyway, the other three were KP4EIT (FK68 6752km), LU2GPB (GG03 10542km) and CE3CX (FF46, 11866km). The first of these was also likely to be double hop Es. The last two were ... who knows? TEP, F-layer, whatever. Certain stations near me were having open house working into LU and CE and good luck to them. The trick is to work them first and worry about the propagation later.

So here we are again still in May commenting on long distance 50MHz propagation. There is some juicy DX to worked in amongst the high volumes of Es around. What will the next month bring?

73 Jim

GM4FVM

10 May 2024 Aurora

 I was browsing about the news sites when I came across this on the RTÉ.ie pages:-

US authorities have issued the first Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch alert in almost 20 years as a powerful solar storm will hit Earth, with one enthusiast saying there's a "good chance" of seeing the Northern Lights in Ireland.

It is unusual for general news sites to carry anything which might be of any interest to radio amateurs or sky watchers. So this had to be something important. Further information could be found at VE3EN's Solarham had it not changed from Solarham.net to Solarham.com, which threw me off the track for a while - thanks to Mike GM3PPE for putting me right there. Anyway there were several big CMEs on the way towards Earth, and in a configuration which suggested that faster ones behind would merge with slower ones in front and produce a stronger effect here. And so it proved.

GM4PMK magnetometer on 10 May 2024

As usual click the image to enlarge if necessary.

I worked 22 stations during the aurora over the 24 hours after the first arrival of the particle stream. 21 were on 50MHz and one on 70MHz. All of them were on Q65 as I could not even attempt to use the microphone due to having the cold and 'flu. This activity covered 10 DXCC and 20 squares, with my best DX being to OE5OLL in JN68 at 1352km. I probably could have done more if I had been feeling better. I also spent some time between midnight and 02:00 local time out in the garden looking at the visual aurora.

50MHz auroral contacts at GM4FVM on 10 and 11 May 2024

All of these contacts were truly auroral with no tone audible, even the fairly close contact with Mike GM3PPE which is only 31km direct but a lot further via aurora. During the time I also had some very useful contacts with Dave, G0ODA on 432MHz and Gordon GM4OAS/M on 2m FM, but no aurora involved there! Having said that, there were reports of auroral contacts on 432MHz, so this was a very powerful event. I did not have 144MHz available at the time and it never even occurred to me to look at 70cm. Possibly a lifetime only chance missed there, but CW was beyond me at that stage.

One unusual feature was a fairly widespread Auroral Es opening across the Atlantic on 50MHz. I listened for about 30 minutes while others worked across the pond but nothing from there was heard here. I have often experienced Auroral Es during smaller openings, but I have never known of a trans Atlantic event.

The one Au contact I had on 70MHz was with G4BRK in IO91 (bringing the total square count to 21). This was my first Au contact on 4m using Q65. I was calling using the Q65-15C variant but Neil and I both noted how wide the signal was. Although many of us started out using Q65-15C during this event, most ended using 30C as it uses less bandwidth. I can see downsides to both approaches so some thought needs to be given as to which one we should use in future. Usually, decisions like this are made in amateur radio by somebody picking something and everybody following, whether that is right or wrong (like using 30 second periods for 2m MSK144 in Europe).

Anyway, this aurora brought a lot of activity much further South than we usually get, and it must have created new DX records for a lot of amateurs. It may well be a new Au DX record for me too. I must look it up.

I shall leave you with some photos I took of the visual aurora as seen from GM4FVM.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Transatlantic on 6m, the "new normal" on 50MHz?

[Why do you keep writing about Sporadic E Jim?] 

Because there isn't anything else at present.

Not quite true, there have been several auroras. These events all have something in common - I missed them. I got back in on 2 May just in time to catch the last of a good aurora and on 50MHz I managed to work G8BCG in IO70, a distance of 623Km. This is a pretty good result on aurora for me as G8BCG is probably the furthest south I have worked on aurora in the UK. Sadly, I missed everything else in that event.

But it is true that I am not writing about big tropo openings on the higher bands because there have not been any. Maybe soon there will be. Other esoteric modes = zero.

So time to consider again the issue of transatlantic 6m propagation. This is not due to storms positioned 2000km apart across the ocean, as I have been reading recently. I shall stay away from further discussion of what the mechanism might be, other than a final guess.

Since my first transatlantic contact from here with VO1SO back on 18 June 2011, there have been 31 days when I have had 50MHz contacts across the North Atlantic. For this exercise I am excluding Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America - this is North Atlantic only. This was done in an attempt to screen out Trans Equatorial Propagation which is tricky to identify.

After that first contact I had to wait a week short of five years until the next one. Then there were two days in 2016, five days in 2017, six days in 2018, two days in 2019, five days in 2020, three days in 2021, none in 2022, and six in 2023. Plus one now in 2024.

There is one feature which applies to all 27 days of contacts across the North Atlantic up until the end of August 2023. All of the contacts in that period were during June, July or August. The earliest was 4 June and the latest was on 24 August. This shows the characteristic lag mentioned in the last posting for Es contacts in general, starting about 17 days before midsummer and ending 65 days after midsummer, making the lag about 7 weeks (see last posting). Not much data for this one so maybe that lag is a bit exaggerated.

What makes the last four contact dates unusual is that they fall way outside the usual pattern. The dates are 27 and 30 November 2023, 1 December 2023 and 1 May 2024. If I needed more evidence that the Es season is getting longer then here it is (if it is Es). Before this week my earliest QSO across the North Atlantic was 4 June. The latest one was 1 May. 

I only made two contacts that day, and I failed to confirm a third one (VE1SKY). There were several stations heard such as K1SIX, K7BV, K1KA, WW1L etc. The point here is that this was a substantial opening even if I only worked two stations.

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM on 1 May 2024.

So what propagation gives transatlantic 6m propagation on 1 May? Is that the same process as in November and December the previous year? When my previous contacts on this path have all been during the period from June to August, it makes me wonder.

Sporadic E which is vastly more sporadic than I have ever seen, or F-layer, or something else???

All the books say that Es is not influenced by the sunspot cycle, and I cannot really see how it could be. Surely not that.

73 Jim

GM4FVM