Height, propagation 3 ways in one day, and the Sliced Bread Theory.

After thinking about the conundrum of several receptions of a station while the mast was lowered, I tried to work someone reasonably close on meteor scatter with the antenna deliberately lowered - 5m elevation rather than 10m. I do this even though I suspect it was just random chance.

It was not a perfect test and on its own it means nothing. I would need to run a series of tests to prove anything. But the theory as I understand it goes that lowering the antenna will tend to raise the angle of radiation. So with this in mind I worked OZ3ZW in lightening quick time on 20 April. It is a short 867km path and the software suggests an 11 degree elevation is necessary.

I would need to do a lot of tests to make any headway on whether this really makes much difference from my QTH. The first example of this for me was on 2m, whereas this test was on 4m. So the proximity to the ground in wavelength terms would be different. Also, OZ3ZW is handily placed in a direction where I have no other obstructions - using a 5m mast beaming south would be pointing direct into the roof of the house. So how practical it might be to use lower antenna elevation is a bit doubtful.

Also, I have a bit of a nagging distrust of ground gain calculations. The ground here is always dry, and is exceedingly dry just now. We get terribly bad RF earths. That does not seem to be a great foundation to achieve much. But lets see.
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23 April was a busy day.

With the Lyrids peak scheduled for the weekend of 22 and 23 April I had hoped to exceed my results on the previous weekend.

Not a bit of it.

22/23 April seemed like a normal period for MS, save that it was more annoying than usual. I am referring to the odd conditions where you get isolated, strong, reflections. Usually at a peak you get long enough periods of ionisation to conduct a QSO quickly and easily, at least on 6m.

With the isolated strong peaks conditions you get very strong CQs from all sorts of interesting places, in this case particularly from Italy, and then nothing more. If you reply to the CQ you spend 10 minutes transmitting in vain. Bah!

Always the optimist I planned an early start on 23 April and this splendid attention to duty returned a 6m QSO with PA0TCA in JO21 square. Nice as this is, it hardly justified me stirring from my scratcher at 05:00 to get this at 05:55. Eventually at 08:24 I made a scratchy 4m QSO with Jurek SP9HWY who is in JO90 square. The intervening two and half hours produced nothing at all. For an acknowledged shower peak period that was disappointing.

The previous day was a washout and the more sceptical amongst us might have concluded that the Lyrids came a week early. However, old Isaac Newton was pretty good at his physics and these things depend on solar system gravitational forces and they are very predictable events.

I wonder a bit whether some of our old familiar meteor showers are becoming exhausted and are basically not a good as they were. Perhaps new comets and similar bodies will heave into view and leave us new trails. This process happens over a long time period, but I was not expecting it now. Another effect is the relative angles of the showers, which is also predictable and which modulates the intensity of the shower over the years. Perhaps we have just been unlucky recently.

Leaving that aside, there was nice Es opening on 23 April.

10m Es WSPR at GM4FVM on 23 April 2017

This looked like a proper Summer Es type event. Gianfranco, IU1DZZ was a good signal over a two hour period. Later I even heard EA8, though that seemed to be part of a very weak F layer event.

I count the start of the Summer Es season from the first 6m (or 4m if it is first) contact. I did not get one on 23 April, though other GM stations did. Just the luck of the draw really, or my lossy co-ax?

So with Meteor Scatter and Es during the day, I was able to complete an Aurora contact too, in the evening. I heard Clive GM4VVX calling "CQ A" with serious AU distortion on his signal so I had to have a go. I could not manage to plug in the key, but I proceeded with the CW memory in the TS-590. I had a simple QSO programmed in, so it was slightly formal but it worked. So all three propagation methods produced a QSO on that day.
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As I write this on 24 April there has been another Es opening.

10m Es WSPR at GM4FVM on 24 April 2017

Once again I had no success working anyone on 6m though other GM stations did. Personally I blame the white sliced loaf. Since bread production went industrial nothing has been the same.

Mrs FVM has taken up home baking and our bread has improved no end, but she cannot change the world single handedly.

Sorry about that, it was another attempt on my part to match the crazy ideas others have about radio propagation. They never seem to need a reason for good propagation (apart from their own operating excellence), but they can always be relied on for something bonkers when they turn on and there is nothing but white noise.

I (of course) am above such things.

The Es area showing on DXMaps on both days was over the North Sea and too close for 6m propagation from here, though GM stations further north and west did better. This is an alternative explanation, but I am sticking to the bread idea.

Lets hope all three aspects of VHF propagation improve further.

73

Jim

GM4FVM

The Mother of All Meteor Scatter Contacts (MAMSC)

For someone who could have won the All Ireland Waffling Contest in his youth, and who went on to get better at rambling sentences with age, I write very terse notes in my diary. You all know how easy it is for me to fill a blank page (several pages really) on this blog, but the diary entry last weekend simply said :-

Lyrids Starts

And so they did. Hooray!

15 minutes of 6 metre meteor scatter reception as shown on PSK reporter on 16 April at 13:39

PSK reporter as shown above does not report all the contacts available as many stations do not turn it on.

The Lyrids meteor shower is one of the top five of the year and often produces excellent results. Hence the diary entry.

Even old GM4FVM got in on the act. It helped that I could not sleep very well and had some early starts. QSOs at 05:39 are not common hereabouts. Over the four days since activity suddenly picked up I worked:-

2 metres
OH6KTL (KP02 1505km) SM0EJY (JO89 1224)

4 metres
OK2BRD (JN79 1291), OZ2OE (JO45 742), OZ1JXY (JO46 732), OK1DIG (JO60 1228), SP9HWY (JO90 1539) LA9BM (JP40 798)

6 metres
S59A (JN76 1610), ON5PU (JO21 687)

All of these, except ON5PU, were stations I had worked before, but at least it was activity. And OK1DIG was a new square for 4m, as previously I had only worked Dan on 2m.

MAMSC, (the mother of all MS contacts) (why do we have these silly "mother of" things?), was working SM0EJY.

So here is the anatomy of a 2 metre meteor scatter contact.

Mrs FVM wanted to watch something on the television, called Broadband or something. Some sort of detective drama which is too dark for me to want to follow. It isn't the delightful "Brokenwood Mysteries" or similar comforting quirky series with flawed detectives and jolly macabre pathologists who are full of delight at doing another gruesome post-mortem. No, time for a bit of amateur radio for me.

With at least an hour to occupy I decided to call CQ for ten minutes each on 6m, 4m and 2m. It took a while to start, so CQ on 2m was from 20:42 to 20:52, beaming East. I had expected to be on for longer, but Mrs FVM emerged at 20:59 and said that she was tired and it was bedtime for her (almost 10pm local time). Not having seen any response to my CQs I decided to go outside and wind down the antenna and turn in.

On returning to the shack I found this on the screen:-

21:02         PJY 26 26 GM4FVM SM

Hmmm. This looks like SM?PJY, but there is no sign of that callsign in QRZ.com, so maybe something else. Nothing else for it but to go back out and put the antenna back up.

I turned the beam towards SM and started calling QRZ? GM4FVM. or QRZ? SM? GM4FVM.

Nothing.

Until this:-

21:21        26 26 GM4FVM?

The question mark was probably an invalid character. So who is this? Where to point the antenna?

Going through the listings, there was no SM callsign ending in PJY. There is, however, an SP3PJY, a Polish club station. I tried turning the beam a bit more South of East and tried calling QRZ there.

Nothing.

I decided to call beaming East until a hour after the initial CQ, which would be 21:52. Two metre meteor scatter can be like this. It can take a hour to get one piece of information. During the peak meteor shower, in the morning, you can complete a QSO in minutes. In the evening it can take ages. As the beams are far more directional on 2m, it is hard to know which way to beam.

In this case, almost an hour in, I had no idea of the callsign of the station calling. Nor did I know which country it was in. Plus it was getting late, and it was even later in clock time in either Sweden or Poland, or anywhere to the East.

This is getting like my two longest QSOs which each lasted about 3 hours. Both were in the evening, but in those cases I had been alerted by email so I knew that the station was standing by. This one might have gone to bed by now.

But still, the neurosis of the amateur digs in. This is the only time I feel any connection with Tony Hancock's spineless "Radio Ham". Waiting an hour to get the other guy's callsign creates amazing thoughts in the mind. Could this be a real DX station? Is this the QSO to set a record? It must be, if it takes an hour.

So at 21:52 I went out to lower the antenna and give up. On returning to the shack I found this:-

21:55    GM4FVM SM0EJY 26

I had been wasting my time looking for SM0EJY in QRZ.com, as Andy isn't even listed in it. However, I had worked him before, so the logbook provided all the details I needed.

Nothing else for it but to go back out for the fourth time and wind the antenna back up again. At least now I know who it is. I can point the beam the right way. But is he still there? Has he now gone to bed? After all, he has been sending the same message for over an hour himself. Is anyone else determined enough to spend so much time to complete a repeat QSO?

If it takes a hour to get the callsign, how long will it take to get the report?

Well, at least I can now change my QRZ? message into SM0EJY GM4FVM 26 26. So that is what I did.

The reply came after just 24 minutes!

22:19    PCR8 RRRR RRRR SM0E

Now you might think that this is not enough. It is only a partial callsign. The question is, how many SM0E.. stations might there be on 2m meteor scatter to confuse it with? I doubt if SM0EUI has decided to pop up here. If it was a contest I might take a different view, but in these circumstances this is good enough for me. Me, in a contest? Time to send 73.

And then of course we get into the 73 dilemma. I need to receive a 73 because it lets me know to stop sending my 73. It provides "closure". He needs to receive my CQ for the same reason, but he is under no obligation to send one. It is not an essential part of the QSO. It would be nice if he did because it would end it for me and it might provide some more characters to confirm the last reception.

For once I need not have worried too much as the reply came at 22:30

22:30    ,CM0EJY 73 SAP

There is a sequence there M0EJY 73 S which is a slice from the repeated SM0EJY 73 which was what I was after. Time to turn off and wind the antenna down, again.

So what is to be learned here? Well, outside the peak morning session, MS QSOs can take a while. This one was not quite up there with Father of All Meteor Scatter Contacts (FAMSC) or even Uncle Terry of All Meteor Scatter Contacts (UTAMSC), which were three hours each. But they were skeds, pre-arranged, and I knew at the start who they were with. This was a random contact coming from a CQ. That is the way I like it (no KST chat room here). At 20:52 to 22:30 it was only 98 minutes (or 108 minutes maximum, as I am not sure when Andy heard my first CQ). A mere split second in the great scheme of things. I mean, which HF DX champion would spend less that an hour and a half on one single QSO?

Sometimes I sit and listen to HF contests. I hear stations using CW so fast that it puts me off even trying to listen beyond the callsigns, never mind actually coming on and giving them a point. How many QSOs do they get into 98 minutes? On the other hand, I judge a QSO by how difficult it was to complete, rather than how fast I can cram it in to my busy schedule. You may come to your own conclusion. And of course there is room for both.

It is a contact like this which gives rise to habits. If I cannot get a reply now, I know that the thing to do is to go outside and wind down the antenna. Maybe not.

Could it be that lowering the antenna might have raised the take-off angle and made the contact possible? I doubt it, but you never know. The software suggests a 6 degree take-off angle as the optimum for this contact.

I have been ranting on for ages about how easy it is now for anyone to have a go at meteor scatter. This is still true. On 6m you can find your feet. On 4m it gets a bit racy. On 2m you have to become a deer stalker, using your patience to catch the prize. Even if the prize is working someone you worked before.

By the way, if I had not installed the quiet lights, I would almost certainly have missed this QSO. I put them on when I go out to wind down the antenna, and the old ones would have created quite a bit of noise while I was doing it. And the key decodes in this contact happened while I was out there.


If only people on 2m used MSK144 instead of FSK441 life would be easier. I bet the contact with SM0EJY could have been done in half the time or less on the better mode. And if we had been using WSJT-X, we could both have gone to bed after the exchange of callsigns and left the software to finish it (only joking, I would not do such a thing - and anyway, who would be there to wind the antenna up and down every quarter of an hour or so?).

But hey, I have had my fun, and that's all that matters (as Father Fintan Stack famously put it in the wonderful "Father Ted" TV series).

Other diary entries:-
22 April "Lyrids"
23 April "Lyrids"
25 April "Lyrids ends"

I suggest that to maximise results and to prevent very long QSOs, call CQ in the morning. So my message is "do as I say, not as I did".

73

Jim