On having a hunch

OK, I have written a long turgid waffle about a month of 23cm tropo and worthy stuff about gradually improving conditions. It was well annotated and carefully phrased. However, I wouldn't want to read it myself and my belief is neither would you. Nothing new there then.

So this will have to do.

Here is the first image from that non-posting just to make me feel that composing it was worth all the effort. It shows broadcast stations making their mark on 70MHz, which actually has some relevance to this posting too.

OIRT broadcast stations on 70MHz on 9 June 2022

This is about me learning to trust my instincts, or me backing my hunches.

Some of my best radio moments have come from hunches. Like the hunch which kept me on the 6m band for three hours after an aurora had faded just in case there might be an auroral Es opening to the North of me. There was and I worked JX9JKA, the only time I have worked Jan Mayen.

Or the hunch that 2m might open into the Baltic so that I waited from 13:30 to 18:30 on 13 July 2020 before working Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (and missed out on Kaliningrad). 

Five hours sitting here working a total of two G stations (no disrespect to G stations, but sometimes I need some DX too). Five hours with the Sun beating down outside and grass waiting to be cut. Five hours watching broadcast stations fill the 4m waterfall and having this hunch that something is about to happen on 2m. And I was right.

Let us have no mention of the times when I am not "right". However, I think that the odds work out in my favour most of the time.

It is a bit more than a hunch of course. I follow the propagation across bands and use some dead reckoning to suggest where an opening will happen. I work from given fixed points and fit the variable elements around that. After almost 50 years I am getting almost competent at doing this.

The period covered by this posting is 11 and 12 June 2022. 50MHz was full of stations each day during an excellent Sporadic E opening there. I noted this and moved up to 70MHz on both days. My hunch is that it will open too. Anyway, with just a half wave vertical on 6m at the moment I guess I am not going to work much in the way of DX (wrong, see later).

The result of the first hunch was this outcome on 4m

Contacts on 70MHz at GM4FVM on 11 and 12 June 2022

Click  to enlarge if you need to see the image more clearly.

52 QSOs in two days, 18 DXCC, 38 squares and two continents, with a best DX of 3884km to 4Z1TL. On 4m. The RSGB basic award for 4m starts at 20 squares and four countries. I would not expect to qualify for an award in a day (which I would have done if 11 June had been my first day on the band).

I was not even trying very hard. I heard but did not work Cyprus. If I had really needed more countries I might have worked Scotland (a fair bet if I tried), the Isle of Man or Northern Ireland, not DX but still DXCCs. I did not call stations I heard in Belgium and Netherlands in case they thought I was "too local". What the total might have been if I been looking for a record I cannot imagine. The 55 squares and ten countries needed for the highest RSGB award might have been done in a weekend.

So seeing 6m open and deciding to head for 4m is a hunch that worked. It often does.

Moving up again from 70MHz to 144MHz is not so straight forward a proposition. Sporadic E on 2m is much rarer than it is on 4m, just as on 4m it is rarer than 6m. The frequency gap is wider, the area covered by each opening is narrower, and there is not so much of it (meaning it is just rare). However, Es on 2m seems to be a lot easier to work these days. FT8 means the whole continent of data nuts is listening on the same frequency at the same time. 

I waited for just over four hours between 4m opening and my first contact on 2m. On 11 June 2m opened in the same direction as it had on 4m, which was towards Spain. I worked three stations in 17 minutes and the 144MHz opening was over. That is the way it works. You have to work the ones you hear immediately or they are gone (and a fourth one faded mid-QSO). It only takes 75 seconds to work someone on FT8, but that might be too long to complete on 2m Es.

All three stations were new to me on this band and there was one new square. A good result on 2m into Spain from here.

This could be the only 2m Es opening for me to Spain this year, and after that wait it lasted 17 minutes.

Contacts on 144MHz at GM4FVM on 11 and 12 June 2022

It is not quite so easy is working out if an opening is going to occur towards Italy. For some years now Italy has not granted access to the 70MHz bands for its amateurs. So I watched for stations on 70MHz in that general direction, particularly Slovenia which borders Italy. My hunch then moved to the possibility of an opening into Italy on 4m. There were huge broadcast signals on 4m which seemed to be coming from Moldova, certainly suggesting that pointing the beam at EA was no longer the best bet.

19 minutes after the opening to Spain ended, a prolonged 2m opening to Italy started. I was right to stick to my hunch. I worked ten stations in Italy, only four of which were new callsigns to me. As usual on 144MHz, they barely stayed above the noise for long enough to be worked and I lost five more in QSB.

When I say "prolonged" opening I mean 52 minutes in total. And it is not as though I could hear a station for 52 minutes, none could be heard for more that 3 or 4 minutes each. With a tropo opening you might hear a single 2m station for hours, whereas with Sporadic E I basically had a series of 10 separate short openings with gaps in between filled with failed QSOs to others.

It says something about how obsessed I am about all this that of the ten Italian stations on 2m I had worked six of them before on 2m Sporadic E. Or perhaps it says something about how obsessed they are. 

Anyway, one new square in Italy to add to one new square in Spain, a total of 14 QSOs to 14 squares, best DX being IW8PQU in JM88, 2339km away. Not bad for 144MHz.

Before I leave the 2m side of things it is worth noting that there was no 144MHz Es opening on 12 June. How come I can rely on the evidence of an opening on 6m and 4m to expect a 2m opening on 11 June, and yet the same thing did not happen on 12 June? Well, that is why it is a hunch and not one of the Laws of Physics. Sporadic E does not play by strict rules. All my hunch can do is show where to look, it does not promise where I can find.

As a general rule if I look at 4m and see reports less than 0dB in FT8 it is not worth me looking at 2m. If I see reports about +10dB it is definitely worth looking at 2m. On 11 June 4m reports peaked on 4m at +30dB and were around +05 before I moved up. But of course this is just an invitation to look, not a promise of a find. On 12 June the highest report I gave on 4m was +33, and the highest I received was +38.

Was there no Es here on 144MHz on 12 June? Maybe not. If I was seeking a justification for what I do I could simply point to the fact that 2m Es is very localised and lasts only for a short time. Thus there might have been Es into an area covering a bay or sea, or a region in which no amateur happened to be listening at the time. Given the locations of few amateurs with good VHF DX stations that is certainly possible. 

Looking at the 144MHz map the openings could easily have been into the Western Mediterranean, the Tyrrhenian Sea or the Adriatic Sea instead and I would have heard nothing. There are so few stations operating on VHF from North Africa that openings there might produce no response at all. And from the other end the path might lead into the North Sea and not directly to GM4FVM. So often when I have a hunch and hear nothing, it may not be because there is no opening.

I do not need to make up a theory. I just do not know if there was Es and I missed it, or there was none.

My hunch is just to help me know when to look. The big plus is that I can look at the situation and quickly assess when I can turn off and go and watch Masterchef Canada on the television. Given the variables I cannot say for sure that something definitely will happen, but I can be pretty confident when it won't.

Secretly I might admit to the hope that we never find a way to predict Es more accurately. I love the anticipation. I actually enjoy forming an idea and listening to see if it happens. I get the sense that it is not my equipment that decides how well I can do, but nature itself. 

Nothing I do here is down to me. All of it is thanks to nature. I really enjoy pushing the boundary of what I do until it is nature which is holding me back.

Before I started using these tactics I investigated 2m Es and concluded that it was a pointless exercise to try to work it, especially from this far North. It was too rare and would require too much listening time to cover every chance occasion when it might happen. Back then of course I had not worked out the progression from 50 to 70MHz which would give a clue to the best times to watch. 

By concentrating on 144MHz I do not want to minimise the success on 70MHz. 11 and 12 June netted a lot of interesting QSOs on 4m. I had managed to work SV9FBM on 22 May to achieve DXCC number 49. It looked during 11 and 12 June that I might find number 50. I heard but did not work Albania, which would have done the trick. It is getting close. I have now reached 270 squares too, quite a few more than the 55 to make the highest RSGB award.

And finally, just because I now only have a half wave vertical and 100W does not mean that I have given up on 50MHz. On 17 June I worked HI3T. I have worked him before so Dominican Republic is not a new country, but it is for barefoot with that antenna.

I suppose it just goes to prove that kilowatts and a big beam are not always needed.

73

Jim

GM4FVM