A long term milestone reached at last - and TEP or multi-hop Es in September?

It is sixteen years now since GM4FVM returned to Scotland and took up this callsign again. After a busy few years of moving from GM to GI to G, finally we came back to Scotland. Finally (I think). Mind you, having done G to GI to GM before that, you never know.

It took a while to get established here, and I had my first 50MHz contact as GM4FVM on 23 February 2010, over thirteen years ago. That was to GM8BDX in Birgham, less than 30km away, but it produced DXCC number one on 50MHz. 

So that was the start. It was three months before S53CC gave me DXCC number two.

By March 2017 (only seven years later!) I had reached 55 DXCC on 6m, over half way towards that magical DXCC itself. DXCC on one band still seemed a bit of a stretch for me. However, by March 2018 the total was 63 and by the end of 2018 it had reached 71.

I think you can see where this is going.

By July this year the total had reached 93, and a month ago 99. Almost there. However, that seemed to be it for 6m Es in 2023. This year's Es season appeared to be over and certainly as far as multi-hop Es was concerned.

However I still keep an eye on the space weather via Solarham (link in the sidebar). There was a disturbance on 3 September. The data on DXMaps.com stated "SWX=Moderate Storm" which was enough to get me interested.

I had been checking in at the shack at various times just in case something happened. Otherwise I was watching an excellent episode of that reliable Kiwi detective drama "Brokenwood Mysteries". This one surrounded a murder amongst a female motorcycle gang and I got quite involved in the plot. I do think that the arrival on the scene of Detective Chalmers has definitely brought a slightly more gritty angle to this series - and it needed it. Anyway, I devoured the whole thing.

When I strolled into the shack again at 20:59 UTC I was surprised to see that there was a lot of traffic on 6m from the direction of South America. In fact, I saw Gordon GI6ATZ working a CE station and David GI4SNA working an LU7. Time for action.

By 21:06 I had worked PU4JOE, and then CE3VRT by 21:09. And that was it. CE3VRT was my first 50MHz contact into CE from here, and also CE was my 100th DXCC worked on the band. Job done.

Contacting PY5EW completed activities for the night, at 21:13.

50MHz contacts recorded on DXMaps on 3 September 2023.

DX Maps tells the tale but maybe does not answer all the questions. All of those contacts into South America are shown as Trans Equatorial Propagation (TEP). Yet, when similar contacts were made a week or so earlier they were all recorded at Multi-hop Es. There certainly was Es about as can be seen by the red lines within Europe.

Was this TEP at 21:13 in September, or multi-hop Es, or a combination of the two? I do not know.

Moving on from that question, I had to check Clublog just to see that they had acknowledged my 100 score. You never know you know, someone near to me might have sabotaged me sending Clublog the details. You do not need to be paranoid to write this blog but it makes it a lot easier to fit in if you are.

Clublog personal DXCC chart page for GM4FVM

Well, I can move on from that too. 

The achievement moves me to 1523rd place in the Clublog 6m DXCC list. I would not describe that as having achieved greatness. I am 1523 steps down the ladder from the top, but rising to the top has never been my ambition. I only do this to measure how my station is operating.

Who cares about places on that DXCC list? Not me.

These little milestones just serve to motivate us and to check if things are getting better. They might spur us on to improve the antenna or something similar. After that the next thing happens.

I am more interested in the mode of propagation which got my 50MHz signal to CE3VRT than the achievement of working 100 countries. Even more intriguing was reading CE3VRT's QRZ page about his efforts at 23cm moonbounce using a 1.8m dish.

Hmmm. Most interesting.

73 Jim 

GM4FVM