What is it with 23cm?

What is it with 23cm?

I was reading a fellow GM's blog today and I saw that he said that working UHF was "highly addictive". 

Today I have been working my three-band trick. Six meters open, four meters stuffed with OIRT broadcast stations in Belarus and Ukraine, and me on 2m working OE and 9A. Surely that would be fun enough for anybody?

That is good but it is not enough for me. Clearly I need THAT --- and I need MORE.

When I started out on my ham career microwave bands involved dark arts. Mysterious waveguides, unaffordable coax the size of drain pipes, and wartime Klystron valves. Or the other route involved triplers such as those made my Microwave Modules. Some folk started at 144MHz, tripled to 432 and then tripled again to 1296, resulting in an FM signal as wide as a barn door. And this was a barn door that drifted up the band. To hear this stuff you used a receive converter.

I never got near microwaves then. Even for 144MHz I started off using a valve receive converter down to 28MHz and then into a deaf AR88. My transmitter started with an 8MHz crystal and multiplied up to 144MHz, so going up six more times seemed like a crazy idea. Or too much like hard work.

Then, decades later, after the passage of  much RF, I was left a brand new Icom IC-9700 by David GM4JJJ. When I mentioned to Neil, G4DBN, that I had an IC-9700 but I only used it on 2m, he sent me a Wimo 28 element yagi. So there I was with rig and antenna. I reused some old coax and I was on the air on 23cm on 1 September 2019.

My limited knowledge, formed over 40 years before, was that this was a very difficult band to manage. This stuck with me for a while. Plus I had the idea that this little antenna would surely only send out dibbly-dobblers and I would never be heard anywhere. I reckoned the results would be pitiful. You can judge for yourself how wrong I was.

1296MHz contacts at GM4FVM since 1 September 2019

Click to enlarge images, blah, blah, etc, etc. 

OK, it has taken seven years to do all this but I have had 247 QSOs and worked 14 DXCC during that time. True, 32 of those QSOs have been to JO46 square in Denmark. The fact that my most worked square is in OZ is really due to geography. My antenna is basically pointing straight across the sea at Denmark, whereas towards the rest of Scotland it points at the Lammermuir Hills followed by the Pentland Hills and then the Highlands. Generally working Denmark is reasonably simple if there is a tropo lift across the North Sea, and there often is. This high number of contacts is despite JO46 being at least 630km away and beyond aircraft scatter range.

During a tropo opening 23cm often becomes my favourite place. I can forget all that stuff I believed in all those years ago. My ODX for a tropo lift was to LY2WR, 1719km away in KO02. That was about 1500km further away than the best DX I could imagine on this band before I started.

Now of course my station has altered slightly over time. I found that the IC-9700 drifted on 23cm so I added a Leo Bodnar GPS frequency standard. I upped the power using W6QPL amplifiers, first to 50W and then (thanks to Sid, G8SFA) to 150W. At various stages I have been using a 36 element yagi, and at other times reverted to the original 28 element. Although there is supposed to be a 2dB difference between them it seems to matter little. I am still using 19m of Hyperflex coax which manages to lose half the signals thanks to having 2.9dB loss at 1296MHz. I now have an SHF-Electronik MVV-1296 masthead preamp which has a noise factor of 1.5dB.

My station is modest. I could make it better. To me that is worth thinking about but not the point. I do not run a kilowatt or have superb antennas on any band. I work on five bands and I cannot have a superstation on all of them. Hopefully over time it will get gradually better, but my initial effort to get going has proved that 1296 is indeed worth the effort.

How can I illustrate where I can work to on this band? What about listing my five most recent QSOs (in reverse order of course, this is my blog after all)?

1) 30/5/26 G4ALG/P. IO91. I did not get Mike's exact location but this was over 400km and not an easy path over the Cheviot Hills and then the Pennines. It was his best DX on 23cm to date. Unusually for me this was a CW QSO. It was assisted by aircraft scatter. I like helping someone to their best DX, even if he has to try to understand my awful CW.

2)  23/5/26 GM4OAS IO75 258km. Difficult path. Thanks to Gordon being on the far side of the Highlands, this had to be entirely by aircraft scatter. Gordon suggested starting on FT8 but the Doppler was too high so we switched to Q65. You can see the steeply sloped trace on the Q65 waterfall showing the Doppler shift, which Q65 coped with well. We actually worked twice with the same plane.

QSO with GM4OAS on 23 May 2026.

3) 15/5/26 NC1I FN32 5133km. This was my first moonbounce QSO on 23cm. Frank was amazed when he heard how much power I had at the antenna thanks to my lossy coax. Of course he has a superstation with a big dish, but he still needs people to work. It was Frank who started me off on 70cm EME too. Indeed Frank started me off in all EME. I was using my 36 element yagi with no elevation.

QSO with NC1I on 15 May 2026

4) 1/5/26 LA3EQ IO28 563km. This is actually also the 5th QSO. I heard LA3EQ over a 48 hour period during a tropo lift. I worked him eight times on three bands. Although only twice on 23cm, the report was +16dB and at one point he was +23. Even I cannot work someone repeatedly over 48 hours.

Above is a slice of my 23cm QSOs from my logbook. LA3EQ is a classic tropo lift/duct. This enhanced tropo propagation stayed up across the North sea for two days and at times allowed incredibly strong signals. 23cm can have superb tropo ducts. NC1I shows that you don't need a superstation or even elevation to work somebody on 23cm EME (provided they DO have a superstation at their end). The tell-tale trace off to the right on the first map above is that QSO. GM4OAS shows how aircraft scatter can cover the most tricky terrain. And G4ALG/P showed how with him running 20W we could add to a weak "dead band" path by using aircraft scatter.

FT8 might work for tropo, but Q65 is needed for aircraft scatter or EME. CW, as we are often told, is best in every situation ...

I have tried to show how I have become fascinated by 23cm. I wrongly believed that it was difficult, not taking into account how much technology has changed over my ham career. [That is a long career Jim]. Are other hams also put off by such mistaken notions from the past? How many IC-9700s are in use, maybe only on 2m as mine used to be, and are wasting their capacity to work 23cm? Could others be amazed by 48 hour tropo ducts, mind boggling aircraft scatter and EME on a shoestring? I bet they could.

What should I do next? Be content with my modest equipment? Go for high-spec coax,or a dish, or elevation, or more power, or a better preamp, or add higher microwave bands? Or all of these? I don't know. But I am thinking about it. I sometimes wonder if the best amateur radio set-ups are the ones we plan in our heads. The 23cm one I am planning is great - in my head.

23cm is just one of the five bands I use. It can be silent for days (/weeks) on end. When it opens it can be superb. 

I love the 258km QSO with Gordon just as much as the 5133km one with Frank. 

Everything on 23cm is DX compared with what I expected.

"Highly addictive" the man said. 

Do you think that I am hooked?

They tried to send me to rehab, but I said CQ, CQ, CQ. 

73 Jim

GM4FVM