LU8DPV special WSPR report, 2019 January 10-11

The old way to connect Wales and Argentina: The Mimosa, that carried a small Welsh colony to Patagonia in 1865.

With the continued, kind cooperation of Raul, LU8DPV, 14MHz WSPR continued to be sent overnight, this time with Raul's fine 3 element Yagi beaming 335 degrees.

The idea behind 335 degrees was that the evening terminator runs closely along this heading, as the extract from DX Atlas below shows:

I was interested to see if Raul's signal would continue to be heard here, and also maybe by TF1VHF, who heard him at an unusual time last evening.  Was the signal travelling to the north along a region behind the receding terminator?

Well, this is how I heard Raul:

 

The spots within the shaded area, though weak, are certainly anomalous, especially with Raul's antenna in a beaming position where the elements are presented side-on to Europe.  With practically no change in the field conditions since the preceding evening (beaming 030 degrees), the spot pattern is very different.

We now have to consider whether, in the shaded box time period, there was any geomagnetic enhancement.  Kp was low, at ~2.  The stack plot on the Norwegian line looked like this (Z component):

Its clear that the near-midnight onset of a modest high latitude disturbance in the field coincides with Raul's post-midnight signal being heard for a while.

It's difficult to know whether Raul's spots travelled directly, along a great circle path, or along another, non-great circle path.  Even with the elements fairly side-on to Europe, the gain from a 3-element Yagi is still about 5.7dBi, without taking ground gain into account.  So a 5W signal has an ERP of at least 11W.  But I don't think this is, of itself, enough of a power gain to 'force' the signal to Wales.  After all, either there is propagation, or there isn't. 

Hardly anybody else heard Raul in the post-midnight period here.  LX1DQ lost the signal as the grey line period passed into true night at 16:08UT, but then recovered him at 23:56UT for just over 20 minutes.  A similar, but not identical situation was shown by EA8BFK:

It may be that the fact I continued to hear Raul into the post-midnight (UT) period, where EA8BFK (a regular number 1 receiver in the daily listening challenge) did not, might indicate the effect is related to the high latitude magnetic field.  It's too early to tell.

Tonight, I am hoping Raul can beam 135 degrees, which will send his signal into the austral twilight for several hours.  We'll see if we can make any sense, or no sense at all, from what emerges!

My continued and sincere thanks are extended to Raul for his dedication, reliability and friendliness - the characteristics of a true amateur radio operator.  With the weekend and the increased interference from contests and general operating that it brings now upon us, any more WSPR testing will have to wait for another day.

A modern day joining of nations!