A marine duct has formed between the UK and the equatorial Atlantic, with D4VHF appearing early this morning. Despite two way reports, I didn't manage a QSO at that point.
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| Wahoo! Made it. Noise lines are due to the 8-ele pointing directly at my laptop. |
A little later, the signal became strong enough to make it. D4VHF was all but invisible on the waterfall, despite the beams and fairly high power at both ends (12 ele, 400W there; 8-ele, ~130W here). It's instructive to consider that, with HFTA predicting just over 21dB antenna-and-terrain total gain (and this at very low angles, below 1 degree), that ~130W input equates to ~17.1kW ERP.
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| Marine duct - narrow but just enough to allow the QSO. Image: F5LEN. |
Conditions at lunchtime were pretty stable, but I could only see one EI station also making the connection at the time.
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| Beaming 210 to Cabo Verde. |
Not quite as exciting as January 1st, when I achieved the 2-way D4 QSO with just 3 elements and 50W.
UPDATE:
Amazingly, I managed +10dB, rising to +16dB into EA8CXN. A few moment later, we managed a clear 2-way SSB QSO! FT8 then went up to +20dB at EA8. Wow!
5 comments:
Hi John, well done, that's a nice achievement. 73 Paul
Just a note :) The IARU Region 1 tropo record for 23cms is 2661kms. Anglesey to EA8 would comfortably break that.... http://vushf.dk/vushf/wp-content/plugins/IARU-DxList/ShowQso.php?Call=D44TXV&Band=1,296%20GHz&Propagation=TR&Distance=2661
Well, you can have a good laugh at me reading that, looking up the total price of getting a 70cm system going in a hurry, and then deciding I will have to concentrate on 2m this year! Mainly a problem of finding a good spot for another mast, really. Ah well! EA8 was actually calling for a 70cm QSO, but there I was, lemon-like, unable to!
The problem with 70cms or 23cms in Wales or Ireland is that it is very quiet most of the year as we're so far west.
The way to go would probably to have a small yagi that can be put up at short notice to take advantage of exceptional conditions.
Yes, that and the fact that I don't have a 70cm SSB rig. That mnay change, as I only bought the IC-746 second hand, to see if I could do something useful with 2m. That I could get to D4 was a big surprise, so it's sparked a new interest in VHF now.
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