DXplorer - Interpretation Care

This afternoon, I ran a 1/4 wave vertical (MW1CFN) on WSPRlite down on a lowish clifftop overlooking the sea.  At the same time, I had my vertical delta loop running (as M1CFN) just about 2 miles away, on top of Parys Mountain.  Both antennas were running 200mW.

Now, on the above comparison, the 1/4 wave vertical (MW1CFN) comes out at over 3dB - twice the signal strength - of the vertical delta loop.

So, the conclusion could be: forget the delta loop.  But that is a dangerous thing to do.  First, you have to consider the pattern of spots hearing both antennas. Here's the plot, delta in red, vertical in green:

Clearly, the conclusion has to be modified.  The reason the vertical initially appears to be better than the delta loop is that the stronger (sometimes much stronger) reports are coming from close in, within Europe.  From the overall pattern, it's clear that the delta loop is reaching much further into the eastern US than the vertical.  This plot shows how that works out in numbers:

But note the exception: the highlighted receiver in the map of spots shows that KB1VC heard both antennas at the same strength at the same time.  From that, you would expect a few more receivers to have heard the vertical in the US, but they didn't.

The overall conclusion is clear enough: the delta loop (which, as effectively a pair of closely-spaced, phased verticals) should enjoy roughly a 3dB advantage over the 1/4 wave vertical, is indeed the much better antenna, enjoying a significantly lower radiation pattern (as indicated by the weaker short-skip reports) where that gain is realised and turned into DX spots.  Sloping ground only means an even better low-angle performance.

The modelled pattern below shows clearly the suppression of high angle signals for a delta loop:

And here's the vertical's pattern, with a nice (but mostly undesirable) high angle bulge.  Note how different it is to all those lovely, symmetric patterns you see in books and magazines, who invariably use misleading 'free space' settings (and, sometimes, infeasible radial numbers) to do their computations.

The next test will be placing the vertical at the water's edge.  With winter coming, that may have to wait for a while!

12m is GO!

Wow!  12m is like a dream today!  For a couple of weeks now, DX is rolling in from all over the planet on FT8 throughout the day.  There's even some SSB activity!

EURAO - The Future of Representation?

Regular readers - if there are any - will know that, whilst I support the idea of the RSGB as a society, I have never really supported it in the way it works.  Or, rather, doesn't work - for me.

The RSGB is, I think it's reasonable to say, a society struggling to stay relevant in an electronic age where opinion, dissent and discussion is easy and immediate, and can no longer be stifled by glacial, impenetrable committee structures that have only ever really served as a place for those who seek self-importance to find comfort.

I've been quite encouraged, therefore, to discover EURAO - a nascent representative body for all amateurs across Europe - and even beyond.

Recently, I joined EURAO after some time of keeping an eye on how it developed.  I was eventually persuaded to join by a very public clash between the then president of EURAO and (Region 1) IARU's bigwigs (some of whom are, of course, ex-RSGB bigwigs).

The nature of this clash exemplified the kind of conflict that the more comfortable, established radio organisations have with a new generation.  IARU seemed, to put it mildly, threatened by a new body in the form of EURAO claiming to represent all of ham radio.

The problem for the likes of IARU and the RSGB is that their very legitimacy derives, ultimately, from the goodwill and support of the radio community.  If, in future, they display what might sometimes be seen as a 'Little England' mentality, then they will, given a few years, probably find themselves washing up on the shores of irrelevance.  Personally, I would cry no tears if they did, and it would be a mistake to think that the attempted return to Colonial Britain via Brexit will bring a New Golden Era for the likes of the RSGB.

The great thing about EURAO is that it isn't fixed in one country.  That makes it considerably more dynamic and open to different ideas.  Just have a read of this fascinating interview with EURAO's new President, YO9RIJ, to see how very different life and political experiences can bring so much more to understanding the future of amateur radio.

Perhaps the best words I have read from EURAO so far are these, from YO9RIJ's interview:

"EURAO will remain an independent entity that defends the interests of ham radio in Europe and the world, regardless of the actions of other societies."

That is the absolute crux of the matter: representing the grassroots experience of radio, and ignoring, where appropriate, foot-dragging playground politics by dinosaur-like traditional societies.


True, EURAO is still very young and its degree of influence within any individual state is almost absent - at least for the time being.  But that can change.  I hope it will, because under the RSGB in its present form, simply trying to 'keep calm and carry on' in the same way as it has always done has largely failed to save our hobby from RFI, over-restrictive planning and ever-increasing pressures on the spectrum.

12m is Dead. Not this year, it isn't!

12m is my favourite band.  I fell in love with it when I had a reasonably good, vertical 2-ele yagi set up (and how infrequent they are!), with pole fixings that let the reflector be moved around the radiator.  Since then, I've upgraded to a 3-ele LFA Yagi.

No other band I've operated on follows the day quite so well.  Mornings are announced with lots of Russian stations.  Then it's across to Europe for a good fraction of the day, with the odd opening to the Indian Ocean, Africa and, sometimes, the Pacific.  Sunset brings a brief period of US Pacific coast stations, and again, sometimes the odd Pacific island QSO.

2016 was notable here for quite a drop in 12m QSOs.  Certainly, 2017 hasn't seen any 12m ragchew sessions that were common until early 2016, across to the US. 

But the band isn't dead.  Far from it!  In fact, 2017, a point that should be lower in solar activity and quite close to minimum, has been substantially more active than 2016.  Almost all days have at least one QSO, with the equinoctal periods turning up the QSO rate significantly.

A lot of the QSOs are on the back of various Es mechanisms, of which there are many.  Normal summer Es, plus lots of solar outbursts that give a good kick to propagation.

Thanks to fast modes like the recent FT-8, it's now quicker and easier than ever to test the waters and see if someone answers.  Most times, someone will!

JT9 Pushback!

FT-8 mode has been stealing the digital show of late. 

Not that it's been all excitement and good news.  FT-8 has been pushing into traditional JT65 territory, with so many users active at the same time that it has often seem as though, soon, there would be nothing but FT-8.

So I was glad to see early this morning that 20m was packed full of JT9 signals from across the world.  It seems that JT65 is being infringed so much that JT9 is a relatively FT-8 free area to set up shop.

I think this is a good thing.  FT-8 is just ridiculously fast, often struggles to decode, and has absolutely no reward merit at all.  It really might as well be a fully-automatic points gathering mode. That is not how I do radio, and if the number of JT9 signals fighting back this morning is anything to go by, it's also not the way very many others want radio to go.

Solar Eclipse - WSPR Results

Despite being across the Atlantic, the great US eclipse of August 21 2017 was an opportunity to test for any propagation peculiarities into the EU that arise from temporary darkness.

I had a long thought about which band to listen out on for this event.  There was a lot of ignoring to do - not of reason, but of opinion flooding out from the US which, understandably enough, was heavily biased towards the low bands.

I settled on 20m.

Interestingly, there did seem to be a marked, transient change in propagation from the US west coast.  As soon as totality hit Oregon (17:16UT), W6BSD (a long way off the totality line) and, a few moment later, K7RE (also way off totality), popped up from nowhere.  W6BSD was very weak at -28dB S/N, but K7RE hit -15dB at 17:3UT, dropping off a cliff to -24dB ten minutes later.  K7RE did not appear again for another two hours, when the eclipse effects were well over and very shallow-angle local sunset propagation briefly took over.

How MUF ought to have worked out inthe absence of an eclipse.

It's clear that essentially no station directly in the path of totality was heard during the eclipse, even though many stations prior to the eclipse were being heard well.  The propagation prediction in terms of MUF confirms the experience that signals from the US ought to have been strong until the eclipse ended around UK sunset time.  That they were not suggests strongly that transient darkness was suppressing the MUF and, therefore, the received signals.

KG6MC, a station just off the totality path, was heard before, through, and after the eclipse. The overall pattern was quite noisy but did show a distinct reduction in signal strength when it could have been expected to be increasing.


N4EFS was the best example I heard, in that he was received steadily for hours running up to the eclipse, and then vanished about 45 minutes before totality.  Again, that is not expected by reference to experience of propagation or the MUF forecast.

I'm sure there will be a more robust and detailed assessment of any effects in the US, where they can be expected to be strong down to the low bands.  It remains to be seen if anyone had any interest in a proper assessment across to the EU.

FT-8: Another Threat to WSPR

The new FT-8 mode, which has a QRG on 80m of 3.574MHz, has brought with it a very unwelcome further infringement of WSPR, sitting at 3.57260MHz, badly affecting results with that very weak signal mode.

Why transmit outside the WSPR section, when you can mess things up for people?

Of course, it's not FT-8 or its creators that's at fault; that lies squarely with operators, many of whom are clearly experienced.

This is highly symptomatic of recent developments in the amateur radio world.  Click an icon on a piece of software, think what you're doing is fine because 'the software sets everything up', and mindlessly mess-up other people's hard work.

So, if you operate FT-8 or any other mode near the WSPR section of any band, please accept it takes very little bandspace, and make sure your transmissions are outside of the WSPR portion, making sure to allow for the positive shift due to the tone frequency, which is not the same as the frequency shown on your rig's panel!