46 and counting…

A chance to try and work a few new ones. Unfortunately I only heard one station that would have been a new one for me, ST2KSS in Sudan on 15m, a band on which my antenna doesn’t work particularly well. I tried to call him many times but he had lots of loud stations calling him whenever I could hear him (and he was never more than strength 7 with me) so no QSO resulted.

Over the two days (in what amounted to about 2 hours operating) and making only selective calls I logged 35 stations (40m=17 20m=9 15m=8 10m=1) in 32 different countries - they were:-

Aland Islands, Balearic Islands, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, European Russia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Kaliningrad, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Madeira Island, Morocco, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, USA and Wales.

Not a bad little haul but no new ones. I’ll hope for better luck and better propagation for the CW contest at the end of November!

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, contest, CW, propagation, SSB

Small but significant, sunspot 1028 of cycle 24 is barely visible in the upper left quadrant of the solar disk but this is the sunspot that has broken a run of 18 consecutive days without any sunspots.

Now if only there could be a few more sunspots emerge over the next few days in the run up to the 2009 CQ World Wide DX SSB contest this weekend…

Dean Amateur Radio, Totally random contest, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot

This in a report yesterday (Wed 14th Oct 2009) at SpaceWeather.com entitled ‘Deep Quiet’. Today will be the 14th such day and there is no sign at the moment of when this streak might be broken.

So far this year, the sun has been spotless 79% of the time, topping the 73% mark recorded in 2008. Cycle 24 seems to be a long time coming and there have been a few false dawns. Long after many forecasters thought that solar minimum would be finished, the quiet is not only continuing, but actually deepening. So much so that some are now asking “are sunspots gone for good?”, as this article on the NASA website explains.

Opinion is divided - those suggesting a decline say that “sunspot magnetic fields are dropping by about 50 gauss per year, if we extrapolate this trend into the future, sunspots could completely vanish around the year 2015″ whereas those with a more positive outlook say that “other indications of solar activity suggest that sunspots must return in earnest within the next year.”

I for one am hoping that the optimists are proved to be correct in their assessment rather than those predicting a gradual decline. Shortwave propagation is much improved when there are lots of sunspots and those of us with modest antennas really need all the help we can get!

Dean Amateur Radio, Totally random antenna, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot

Well it came and went and I dipped my toes in the furious contest waters but nothing new or exciting for me this time. Over a total of about 2 hours operating in 4 sessions I worked some 40 stations in 21 different countries - Armenia, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Estonia, European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Morocco, Serbia, Slovak Rep, Slovenia, Ukraine and USA.

What I did notice was that conditions on both 20m and 40m were much improved over my recent excursions to those bands - most stations were worked after just one call, although I was selective in just which stations I worked.

Sadly the few expected rare ones either weren’t active over the weekend or were just not heard at my location. That said I enjoyed getting back on the bands and I’m happy with my little haul and even more so with the improved band conditions.

Dean Amateur Radio 20m, 40m, contest, propagation, RTTY

Another sunny Saturday afternoon found me (G0RIF), Richard (M0SNR) and Luke (M3VVB) at Barr Beacon for what might have been our last portable operation from there this year. I was working a bit of HF (20m and 17m) while Richard and Luke worked VHF (2m) and UHF (70cm) with a SOTA beam on an 8m pole.

I set-up on 20m with my FT-857 (80w SSB) and one of the Par Electronics EndFedz in a vertical configuration. I found 20m to be quite busy and the band seemed to be in decent shape. Unfortunately the Scandinavian activity contest started at 13:00 local time after which the band was very busy. In a little over an hour on 20m I worked stations in Ukraine (EM0WFF), Switzerland (HB9VELO), Hungary (HA6NW), Belarus (EV6DX), Finland (several including Greg, OH2FFY/m with a full size 20m vertical), Sweden (several) and Japan (JA7NVF). Greg has posted a video he made during our 20m QSO which you can see here.

Eventually, due to the number of contest stations, 20m got a bit too wall-to-wall with big signals so I switched to 17m, again with an end fed vertical dipole (another of the Par EndFedz). Conditions on 17m were pretty good and I worked stations in Cyprus (5B8AP), USA (long chats with Andy, KB1KYN on Nantucket Island and Frank, K0FPL in Kansas City), Madeira Island (CT9/SP9CTT) and the Canary Islands (EC8AVA) before the DX catch of the day. Calling CQ at about 13:40 UTC I heard a good solid 58/59 signal come back to me in the form of Des (ZS1ZY) over 6000 miles away near Cape Town! We had a nice chat before QRM at his end overwhelmed my reported 33 signal. I think this demonstrates what can be achieved with a modest portable station and I was very pleased to work down into South Africa with my simple vertical dipole antenna and 80 watts of single sideband transmitted signal.

All in all we had a good afternoon in the sun. My little bit of HF DX was supplemented with some nice continental catches for Richard and Luke on 2m (Germany and The Netherlands). We’re all now waiting and wondering when we might next get out…and wondering whether or not conditions will be as favourable next time. I sure hope they are.

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, dipole, DX, EndFedz, FT-857, Par Electronics, portable, propagation

Yes folks, it’s coming soon, on the weekend of the 26th and 27th of September 2009, the CQ WW DX RTTY contest - one of the biggest RTTY events in the amateur radio calendar.

As usual there are plenty of dxpeditions or dedicated contest operations to coincide with this event. Of note for me are 3A/HA3JB in Monaco (I still need a QSL card from Monaco even though I worked it many years ago) and ZF2SX on the Cayman Islands, which would be a new one for me.

Add to this the usual crop of less common countries that can be heard during a major contest and it could be an interesting weekend…if I get on the air. I’ll hope for a few hours here and there even if only to try and snag those mentioned above. Fingers crossed the bands are in good shape for this one!

Dean Amateur Radio contest, propagation, RTTY

From SpaceWeather.com…[2009-09-01] “SUNSPOT 1025: A new sunspot emerged yesterday and interrupted a 51-day string of blank suns. It wasn’t much of an interruption. Sunspot 1025 is small and may already be fading away.” That might explain the CQ fatigue I’ve been reporting! A massive 51 days without any hint of a sunspot - that’s quite a stretch. It goes a long way towards explaining why conditions have been so poor recently on HF. Indications are that this could be just another false dawn for cycle 24 but let’s hope that it does perk up soon!

some actual sunspots *

* Just to clarify, this image does not show sunspot 1025. Sunspot 1025 was much smaller than the sunspots shown here.

Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot

I’ve seen it written somewhere that many receivers don’t make for a busy band. What this means is that if everyone is listening, scanning the bands for stations, no contacts will result. Someone somewhere has to call CQ to initiate a contact (for non amateur radio types a ‘CQ call’ is a ‘hello…is there anybody out there’ invitation to other stations to reply and establish a contact, or QSO).

With that in mind I have over the past week made many CQ calls (different bands, different modes) in attempts to make some contacts on otherwise quiet bands. My results were a bit disappointing to say the least. I managed to work a clutch of close-in European stations (from Germany and Spain) but apart from that I was calling in vain - hence my title for this post - ‘CQ fatigue’.

Now I know my antenna isn’t great (but I am resigned to living with it until I can think of some ingenious alternative) and I know conditions aren’t at their best (although they have been a bit variable over the week), but is it really THAT bad, that in hours of callling CQ I get so few replies? It’s been that bad I have even dared venture onto 50MHz yesterday (2 contacts) and 144MHz this afternoon (no contacts)! I hope things improve soon.

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, CQ, propagation, QSO

I’m not a serious contester but I do enjoy taking advantage of high levels of activity on the bands during contests to check conditions, see how well my antenna is performing, work a few stations and hopefully log a few new ones. To those ends I spent a few hours at the radio over this past weekend during the Worked All Europe (WAE) CW contest. For those who don’t know, this is a contest where Europe works the world and the world works Europe - this means that as a European station I could only work stations outside Europe.

My operating was split over both Saturday and Sunday and my first thoughts on Saturday were that conditions were really not very good. Few stations were heard outside Europe in countries other than USA, Canada and Asiatic Russia, three countries with a high number of high power stations with good antennas. It was much the same on Sunday although it did seem to me that conditions were slightly better than Saturday.

Over the two days of the contest more than two thirds of stations I worked were from either the USA or Canada, several were from Asiatic Russia and I worked 2 stations from each of Cyprus and Uruguay. I also worked a single station in each of Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Stations heard but not worked were from Japan (several), China (2), Brazil (4), Argentina and Cuba (1 each) - of these China would have been a new one for me but despite calling one particularly loud station on Saturday for several minutes he just wasn’t hearing me. This was probably due to the fact I could only hear him because he was running high power into a decent antenna and my antenna wasn’t radiating my 80 watts of CW very well. Oh…and of course the conditions weren’t great!

All in all it was quite a disappointing event due to the lack of variety in DX stations heard and worked. Conditions weren’t great and it was hard work getting through to many stations with my modest power output and compromise antenna. Sun spot cycle 24 - where are you?

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, contest, CW, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sun spot, WAE

It was around 1900 UTC when I turned on the radio last night. The antenna was still setup for 30m from the night before so I tuned around the CW portion of the band. I found Bodo working stations around 10.125MHz listening up between 1 and 2KHz. Conditions weren’t great but I set my split for 1KHz and set about waiting for his signal to peak (assuming that this would give best reciprocal propagation). Having sent my callsign a few times it was around 1913 UTC when I heard my call coming back through the noise - a quick ‘tu 599 73′ later and he was in the log!

my QSO confirmed in online log

Dean Amateur Radio 5N0OCH, CW, propagation