Friday, July 17, 2009

WSPR...40m Activity Period - 15th July 2009

The majority of stations using WSPR seem to mainly use 30 metres. In an attempt to encourage more use of other bands, special activity days are organised every week. For this one, I opted to listen on 40 metres and left the rig on receive from early on the 15th to around 08:00 on the 16th.
Using my very low doublet antenna (~5m agl), several European stations running around 1 to 5 watts were heard, nothing special. One notable exception was DL6NL who was running only 50 mW and was heard for the whole day, even at local noon which is probably a sign that the MUF was pretty low.
The following DX was logged...
VE3ODZ (5w)
WB4KLJ (2w)
KE7A (5w) in Texas...consistent signal for ~4-5 hours both mornings.
PY8ELO (20w)
VK6POP (10w)...heard several times on the evening of the 15th. First heard 16:00...several hours before local sunset & several hours before sunrise in VK.
KE0CO (5w) & W7RDP (5w) in Washington state in the NW USA.
2009-07-16 04:34 KE0CO 7.040085 -26 0 CN87tl 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7317 kms
2009-07-16 04:56 W7RDP 7.040073 -23 0 CN87xo 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7291
2009-07-16 04:34 W7RDP 7.040073 -22 0 CN87xo 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7291

Both stations (3 spots in total) were only heard at my local sunrise which was at 04:33. I was suprised to see that I was the only station in Europe to hear them that morning!

The following morning I noticed something similiar on 30 metres where only 2 European stations heard AC7SM in Las Vegas, Nebraska running 5 watts. GM4YJB had one spot at 03:30 and these were my spots...
2009-07-17 05:26 AC7SM 10.140218 -27 0 DM26ie 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7937 39
2009-07-17 03:22 AC7SM 10.140219 -27 0 DM26ie 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7937 39
2009-07-17 03:12 AC7SM 10.140219 -30 0 DM26ie 5 EI7GL IO51tu 7937 39

This time, the 'sunrise' effect was not so obvious....perhaps it is more pronounced on the lower bands like 40 & 80m?

I would have thought that other European stations with better antenna systems would have heard these US stations as well? These initial results would suggest that location is just as important. I must check again on another few mornings to see if something similiar happens again.

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