There was a good Sporadic-E opening on Tuesday the 21st of April 2020 with three stations reporting reception of the OZ7IGY beacon in Denmark on 40.071 MHz.
The screenshot above is from the DXMaps website which has a special page for 40 MHz reports.
Considering the low level of activity on the 40 MHz band, this page is normally blank so it was unusual today to see three traces on it!
These are some of the 40 MHz spots from the DX-Cluster...
EI7GL-@ 40071.0 OZ7IGY 13:12 21 Apr PI4 -6 dB Q=98 (es) Denmark
G7CNF 40071.0 OZ7IGY/B 12:39 21 Apr
EI7GL-@ 40070.0 OZ7IGY 12:20 21 Apr PI4 -4 dB Q=100 (es) Denmark
EI7GL 40070.0 OZ7IGY/B 12:19 21 Apr IO51TU
EI7GL-@ 40070.0 OZ7IGY 12:15 21 Apr PI4 -3 dB Q=100 Denmark
EI7HBB 40071.0 OZ7IGY 11:43 21 Apr Denmark
EI7HBB 40071.0 OZ7IGY/B 11:36 21 Apr 539 Denmark
Lloyd, EI7HBB was the first to spot the OZ7IGY beacon on 40 MHz at 11:36 UTC.
I came across the 28 MHZ version of the beacon at 12:01 UTC during a scan of the band. As the 10-metre signal was strong, I then had a listen on 40 MHz and sure enough, the 8-metre beacon was audible. I spotted it on the cluster at 12:15 UTC.
The distance from the beacon is about 1350 kms for Lloyd and 1390 kms for me.
At 12:39 UTC, G7CNF spotted the beacon from the south-west of England.
The PI4 in the cluster spot refers to the PI4 software which decodes the OZ7IGY signal which alternates between giving out its ID in morse and in PI4.
The amazing thing about the PI4 software is that it can hear the signal buried in the noise. At one stage, it decoded a -18dB signal and I could hear nothing.
More information about this beacon and the PI4 software can be found on the OZ7IGY website.
This is a screen shot of the PI4 software...
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| Decode of OZ7IGY signal on 40 MHz |
These are all the decodes that I got on 40 MHz on the 21st of April 2020...
As you can see, I was hearing the 8-metre beacon for at least an hour and it finally disappeared at 18:18 UTC. It seems as if the opening to Denmark on 40 MHz lasted at least 90 minutes or so.
1 comment:
It was strange opening. When I first heard the beacon on 40mhz, 50mhz was closed. I concentrated on trying to get a 10m contact and although I did hear a SM station and 2 PA stations having a rag chew it took me 30 mins to work a station and then it was a SP and DO. By then 6m was open and I worked just one DK station,FT8 was banging out 59 signals, why on earth operators can't QSY to SSB when the band is in full swing I don't know. One thing I did notice was the whole time the 40mhz beacon was in (30-40min)I could not hear a peep from the 10m beacon. It does look that interest is growing in the band and to that end it would be good to have a database of stations who are interested and can receive 8m. Maybe a Facebook group that could alert those interested to listen out.
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