Tuesday, April 20, 2021

South African 8-metre beacon on 40.675 MHz heard in Greece - 19th April 2021


Following on from the report last month of the ZS6WAB 8-metre beacon being heard in Portugal, we now have news that the beacon on 40.675 MHz has been heard in the north of Greece by SV2DCD!

In a report by email, Leonidas SV2DCD informs me that he first heard the beacon on the 19th of April 2021 at 14:00 UTC and it peaked around 15:40 UTC. Leonidas was using an 8-element Yagi for 50 MHz to listen to the beacon on 8m.

You can see a video of the reception below...

As outlined in the video title, Leonidas feels that the propagation mode was TEP (Trans-Equatorial Propagation). I have shown the Geomagnetic Equator in the map above and it seems to be roughly equidistant from both stations.

The distance was approximately 7,220 kms.

Now that we have concrete evidence of the 8m South African beacon being heard in Europe, hopefully others will try to have a listen and report it.

Analysis... This new 40 MHz beacon could prove very useful for serious 6-metre operators in Europe checking to see if there is a propagation path to South Africa. There is quite a jump from say 28 MHz to 50 MHz where as if the band is open at 40 MHz then 50 MHz may not be far behind.

Links...

1) My previous post about the ZS6WAB beacon

2) My 40 MHz page

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