10,470km opening on the 40 MHz band from California to New Zealand - 25th Jan 2023

It's always nice to see 8m reception reports from different parts of the globe and this time we have a reception report of the 40 MHz WSPR signal of WM2XCC in California by ZL1RS in New Zealand.

WM2XCC is one of the experimental licences for the 40 MHz band and is operated by Chris, N3IZN. The 2-watt WSPR signal of WM2XCC on 40.680 MHz was decoded four times by Bob, ZL1RS in New Zealand during a three and a half hour period on the 25th and 26th of January 2023.

The four reports are below, note that the times are in UTC.

Local   (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W SNR drift km

2023-01-26 01:18 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681486 2 -29 0 10471
2023-01-26 01:00 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681486 2 -16 0 10471
2023-01-25 22:20 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681488 2 -23 0 10471
2023-01-25 21:58 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681488 2 -16 0 10471

The signals range from -16dB to -29dB which means that they were probably inaudible to the ear and were buried in the noise. The signals were still present though which means the trans-Pacific path existed.

The distance was around 10,470kms and the most likely mode of propagation was via the F2 layer in the ionosphere. At midnight UTC, the sun would have been somewhere over the centre of the Pacific and roughly half way between California and New Zealand.

Back on the 28th of December 2022, there was a similar opening from California to Australia. Link HERE

ZL1RS... For the reception report, Bob ZL1RS reports using an ICOM IC-7610 with a 3-element Yagi for the 40 MHz band at 8-metres above ground level. The antenna is fixed pointing at North America and the 4 WSPR decodes were from the second day after it was put up.

Bob notes that New Zealand regulations permit anyone to freely transmit on 40.680 MHz with 1-watt ERP as long as they don't cause interference to any paid licence system.

Side Note... When I was writing this latest trans-Pacific 8m report, I had completely forgotten about the reception report of WM2XCC in Australia at the end of December. I wrote that blog post and I had forgotten about it after a month! It just shows to me the value of generating a blog post about an unusual 8m opening and then linking to it from the 40 MHz page on the blog.

WSPR reports disappear after 5-weeks and FT8 reports disappear off the PSK Reporter website after 24 hours. How many unusual openings on the various VHF & UHF bands go unreported and unnoticed?

Addendum: Bob, ZL1RS reports... "Another opening 26/27 Jan utc:

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az Mode
 2023-01-27 00:46 WM2XCC 40.681486 -23 0 DM13ji 50 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 23:14 WM2XCC 40.681487 -25 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 22:18 WM2XCC 40.681489 -15 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 21:44 WM2XCC 40.681488 -19 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 21:26 WM2XCC 40.681488 -16 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 21:04 WM2XCC 40.681488 -9 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 

There would have been more except that reception here was obliterated by severe rain static for about an hour.  During that time there were 3 other partial WSPR traces (which did not decode due to the rain static), but from the timing and frequency offset, we believe it was WM2XCW (aka NR7V)."