Saturday, February 10, 2024

EI1CAH 40MHz beacon heard in California - 9th Feb 2024


Chris, N3IZN near San Diego in California reports reception of the Irish EI1CAB beacon on 40.016 MHz on Friday 9th of February 2024. Chris was able to decode the PI4 signal from the 8m beacon and as it shows in the graphic above, the signal level was down at -22dB which is well below what is audible to the human ear.

The EI1CAH beacon is located on the west of Ireland and it's 25-watt signal is often heard across the Atlantic in the eastern part of the United States. This isn't all that unusual now that we're near the peak of the sunspot cycle. 

The more northern path to California is much more difficult and it's interesting to see a signal at 40 MHz complete the 8,124km path.

Link...
1) For more information on the 8m band, see my 40 MHz page.

3 comments:

Ei4geb said...

Nice to see the beacon is getting that far.
Lez
Ei4geb

Robbie Ei2iP said...

We can safely say that 40Mhz is open daily, starts in South Africa, then Caribbean, then to North America.

So it is no surprise to see that West Coast is hearing signals from EU..
Two way West Coast contacts are nothing new really, as it has been done several times, last year.

We see plenty of so called spots on the dx cluster of been heard but not of actual two way contacts, so these spots are kinda useless really.


The goal is to be heard in VK or NZ, some of us already have achieved that ;-)

But without actual stations that can transmit on the bands, my interest is slowly waning, I don't see any challenges on 40Mhz and I might leave it to the local newbies.

De Ei2iP, Robbie

John, EI7GL said...

Robbie, it's not all about making two way contacts. A lot of people are just interested in propagation at 40 MHz and are quite happy to just listen.

40 MHz spots might seem useless to one person but the same spots could be of interest to someone else.

40 MHz signals from Europe reaching the west coast of the USA are always of interest because of the northerly path. This was the first time that N3IZN had heard the EI beacon.

John, EI7GL