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Thursday, September 26, 2024

6100km TEP contact on the 144 MHz band between Spain and St Helena - 25th Sept 2024


A little bit of history was made on Wednesday 25th September 2024 when EA4I in Spain and ZD7GWM on St Helena Island in the South Atlantic managed to complete a Trans-Equatorial Propagation (TEP) contact on the 144 MHz (2m) band.

This is as far as I know the very first TEP contact on the 144 MHz band between these two countries.

José, EA4I in the west of Spain was running 700 watts into an array of 4 x 17-element Yagi antennas. As far as I know, the polarization was horizontal.

Garry, ZD7GWM on St Helena had a much more modest station with just 50-watts from a Yaesu FT-897 into a Diamond X700H vertical antenna.

While many other TEP contacts are made with the Q65 mode due to the TEP spreading and distortion, this particular contact was made with the FT4 mode.


Andy, EA7KBX reports... "A new record was set tonight between EA4I Jose and ZD7GWM Garry - a small group of us have been running TEP tests from Spain to St Helena Island on 2m / 144Mhz the QSO was completed using FT4 at 6,094.22Km !! 

Jose using 4x 17 element beams and 700w while Garry was using a Diamond vertical and FT- 897 with just 50w !! Amazing contact for the record books"


Analysis... 2024 has been a pretty remarkable year for Trans-Equatorial Propagation on the 144 MHz band. For the last few years, there have been many reports of TEP openings from Argentina & Brazil in South America to the Caribbean area.

Some were claiming that it wouldn't be replicated in other parts of the world because the Geomagnetic Equator was too far north but that hasn't turned out to be the case. We've seen regular 144 MHz TEP openings this year from Namibia to Europe, the Middle East to the Indian Ocean and from Japan to Australia.

As long as both stations are roughly equidistant from the geomagnetic equator and the signal crosses the geomagnetic equator at about 90-degrees then a path is possible.


The biggest obstacle is getting someone active at either end of the TEP path. In this case, Garry, ZD7GWM is the only person active at the southern end of this circuit.

I'm sure if the antenna was upgraded to something modest like a 9-element Yagi fixed in a northerly direction then even more 2m TEP contacts with Europe should be possible.

I wonder if there are any VHF DX groups that help out DX stations with modest antennas?


I have a previous post about Garry's set up HERE

For more information about other long distance openings on the 2m band, see my 144 MHz page.

4 comments:

  1. Hi all, pse one missing information, was ea4i antenna also vpol or only hpol?

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    1. EA4I was using Horizontal Polarisation. Apparently TEP does not maintain polarisation.

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  2. how came them to FT4 mode? sked?

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  3. Yes, this was a sked! We started on FT8, but the TEP distortion was too much, so we switched to FT4. Several stations in EA were QRV. After the QSO we have been running daily skeds, but using mode Q65-30B which can handle the distortion better. So far there has been some signals decoded every evening (although not complete QSOs every evening). Garry ZD7GWN has now WKD 4-5 stations in Western EA4 (no other EA district) and 4-5 stations in CT.
    Garry ZD7GWM is still using a vertical omni antenna and 50W. However he will probably be QRV with a directional antenna soon. TEP gives a VY small footprint but I hope the better antenna will increase the "footprint". Potential areas that can work him are EA&CT mainland, and possibly western F.
    The skeds are coordinated in a WhatsApp group. To join that group send an email to me SM0KAK, or to G4LOH.

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