2022 Report for the 40-MHz OZ7IGY beacon

In this post, we'll look at the OZ7IGY beacon in Denmark which transmits on 40.071 MHz and how many times it was spotted on the DX Cluster in 2022. I have used the DXSummit.fi DX Cluster as the source of data for this post as I can check the whole of 2022 and download the spots into a spreadsheet to examine.

There may be some spots that are missing and didn't appear on the DXSummit cluster but the aim of the post is to give a general overview of the stations reporting reception of this Danish 8m beacon during 2022 and not list every single report that appeared on multiple platforms.

If anyone would like to add any additional reports for 2022 then they can leave it in the comments.

One other caveat is that I only used one DX spot per person per day for the overall numbers.

Annual Comparison... In terms of the number of DX spots for 2022, there was a total of 176 spots from 30 people for reception of the OZ7IGY beacon on 8m. This is in marked contrast to just 13 spots from 9 people in 2021 when the beacon was off the air for most of the Sporadic-E season.

The OZ7IGY beacon was on air for most of 2022 and what also helped was the growing interest in the 40 MHz band as more stations start listening. The number of report for 2022 also surpassed the previous best which was 146 spots from 16 people in 2020.

These were the top spotters of the OZ7IGY beacon in 2022 (30 in total)...

As can been seen on the map at the top of the post, nearly all of the stations heard the OZ beacon via Sporadic-E propagation. It is perhaps a little suprising that there seems to have been no reports from Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Portugal or indeed a lot of Eastern Europe.

DX Cluster... If you do hear the beacon then make sure to report it on dx-clusters like DXSummit or DXMaps as some of the other clusters ignore spots for 40 MHz as they assume they're a mistake.

More information about the OZ7IGY beacon can be found here... http://www.oz7igy.dk/

For more information on the 40 MHz band, go to this page... https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html

Winter 2022 release of the QRSS Compendium 5th Edition

Every year, the Knights QRSS Group release their annual compendium. You can view the Winter 2022 (5th edition) HERE

The Knights QRSS Group promotes the use of very slow mode code beacons to carry out propagation experiments on the HF bands. Often signals that are 15 to 20 dB below the noise can be seen on a computer screen as opposed to being heard by ear.

While newer digital modes can now be used for detecting very weak signals, they don't really show propagation effects. Either the digital signal was decoded or it wasn't. QRSS signals like the one shown below shows propagation over a 15-minute period.

In that image, you can see how signals fade with the Sporadic-E footprint moving and the polarisation changing. It also shows up slight doppler effects.

You can find out more about QRSS signals by visiting the QRSS Knights Groups.io page... https://groups.io/g/qrssknights/topics

Yaesu FT-818 radio discontinued - Dec 2022

 
In a statement on the 28th of December 2022, Yaesu USA announced that their FT-818 radio is going to be discontinued. The reason given is the 'worldwide parts shortage'.

This radio is essentially a 'shack in a box' as it covers nearly all of the amateur radio bands including all of the HF bands (160-10m), 6m, 2m and 70cms. The power output is 6-watts.

The FT-818 model was released in March of 2018 and was the replacement for the venerable F-817 which was released way back in 2001. The FT-817 was a hugely popular radio especially with QRP and portable enthusiasts in its day. The FT-818 was supposed to be its more modern iteration but it was widely seen the FT-817 with a few improvements and it left a lot of people disappointed.

A quick check of the prices show the FT-818 selling for about $650. That's about half the price of the hugely popular ICOM IC-705 which sells for $1350. As a radio, it would have been under pressure from Chinese radios like Xiegu which sell for the same or less or from the IC-705 which created a huge buzz when it was released.

Maybe it was discontinued because of the 'parts shortage' but I suspect a lot of people will think it was because of poor sales. Whatever the reason, it's sad to see this popular FT-817/818 line come to an end.

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Yaesu also announced that they would be also discontinuing their FTM-400XDR radio. This is a dual band 2m/70cms radio with FM and C4FM. It was released in 2015 as far as I can tell.

Again, the 'parts shortage' is the reason given for its demise.

Yaesu USA ANNOUNCEMENT - Dec.28th, 2022... "Please be informed that the production of the FT-818ND and FTM-400XDR will be discontinued. We are forced to make this unfortunate decision due to difficulty we are having with the availability of some components. We appreciate your long-term patronage of the FT-818ND and FTM-400XDR."

1850km opening on 1296 MHz between Spain & Greece - 2nd Jan 2022

It was interesting to see that a contact on 1296 MHz was made between EA5TT in Spain and SV8CS in Greece on the 2nd of January 2022. The distance was around 1850kms.

While this is well short of the 2714km IARU Region 1 record between Ireland and the Canary Islands set back in July 2020, it is still an impressive distance for the 23cms microwave band.

Manolo, EA5TT reports working SV8CS on 1296.174 MHz on FT8 after working him on 144 MHz and 432 MHz earlier. EA5TT was using just 10 watts with a 35-element Yagi antenna.

As for the mode of propagation, it looks like it was a tropo duct over the Mediterranean Sea. This is the tropo forecast from Pascal, F5LEN...

I'm not sure what the record is for tropo in the Mediterranean but it looks like there is a 3300km sea path between the SW of Spain and Israel. Is it possible on 23cms?