Opening on the 50 MHz band from Antarctica to Europe - 21st March 2023

Tuesday 21st March 2023: Considering it was the equinox with equal day and equal night, it seemed appropriate that there was an opening on the 50 MHz band between Antarctica and Europe.

LU1ZV is located at the Argentine Esperanza base in Antarctica. As can be seen from the map above, the FT8 beacon on 50.313 MHz was heard by several stations in the south of Europe.

Rcvr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC) SNR
CT1FFU 6m FT8 12189 km 16:14:14 -19
EA6SX 6m FT8 12582 km 16:06:15 -19
CT1EHX 6m FT8 11974 km 16:06:14 -19
SV9CVY 6m FT8 13060 km 13:21:14 -12
IT9TYR 6m FT8 12955 km 13:21:13 -11
IT9RZR 6m FT8 12817 km 13:16:14 -17
SV2DCD 6m FT8 13425 km 13:15:14 -16
IZ8WGU 6m FT8 13029 km 13:15:14 -19
ZA/IW2JOP 6m FT8 13310 km 13:13:11 -18
SV2JAO 6m FT8 13476 km 13:08:14 -15
SV1DH 6m FT8 13299 km 13:06:14 -20

There have been plenty of long distance openings on the 50 MHz band recently but they tend to be East-West and not too far from the equator... interesting but nothing special.

What makes this unusual is that the 6m signal was coming from the polar regions. Admittedly the station is at about 63 deg S and about as far north as you can get on the Antarctic continent but it's an impressive journey all the same for a signal on the 50 MHz band to reach Europe.

Report from SV2DCD... Leonidas, SV2DCD in Greece sends the following report...

"Today, SV1DH and I copied the LU1ZV 50MHz FT8 beacon from the Esperanza Base in Antarctica. 

It is the first time for me to copy signals from Antarctica here. Beacon conditions - Antenna is a half wave sloper dipole to the north and power is 3w"

As can be seen from the screen grab above, the best signal that SV2DCD managed to get was -11dB which is a very noisy but audible signal to the human ear. These are the kind of signals that prior to the advent of FT8 would have gone unnoticed on CW or SSB.

Analysis... It looks as if the sun was pretty much at its highest point for the midpoint of this opening. It would seem to have been a multi-hop F2 layer opening. The solar flux was 152.

Thanks to Leonidas, SV2DCD for the report.

More reports on other long distance openings on the 6m band can be found on my 50 MHz page.

Addendum: Report from SV2JAO in Greece...

Amateur TV signals from the German Antarctic Research Station DP0GVN

After hearing the German Antarctic research station, DP0GVN on 28 MHz WSPR yesterday, it reminded me of a recent story I saw about how that station is also operational on ATV (Amateur Television) on the QO-100 Geostationary satellite.

The QO-100 geostationary satellite is located over central Africa and it is allowing radio amateurs the opportunity to experiment on the microwave bands. The uplink to the satellite is just above 2.4 GHz while the downlink is just below 10.5 GHz.

The footprint of the satellite with 5 degree and 10 degree elevations is shown above. For the DP0GVN station in Antarctica, the elevation of the satellite is about 7 degrees above the horizon.

AMSAT-DL recently paid for a new antenna and radome to be installed at the station as shown above. This happened at the start of January 2022.

This is the new radome in place to protect the antenna from the harsh Antarctic weather.

This video clip from Vale, IZ5ILX in Italy dated the 31st of January 2022  shows the ATV signal from DP0GVN via the QO-100 satellite.

Excellent DVB-S2 tests from NEUMAYER STATION
ANTARTICA VIA P4-A - QO-100 GEOSAT
QRG: 10497.750 GHz 1,5 MSr -2/3 Fec#DP0GVN @amsatdl #QO100 #ANTARCTICA
📡📺📹🛰️ pic.twitter.com/DF1Hr6Hwv8

— IZ5ILX Vale (@iz5ilx) January 21, 2022

While I'm not that interested in Amateur TV or satellite operations, I did find this story interesting because it shows how a geostationary satellite like QO-100 is opening up a lot of possibilities for experimentation on the microwaves bands and with Amateur TV.

For someone outside the footprint like in North America, these experiments are impossible unless they live near others active on those bands or modes.

There has been a lot of talk of late about how to get more people interested in Amateur Radio. I'd suggest that experiments like this are going to appeal a lot more to a younger generation than say making SSB contacts on the HF bands which is rather dated at this stage.

Spanish Award...14th Antarctic Activity Week...February 2017

Back in late February, a bunch of Spanish special event stations popped up on the HF bands to mark the 14th Annual Antarctic Activity Week. It ran from the 18th to the 26th of the month. It seemed a bit strange that special event stations in Spain should be marking an Antarctic week. Perhaps it's because of the Spanish research stations located on the continent?

It really was very well organised with 9 stations on air and an excellent support website where logs were being constantly uploaded.... https://antarctica.ure.es/

Of all the websites dedicated to radio awards, this one is certainly one of the best.

These were the 9 stations...

I like the one with the Polar Bear......especially as there are none in the Antarctic! :o))

The top award was the Platinum which required working all 9 stations which wasn't too difficult.

I worked all the stations on CW and made an effort to work them on as many bands as I could.

AO5ANT was one of the hardest to work as the DX cluster shows that there was little or no 80m CW activity and he only appeared on 30m for a few hours on the 17th. EH5ANT was only on 20m CW for 2 days.

One of the interesting results of chasing these stations was that I learnt something about propagation. Notice how there is almost a complete lack of stations on 17m (18 MHz). I could hear them sometimes but they were very weak.

The centre of Spain is about 1,500kms from the south coast of Ireland. 1,500kms seems to be fine for signals on 14MHz and below but too close for 18MHz and 21MHz.

This was the propagation prediction map at the time...

It clearly shows that while 20m (14 MHz) was open to Spain from Ireland, the distance was too short for 17 and 15m. I believe that EG5ANT may have been in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa so it's probably no suprise that he was the only one I worked on 17m. The distance in that case was close to 2,000kms.

On the top 100 lists on the website, I was the only EI listed. It's interesting that the many of those in the top 10 were far enough away (2000kms+) to make use of the openings on 17 and 15m. i.e. Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, etc.

Rules..
Diplomas will be awarded in four different categories depending on the number of special stations contacted by the applicant (or received in case of SWLs)
BRONZE DIPLOMA... For contacts with 3 different Special Event stations, whatever the mode or band used.
SILVER DIPLOMA... For contacts with 5 different Special Event stations, whatever the mode/band.
GOLD DIPLOMA... For contacts with 7 different Special Event stations, whatever the mode/band.
PLATINUM DIPLOMA... For contacts with ALL 9 different Special Event stations, whatever the mode/band.

Antarctica worked on 15 metres

During the last week, I worked RI1ANC on 21 MHz cw. He was located at the Russian Vostok base in Antarctica and the signal was quite weak...the type that is ok on cw but probably too weak for ssb.

With a Solar Flux of 75, the conditions on the higher HF bands are pretty poor at the moment with 28 MHz being closed most of the time. While East-West paths are a problem, the best paths are often North-South.

Often the higher bands can throw up suprises like this. Because the multi-hop path is just about open, the footprint can be quite small. It can allow you to work the DX without the pile-ups that you might find on the lower bands.