New experimental license issued for the 40 MHz band in Canada - Q4 2021

In a recent post, I outlined how seven stations in the USA had been given experimental permits for the 40 MHz band.

One of those permits (WM2XCW) went to Halden Field, NR7V in the far north-west of Washington state. Halden also holds the Canadian callsign of VE7UTS and he has also received an experimental license from the Canadian authorities for the 40 MHz band.

The experimental callsign allocated is CGB209 and it is for 50 watts ERP from a fixed location in a 4 kHz wide frequency allocation centered on 40.6635 MHz.

VE7UTS writes... "CGB209 is now transmitting from the same location as VE7UTS on a 10-minute interval.  The VE7UTS receiver is deaf when CGB209 is transmitting.  

CGB209 is encoded in reverse sequence in the WSPR packet because WSPR protocol doesn't support numbers in a callsign suffix or a letter as a callsign's 3rd character."

CGB209 has been transmitting for the last few weeks on WSPR on 40 MHz and has been received by the following stations locally in the Vancouver area.

UTC (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W                 SNR drift 
2021-11-16 20:02 902BGC CN89 VE7RPX CN89lh 40.663529 0.2 -3 0 
2021-11-17 04:52 902BGC CN89 VA7MM CN89og 40.663528 0.2 -13 0 
2021-11-21 15:36 902BGC CN89 VE7UTS CN89li 40.663406 1 -13 0 
2021-11-23 05:30 902BGC CN89 VE7AFZ CN89ji 40.663526 1 -25 0 

VE7UTS / CGB209 is currently using 1-watt into a quarter wave ground place and hopes to upgrade to 10-watts soon.

Analysis... The main propagation mode for experiments in the short term is going to be Sporadic-E and with a maximum single hop distance of about 2200kms, all of the current US experimenters will be out of range with the exception of WM2XCC in southern California. 

Over the Winter months, there will be plenty of Sporadic-E openings on the 40 MHz band and it's likely that anyone in the LA to San Francisco area will be able to hear the 40 MHz WSPR signals from Canada if they put their mind to it.

From the second half of April 2022, the single hop Sporadic-E openings will become a lot more common. In May, June & July 2022, some double hop openings to the eastern half of the USA are possible.

F2 to Florida???... As we head towards the sunspot maximum, the maximum usable frequency will climb upwards and will reach the 40 MHz band. It will be interesting to see if there will be a 4000km opening via F2 propagation from Vancouver to Florida?

Canadian Info: If any radio amateurs in Canada are interested in trying for a 40 MHz 'Developmental Licence', have a look at this website for more info... https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf11373.html#how

40 MHz Info: As always, check out my 40 MHz page which has plenty of information about this new 8m band.... https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html