Over the last few days, there has been a mysterious QRSS signal on 28.1246 MHz USB which is also the WSPR frequency on the 10m band. I was seeing it during the afternoon and evening so I guessed it was probably from North America.
It was usually very weak and I was usually only getting fragments of the QRSS signal. I tried to make sense of the dots and dashes but I couldn't be sure if I was actually get real dots and dashes or was it just part of the signal that was missing.
The screen capture above is one of the better ones from the 20th of October. The QRSS signal at the bottom is from AE0V but who was at the top? It didn't seem to make any sense.
On the 21st of October, I got two reasonable screen captures. I then posted these to https://groups.io/g/qrssknights to see if anyone could help. This forum is the main source for all up to date information regarding QRSS signals.
Thanks to Halldór, TF3HZ in Iceland, he was able to solve the mystery! He posted the following...
Finally with this information, all the pieces fitted into place. These are my screen grabs from the 21st of October with the signal shown.
The mystery signal is from KC2CHK in the state of New York and his locator / grid square is FN13WD.
With most QRSS signals, a dash is represented by a long dash and a dot is represented by a short dash.
KC2CHK is using the same length of short dash for both dots and dashes except that the real dashes are at the top of the QRSS waveform whereas the dots are at the bottom.
In the example above, you can see it starts with 'Up - Down - Up' which is 'dash dot dash' which is the letter K.
Some letters can be particularly confusing especially when the signals are weak. An example is the letter H. When the signals are very weak, it looks like one very long dash. But on closer inspection, you can see that it's actually four short dashes on the lower part of the waveform i.e. four short dots which is the letter H.
Mystery solved, thanks Halldór!
WSPR... I checked the
WSPR ROCKS website and sure enough, I had actually heard KC2CHK sixty-nine times over the space of three days (19th, 20th & 21st of Oct 2024) on 10m. His power is listed at just 0.2 watts and is likely alternating between WSPR and QRSS signals for his transmissions.
The strongest WSPR signal is -18dB which means in reality means that it's inaudible to the human ear. If the QRSS signal wasn't shown by software on a screen then I wouldn't have known it existed.
Propagation... The distance of the path from my location on the south coast of Ireland to KC2CHK in New York is about 5000kms which suggested to me that it was F2 layer double hop.
The map above from VOACAP seems to support this as you can see the skip zone in the middle of the Atlantic and the second F2 hop covering parts of western Europe.
Equipment... Frederick, KC2CHK reports that he was using a QRP-Labs Ultimate3S for the transmitter which is running about 200-milliwatts into a half wave dipole about 5.5m above ground level. It was only built in October of 2024 so this is a new QRSS signal on the band. The antenna is oriented east west which means the best radiation is probably in the north south directions.
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| QRP Labs Ultimate 3S units for 50 MHz & 28 MHz at KC2CHK |
Frederick also confirms that he is running DFCW instead of FSKCW just to speed up the transmission, as it can go out in much less time than FSKCW.
In summary... That brings the QRSS tally so far for 2024 up to 26-callsigns & 11 DXCC.
1) 8th Jan 2024: VE1VDM - DXCC #1
2) 10th Jan 2024: VA1VM
3) 15th Jan 2024: G0MBA - DXCC #2
4) 15th Jan 2024: G0PKT
5) 15th Jan 2024: AE0V - DXCC #3
6) 16th Jan 2024: RD4HU - DXCC #4
7) 16th Jan 2024: W1BW
8) 17th Jan 2024: OH5KUY - DXCC #5
9) 18th Jan 2024: TF3HZ - DXCC #6
10) 6th Feb 2024: VA3RYV
11) 16th Feb 2024: IK2JET - DXCC #7
12) 16th Feb 2024: N8NJ
13) 21st Feb 2024: PY3FF - DXCC #8
14) 26th Feb 2024: VE6NGK
15) 27th Feb 2024: NM5ER
16) 28th Feb 2024: VK4BAP - DXCC #9
17) 2nd Mar 2024: WA1EDJ
18) 5th Mar 2024: FR1GZ/B - DXCC #10
19) 30th Apr 2024: IK1WVQ
20) 8th May 2024: IW0HK/B
21) 14th May 2024: IZ1KXQ/B
22) 3rd Jun 2024: M0GBZ
23) 3rd Jun 2024: G0FTD
24) 17th Oct 2024: AA7US
25) 19th Oct 2024: DJ5CW - DXCC #11
26) 21st Oct 2024: KC2CHK
