EI1CAH 40MHz beacon heard in California - 9th Feb 2024

Chris, N3IZN near San Diego in California reports reception of the Irish EI1CAB beacon on 40.016 MHz on Friday 9th of February 2024. Chris was able to decode the PI4 signal from the 8m beacon and as it shows in the graphic above, the signal level was down at -22dB which is well below what is audible to the human ear.

The EI1CAH beacon is located on the west of Ireland and it's 25-watt signal is often heard across the Atlantic in the eastern part of the United States. This isn't all that unusual now that we're near the peak of the sunspot cycle. 

The more northern path to California is much more difficult and it's interesting to see a signal at 40 MHz complete the 8,124km path.

Link...
1) For more information on the 8m band, see my 40 MHz page.

10,470km opening on the 40 MHz band from California to New Zealand - 25th Jan 2023

It's always nice to see 8m reception reports from different parts of the globe and this time we have a reception report of the 40 MHz WSPR signal of WM2XCC in California by ZL1RS in New Zealand.

WM2XCC is one of the experimental licences for the 40 MHz band and is operated by Chris, N3IZN. The 2-watt WSPR signal of WM2XCC on 40.680 MHz was decoded four times by Bob, ZL1RS in New Zealand during a three and a half hour period on the 25th and 26th of January 2023.

The four reports are below, note that the times are in UTC.

Local   (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W SNR drift km

2023-01-26 01:18 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681486 2 -29 0 10471
2023-01-26 01:00 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681486 2 -16 0 10471
2023-01-25 22:20 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681488 2 -23 0 10471
2023-01-25 21:58 WM2XCC DM13ji ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681488 2 -16 0 10471

The signals range from -16dB to -29dB which means that they were probably inaudible to the ear and were buried in the noise. The signals were still present though which means the trans-Pacific path existed.

The distance was around 10,470kms and the most likely mode of propagation was via the F2 layer in the ionosphere. At midnight UTC, the sun would have been somewhere over the centre of the Pacific and roughly half way between California and New Zealand.

Back on the 28th of December 2022, there was a similar opening from California to Australia. Link HERE

ZL1RS... For the reception report, Bob ZL1RS reports using an ICOM IC-7610 with a 3-element Yagi for the 40 MHz band at 8-metres above ground level. The antenna is fixed pointing at North America and the 4 WSPR decodes were from the second day after it was put up.

Bob notes that New Zealand regulations permit anyone to freely transmit on 40.680 MHz with 1-watt ERP as long as they don't cause interference to any paid licence system.

Side Note... When I was writing this latest trans-Pacific 8m report, I had completely forgotten about the reception report of WM2XCC in Australia at the end of December. I wrote that blog post and I had forgotten about it after a month! It just shows to me the value of generating a blog post about an unusual 8m opening and then linking to it from the 40 MHz page on the blog.

WSPR reports disappear after 5-weeks and FT8 reports disappear off the PSK Reporter website after 24 hours. How many unusual openings on the various VHF & UHF bands go unreported and unnoticed?

Addendum: Bob, ZL1RS reports... "Another opening 26/27 Jan utc:

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az Mode
 2023-01-27 00:46 WM2XCC 40.681486 -23 0 DM13ji 50 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 23:14 WM2XCC 40.681487 -25 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 22:18 WM2XCC 40.681489 -15 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 21:44 WM2XCC 40.681488 -19 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 21:26 WM2XCC 40.681488 -16 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 
 2023-01-26 21:04 WM2XCC 40.681488 -9 0 DM13ji 2 ZL1RS RF64vs 10471 230 W-2 

There would have been more except that reception here was obliterated by severe rain static for about an hour.  During that time there were 3 other partial WSPR traces (which did not decode due to the rain static), but from the timing and frequency offset, we believe it was WM2XCW (aka NR7V)."

Opening on the 40 MHz band between California and Alaska - Jan 2023

Chris, N3IZN is located in the south of California and is the owner of the experimental callsign WM2XCC. He has been conducting tests on the 40 MHz band for over a year using the WSPR beacon mode.

Between the 20th and 25th of January 2023, his WSPR signal was heard by a number of US stations as shown on the map above and in the chart below which is listed by distance.

 Local   (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W SNR drift km
2023-01-22 17:18 WM2XCC DM13ji WW1L FN54om 40.681497 2 -22 1 4300
2023-01-24 17:36 WM2XCC DM13ji VA2CY FN46lw 40.681426 2 -16 3 4135
2023-01-25 19:38 WM2XCC DM13ji KC0IYT FN42kj 40.681554 2 -21 0 4115
2023-01-21 18:20 WM2XCC DM13ji VE2UG FN35gs 40.681498 2 -3 0 3939
2023-01-23 21:36 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681506 2 18 0 3863
2023-01-20 19:06 WM2XCC DM13ji KB2MEN FN20ok 40.681484 2 -21 0 3815
2023-01-20 19:48 WM2XCC DM13ji VE3EUR FN25dn 40.681529 2 -6 0 3763
2023-01-22 16:36 WM2XCC DM13ji N2OTO EL96wi 40.681511 2 -22 0 3640
2023-01-22 17:52 WM2XCC DM13ji WM2XEJ EM83ji 40.68149 50 8 0 3144
2023-01-22 17:12 WM2XCC DM13ji AC4TO EM70xl 40.681497 50 -15 0 3134
2023-01-22 17:50 WM2XCC DM13ji N4WLO EM50uo 40.681488 50 22 0 2736
2023-01-22 20:04 WM2XCC DM13ji VE7UTS CN89li 40.681491 50 -26 0 1843

The reception report of particular interest is from KL7HBK in Alaska. Even though there are four other reports which were further away, Alaska is of interest because it's so far to the north. This is especially true as it seems likely that the mode of propagation was F2 layer propagation.

These are all the WSPR spots from Alaska on the 23rd and the 25th of January. The signal reports range from +18dB which is very strong to -18dB which is buried in the noise and inaudible to the ear.

2023-01-25 20:42 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681507 2 -7
2023-01-25 20:22 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681507 2 15
2023-01-25 19:58 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681507 2 10
2023-01-25 19:38 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681508 2 -18

2023-01-23 21:54 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681507 2 21
2023-01-23 21:36 WM2XCC DM13ji KL7HBK BO49et 40.681506 2 18

Alaska has a reputation of being a bit of wasteland when it comes to VHF propagation so it's interesting to see 40 MHz signals propagate so far north. The solar flux at the time of the reports was around the 190 mark.

Link... For more reports and information on the 8m band, see my 40 MHz page HERE

12,000km opening between Australia & California - 27th Dec 2021

Monday 27th December 2021: It was interesting to see that there was a recent opening on the 50 MHz band between the SE of Australia and southern California. Unlike openings from Australia to South America, this one crossed the equator and went to North America.

There is a very active group in Australia & New Zealand using the WSPR beacon mode and on the 27th of December, VK2IJM and VK2EFM in New South Wales heard N3IZN in California.

 UTC (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid                         MHz         W SNR drift km 
2021-12-27 01:16 N3IZN DM13ji VK2IJM QF56ni 50.294549 100 -24 0 12115 
2021-12-27 00:52 N3IZN DM13ji VK2EFM QF56oq 50.294554 100 -18 0 12091 

The distance was just over 12,000kms.

Propagation Mode?? The first most obvious answer is that it was multi-hop Sporadic-E but I suspect the reality is more complex that that. The signal path crosses the TEP zone around the equator so that may have had some impact. The solar flux is up around 120 and the MUF is now above 30 MHz most days. Is it reaching 50 MHz near the equatorial region?

Western Australia to Europe?? The example above was just over 12,000kms, that is the same distance from the west coast of Australia to the south-east of Europe. Are there openings between Europe and Australia on 50 MHz at the moment?

144 MHz WSPR beacon in Hawaii heard by several stations in California (~4000kms)

Back in April of 2021, I had a post up about how Chris, N3IZN in the south of California was hearing the KH6HME WSPR beacon on Hawaii on 144 MHz. At that time, he seemed to be the only person listening for it.

It's good to see that 144 MHz WSPR activity is now on the increase in California and between the 28th of June and the 4th of July 2021, a total of eight stations heard the beacon in Hawaii.

This is the list of stations...

UTC (y-m-d)         TX                 txGrid RX         rxGrid MHz W SNR
2021-06-28 00:04 KH6HME/B BK29go KK6TG CM88qk 144.276997 20 -28
2021-06-28 02:12 KH6HME/B BK29go N3IZN/2 DM13ji 144.277008 20 -19
2021-06-28 15:22 KH6HME/B BK29go N6WS CM95 144.277033 20 -21
2021-06-28 16:54 KH6HME/B BK29go W6IT DM13bp 144.276998 20 -29
2021-06-28 17:10 KH6HME/B BK29go N6CA DM03ut 144.277005 20 -21
2021-06-30 20:00 KH6HME/B BK29go K7KX CM95nj 144.277045 20 -32
2021-07-01 04:20 KH6HME/B BK29go N3IZN DM13ji 144.276999 20 -28
2021-07-01 21:16 KH6HME/B BK29go K6TW DM03 144.277 20 -32

There were a total of 1590 reception reports during that period for the beacon which is pretty amazing considering the distance is in the region of 4000kms.

The strongest signal was +4db which was probably strong enough for a SSB QSO. The weakest signal -34dB which is about 20dB below what can be heard with the human ear.

This was the tropo forecast at 21:00 UTC on the 1st of July which seemed to be a good time for conditions...

There seems to be a 500km or so gap around Hawaii but there seems to have been a good tropo duct predicted for the eastern part of the path to California.

It's likely that the vast majority of the 1590 reception reports were via a tropo duct close to the ocean but considering it's the Summer time, a percentage could have been via Sporadic-E with a tropo extension.

These are the stations in California that heard the KH6HME beacon over a 700km or so front...

144 MHz beacon on Hawaii heard in California - Apr 2021

Back in April of 2021, there was an opening on 144 MHz between Hawaii and California, a distance of approximately 4074 kms.

 Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az Mode
 2021-04-24 11:00   KH6HME/B   144.277007   -31   0   BK29go   20   N3IZN/2   DM13ji   4074
 2021-04-24 10:58   KH6HME/B   144.277007   -31   0   BK29go   20   N3IZN/2   DM13ji   4074
 2021-04-24 10:56   KH6HME/B   144.277008   -29   0   BK29go   20   N3IZN/2   DM13ji   4074
 2021-04-24 10:48   KH6HME/B   144.277008   -31   0   BK29go   20   N3IZN/2   DM13ji   4074
 2021-04-24 10:46   KH6HME/B   144.277008   -29   0   BK29go   20   N3IZN/2   DM13ji   4074

The reports shown above are from Chris Arnold, N3IZN in California who heard the WPSR transmissions on 144 MHz from the KH6HME beacon on a mountain in Hawaii.

The tropo duct across the eastern Pacific usually opens up several times a year and allow signals from 144 MHz to the microwave bands to propagate through it. It's probably one of the best long distance VHF paths in the world.