Report on 40 MHz activity on the 8th of May 2021 ...by EI7HBB

Lloyd, EI7HBB reports that he was active on the 40 MHz band on the 8th of May and caught the extensive Sporadic-E opening. He managed to work S50B in Slovenia twice on SSB during the day as well as hearing S57RW and S5/M0MPM on FT8.

LLoyd also reports managing to complete a 40 MHz / 50 MHz crossband SSB contact with Hugo, ON6ID in Belgium at a distance of about 900kms. ON6ID was on 50.145 MHz and EI7HBB was on 40.680 MHz and the contact took place at 15:22 UTC. He also wonders if this was a first EI-ON crossband contact for 8-metres?

LLoyd was also heard in the Netherlands at a distance of about 1000 kms.

Guest Post: Experimental reception of the OZ7IGY 40 MHz beacon via meteor scatter ...by S57RW

Andrej, S57RW in Slovenia left the following comment on the blog today under an old post. Rather than leaving it there largely unnoticed, I am putting it up as a short guest post.

* * *

Wednesday 5th May 2021:  Today I tried to listen to beacons on the 8m band and around 09:30 UTC, I got two bursts from OZ7IGY in Denmark. 

Both had a duration of about 10-seconds. First, I got a part of the PI4 transmission but that was not long enough to decode. After 2-3 minutes, I got a second burst and copied part of locator and final carrier.

This one was quite strong about S5 to S7 and had a typical burst and after burst. Don't know if that is the right term but it sounded like typical strong MS burst. 

It may be worth listening in the morning when there are more meteors around :) 

RIG was IC-7300 and a dipole for 8m abt. 4m high N/S direction. 73 Andrej - S57RW!

* * *

As the map shows above, S57RW is about 1200kms from the OZ7IGY beacon in Denmark, an ideal distance for meteor scatter on the 40 MHz band.

Note that the Eta Aquariids meteor shower peaks on the 6th of May.