2024 10m QRSS Challenge: - TF3HZ 18th Jan

As part of a challenge for 2024, I've decided to see how many QRSS signals I could capture on the 28 MHz band during the year. On the 18th of January, I managed to get a good capture of TF3HZ in Iceland.

On the 17th of January, I had seen the QRSS signal of TF3HZ in between G0MBA and G0PKT so I knew where to look. on the 18th at 12:14 UTC, the signal appeared out of the noise.

This is a good example of how useful QRSS is in that you can 'see' the propagation changing. It shows how within the space of a minute, the path between Ireland and Iceland opened up.

In the next cycle, I got a nice strong QRSS signal and screengrab for TF3HZ.

The path distance was 1576kms so it's hard to know for certain what the propagation mode was. Was it F2 layer? Was it some mid-Winter Sporadic-E? The sudden appearance of the signal is very similar to a lot of the QRSS signals I have seen during the Sporadic-E season but it's not conclusive evidence. I think it's just one of those cases where no-one can be certain which of the propagation modes it was.

In summary... That brings the QRSS tally so far for 2024 up to 9-callsigns & 6 DXCC.

1) 08 Jan 2024: VE1VDM - DXCC #1

2) 10 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

WSPR North-South Divide on 28 MHz - 16th May 2021

Sunday 16th May 2021: This was similar to the previous few days with plenty of Sporadic-E on 28 MHz but it was less intense. I heard 465 WSPR transmissions from 71 different station on the band.

The unusual signals on this day was the appearance of TA4/G8SCU in Turkey and TF3HZ in Iceland. 

There was some short skip to the UK as well with 15 stations heard but it didn't seem as good as previous days.

I was also reminded about one of the main issues with WSPR on 28 MHz i.e. the lack of stations in some countries.

North-South Divide: As you can see from the map above, there is a real lack of signals from the south of Europe. For example, there are hardly any WSPR signals coming from Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.

When I was monitoring the 10m WSPR band on Sunday evening, I hadn't decoded anything in over an hour. I thought the band was closed. I then switched over to FT8 and there were plenty of stations coming through from Spain, Italy and Brazil.

It really is hard to beat FT8 in terms of getting an overall idea of where the band is open to.

QRSS (Very Slow Morse): With the skip going long, I managed to get a screen grab of the QRSS signals from TF3HZ in Iceland.