40 MHz band report - 19th Feb 2023

Sunday 19th February 2023: Due to interference on 10m from the ARRL CW contest, I switched over to the 40 MHz from about noon onwards and had left the radio monitoring 40.680 MHz for the rest of the day. As shown above, I heard three new stations for me... WM2XAN in the USA, VA2CY in Canada and 4X1BG in Israel.

These are my FT8 reception reports for the day in order of distance.

 Txmtr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC) SNR
WM2XAN 8m FT8 5472 km 18:01:11 -18
VA2CY 8m FT8 4426 km 17:50:26 -10
4X1BG 8m FT8 4076 km 15:14:29 -13
G9PUV 8m FT8 594 km 17:19:11 -19
EI4GNB 8m FT8 214 km 17:29:42 -18
EI4GEB 8m FT8 79 km 20:56:48 2
EI2IP 8m FT8 62 km 18:02:12 -10
EI9FVB 8m FT8 14 km 15:50:42 20

This was just a very small part of the activity on the 40 MHz band for the day with many FT8 reports exchanged across the North Atlantic and from South Africa to Europe. 

What really stood out for me was just how many stations in Europe are now listening on the 40 MHz band. The image above shows the stations in Europe reporting reception of ZS6OB on FT8.

It's worth remembering that there is no DXCC, no awards, no grid square hunting, no DX-peditions on the 40 MHz band, this is just people curious about propagation conditions on this low-VHF band.

The image above shows stations in Europe reporting reception of VA2CY in Canada on 40.680 MHz. Notice the relatively large number of stations in the UK and Ireland.

I have included a list of stations that heard VA2CY below if you want to have a look. For more information on the 8m band, have a look at my 40 MHz page.

14,588km opening on the 40 MHz band from Quebec to New Zealand - 12th Feb 2023

Sunday 12th February 2023: In recent posts, I've reported on how Bob, ZL1RS in New Zealand had heard 3 of the 7 special experimental stations in the USA on the 40 MHz (8m) band as well as PJ4MM on the island of Bonaire in the Caribbean. Reports linked from the 40 MHz page.

On the 12th of February, ZL1RS managed to decode the WSPR and FT8 signals from Bernard, VA2CY in Quebec, Canada on 40.680 MHz, a distance of 14,588 kms. Bernard was granted the experimental license CYA373 by the Canadian authorities to carry out tests on the 40 MHz band.

These are the WSPR reports...

 Local   (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W SNR drift km
2023-02-12 21:04 VA2CY FN46lw ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681457 100 13 -4 14588
2023-02-12 20:52 VA2CY FN46lw ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681454 100 17 -4 14588
2023-02-12 20:44 VA2CY FN46lw ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681454 100 16 -3 14588
2023-02-12 20:28 VA2CY FN46lw ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681469 100 -3 -1 14588

Note the signal reports that range from -3dB to a whopping +17dB, well into the region where a comfortable SSB contact would have been possible.

When I was preparing this post, I noticed that the path was also open on the 13th of February.

2023-02-13 20:24 VA2CY FN46lw ZL1RS RF64vs 40.681467 100 -16 -4 14588

Bob also reports that he also heard several US signals as well as VA2CY on FT8 as well.

Bob, ZL1RS writes... "Some thumping signals received on 8m from VA2CY in Quebec this morning ... +17 in WSPR and +15 in FT8 !

Here are today's decodes (12th Feb) from my WSJT-X  ALL_WSPR . txt and ALL . txt files ...