FT8 signals heard on 28 MHz - Sat 9th & Sun 10th March 2019

Another quiet weekend on 28 MHz with the highlight being one South American station being heard.

Sat 9th March 2019... Just a few signals from the UK and Germany heard.

073430  -6 -0.3 1052 ~  CQ G0OYQ IO93
081100 -16  0.1  789 ~  CQ DO3MA JO40
105630 -15 -0.3 1811 ~  CQ DJ5JD JO33
110430  -7 -0.2 1115 ~  CQ G4EKJ IO93

Opening to Sierra Leone on 28 MHz after quiet week - Sat 2nd to Fri 8th March 2019

I have been monitoring the FT8 frequency on 28 MHz for the last week and things have been pretty quiet. The best day of the last week was Friday the 8th of March when there was an opening to West Africa.

This is a breakdown of the last seven days...


Saturday 2nd March 2019... Just two stations heard all day.
135445 -13  0.7 1690 ~  CQ PA8MC JO20
164015 -11 -0.1  596 ~  PD1KD PD1DL RR73

IRTS Membership - 2000 to 2018

The Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) is the national association representing amateur radio in Ireland.

They have just released their membership stats for the end of 2018 and it stands at 919 members, a drop of 8. To put that in context, that's a drop of 0.9% so it's pretty much negligible.

That figure of 919 includes overseas members and short wave listeners so the actual number of EI stations that are members is probably around the 770-780 mark, about the same as last year.

Thanks to the new GDPR regulations introduced in 2018, the data on the total number of radio amateurs in Ireland is not available. However, it is probably much the same as last year.

At the end of 2017, roughly 45% of all EI stations were members of the IRTS. Contrast that to the ARRL in the USA where the figure is below 20%!

IRTS release Spring 2019 issue of Echo Ireland

The Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) have just released PDF version of the Spring 2019 edition of Echo Ireland to members.

The electronic version is sent out to members before the printed copy and is of course much cheaper to distribute. These savings help to keep the Society in the Black as costs are increasing all the time.

Details of the PDF option below...

DMR repeaters in Ireland - March 2019

These are the DMR repeaters in Ireland at present. Some are on air, some are planned.

The full listing of all DMR repeaters can be seen here... http://ham-digital.org/dmr-rptrreg.php

New Digital repeaters near Dublin on the way

Update March 2019 : It looks as if there are two new repeaters on the way.

EI7BCR will be located at Three Rock in the Dublin Mountains and will have DMR ID of 272222. This should give excellent coverage of the capital city and will be a great addition to the digital network in Ireland.

The proposed output frequency is 439.7875 MHz and the input is 9.0 MHz lower.

The second repeater EI7LLD is located near Kingscourt, Co.Cavan. This will have DMR ID 272223. This should give good coverage of Dundalk and the area to the north-west of Dublin.

The proposed output frequency is 439.7625 MHz and the input is 9.0 MHz lower.

This was first announced back in November 2018 and there is no sign of them to date.

RSGB Paper suggests additional access to 40 MHz unlikely in the UK

The IARU Region 1 (Africa, Europe, Middle-East) Interim Meeting takes place April 27-28 in Vienna, Austria.

An Information Paper submitted by the RSGB seems to suggest additional access to 40 MHz is unlikely in the UK. See below... 

Document number: VIE19 C5 INFO1 
Source: RSGB – Murray Niman G6JYB, Spectrum Chair 
Subject: Innovation Bands & Activities (Information Paper) Committee(s): 
C5 Summary: The Information below is a short summary regarding the additional spectrum available to UK Full Licensees and how it is used. 

In general:- 
• All require a strong justification, conditions to avoid interference and have a Strong Emphasis on Innovation & New Activities – not ‘More of the Same’ 
• They are renewable permits - not permanent allocations 
• Renewal is based on regular progress reports to our regulator against the purpose it was made available for Previous Bands/Requests:- 
• 40 MHz – One Propagation Beacon – additional access refused 

Link... https://vienna.iaru-r1.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/VIE19-C5-INFO1-RSGB-Innovation-BandsActivities.pdf

When will the next sunspot cycle start???

At the moment, we are very much at the bottom of Solar Cycle with no sunspots being reported on the sun for the whole of February 2019.

The obvious question is when will the next solar cycle start? When will conditions improve?

Some think conditions will improve in 2019 but my own take on this is why the rush? In terms of a solar cycle, we have only just got to the minimum and we will probably hop along the bottom for a while before things pick up.

As with all things associated with the sun, we can only make calculated guesses based on past observations.

Say we take an arbitrary figure of an average of 25 sunspots on the sun. This point is measured on the way down to the minimum and on the way back out again.

Looking at the chart below, the sunspot number was below 25 for roughly three years between solar cycles 22 and 23.

The next minimum between solar cycles 23 and 24 was deeper however and lasted longer. It was below the 25 sunspot mark for about five years.

If and that is a big IF this current minimum is deep like the last one and is below the 25 sunspot mark for five years then we get a chart like this.

This suggests that conditions for the rest of of 2019 will remain poor. It also suggests that it will be the second half of 2020 before the number of sunspots and conditions start to pick up. It will be mid-2021 before the sunspot numbers hit 25.

A sunspot number of 25 seems to roughly correlate with a solar flux of about 80 which isn't exactly huge. It should result in some more North-South openings on 28 MHz as well of course much better conditions on the lower bands.

Things after that however will only get better and it's anyone's guess as to how high the next peak will be.

In conclusion, if the next solar cycle behaves like the previous one then it was be mid-2021 before we see any dramatic improvement.

Early 6m DXing in Ireland article reprinted in club newsletter in the USA

A few weeks back, a club in the USA made contact with me about republishing one of the articles on my old website about the 50 MHz band in Ireland from 1957 to 1980.

The article is now in the March 2019 issue of the club newsletter.

Opening to South Africa on 28 MHz - Fri 1st March 2019

After a dismal three weeks, the 10-metre band finally opened up to South Africa on the 1st of March.

These were the stations heard...
110100 -13 -0.6 1264 ~  CQ DJ8QX JO31
114415   1  0.1  899 ~  CQ ZS5PD KF59
114615 -15 -0.2  441 ~  CQ EA5AMC IM98
120715 -16 -0.1  664 ~  CQ G7ODN IO92
123545 -17 -1.2  942 ~  CQ G0OYQ IO93

Some points of interest...

1) South Africa... There seems to have been a Sporadic-E cloud over the Bay of Biscay allowing me to hear an EA5 station near Valencia. This then coupled into some F2 propagation to South Africa.

2) Low Activity... The map on the right above shows who heard ZS5PD on 28 MHz. PSK Reporter shows only four stations hearing him which suggests a distinct lack of stations monitoring on 28 MHz.

3) Sporadic-E Propagation... I noticed from G3XBM's blog that he was hearing an EA7 station near Gibraltar about the same time I was hearing an EA5 near Valencia. We were both probably getting signals from the same Sporadic-E cloud over the Bay of Biscay.

It's likely that I was just in the right location as the path to EA5 lined up with South Africa. For G3XBM 500kms or so to the east, the extended path beyond EA7 probably was just down into the South Atlantic.

Slim pickings but hopefully things might pick up as the equinox approaches.

FT8 signals heard on 28 MHz - 23rd to 28th February 2019

I have been listening on 28 MHz for the last few days on the FT8 and the pickings have been slim. Just a few signals were heard most days with no sign of anything from outside Europe.

The last time I heard a signal from outside Europe was back on the 8th of February when I heard Paraguay. February has been easily the worst month of the 2018/2019 winter season in terms of 10 metre propagation. Easily known we are at the bottom of the sunspot cycle!

Perhaps as we get closer to the equinox, things will pick up? At least we're only 6-8 weeks away from the start of the Summer Sporadic-E season.

This is what was heard over the last few days.

Sat 23rd Feb... Three signals!

IRTS paper on the new 5 and 8 metre bands to be presented at IARU Meeting

The IARU Region 1 (Africa, Europe, Middle-East) Interim Meeting takes place April 27-28 in Vienna, Austria.

Among the many things discussed, there will be a paper from the Irish Radio Transmitters Society on the new proposed bands at 40 MHz and 60 MHz.

Link... https://vienna.iaru-r1.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/VIE19-C5-002-IRTS-40-and-60-MHz-bandplans.pdf

There probably isn't a whole lot new in it that hasn't been seen before but it does present the information to other member societies. If the new band plans are formally adopted then other countries may start looking for allocations of their own.

Extract from the document..."Next Steps : Tables 1 and 2 below are suggested band plans for most of the 5 and 8 metre spectrum granted to the amateur service in Ireland by ComReg. The plans are loosely based on the current 50–54 MHz IARU band plan and have been in the public domain since May 2018 by means of the IRTS web-site.

Concerning propagation beacons work has begun on upgrading some existing beacons and procuring beacons in the new bands. Transverters are already on the market to transvert 40-42 MHz to 28-30 MHz. Originally intended for the Italian 4 Watt “Apparati a 43 MHz” service in the 43.3000 – 43.5875 MHz band, an “international” version is freely available in the Ukraine. This 25 Watt FM transceiver for the band 42.3000 – 45.0875 MHz has a 224 channel capability and is manufactured in Korea and the Philippines.

Amateurs in the Dublin area are currently trialling both the 40 MHz transverter and
the 42 MHz FM transceiver."

Other VHF related papers to be presented at the meeting can be seen here...
https://vienna.iaru-r1.org/conference-documents/c5/

Update : An Information Paper submitted by the RSGB seems to suggest additional access to 40 MHz is unlikely. See below...

Document number: VIE19 C5 INFO1
Source: RSGB – Murray Niman G6JYB, Spectrum Chair
Subject: Innovation Bands & Activities (Information Paper)
Committee(s): C5
Summary: The Information below is a short summary regarding the additional
spectrum available to UK Full Licensees and how it is used. In general:-
• All require a strong justification, conditions to avoid interference and have a
Strong Emphasis on Innovation & New Activities – not ‘More of the Same’
• They are renewable permits - not permanent allocations
• Renewal is based on regular progress reports to our regulator against the
purpose it was made available for

Previous Bands/Requests:-
• 40 MHz – One Propagation Beacon – additional access refused

Link...
https://vienna.iaru-r1.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/VIE19-C5-INFO1-RSGB-Innovation-BandsActivities.pdf

Listening to OSCAR 100

The new Geostationary satellite OSCAR 100 is now up and running and the narrow band down-link can be heard online here... https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/

The up-link is at 2.4 GHz and the down-link is at 10 GHz.

Anytime I've listened during the last week, there has been a small number of signals on the down-link. There has been a lot of hype about this particular project although I'd wonder about how popular will it be?

The coverage footprint is shown below...

FT8 signals heard on 28 MHz - 20th, 21st & 22nd Feb 2019

Conditions on 28 MHz were pretty mediocre over the last few days.

Wed 20th Feb 2019... Possibly the worst day so far in 2019. Heard one PA station from the Netherlands. That was it!

Thurs 21st Feb 2019... Forgot to make a map but these were the stations heard. Only thing of note was a weak Sporadic-E opening to the south.
111230 -14 -0.9 1749 ~  GI4SNA EA5AIH IM98
111245  -6 -0.7 2092 ~  CQ EA5GOR IM98
114900 -18 -0.0  693 ~  CQ PD1DL JO22
120200 -14  0.1 1470 ~  CQ DX 2E0JRT JO01
120600 -13  0.0 1326 ~  CQ EA7KS IM86
123215  -3 -0.1 1608 ~  CQ G0FWX IO82

Fri 22nd Feb 2019... Interesting how I heard lots of meteor bursts in the morning. Otherwise, just another few signals.

092645 -12 -0.7 1038 ~  CQ G0OYQ IO93
093945  -4 -0.2 1740 ~  CQ G0FWX IO82
101500 -17 -0.2  786 ~  CQ GW7KNF IO72
103830 -12 -0.3 1496 ~  CQ EI7HDB IO62
121630 -18 -0.7 1990 ~  CQ F1RAD JN35
132230 -19 -0.8  702 ~  CQ PD1DL JO22
134030  -8 -0.6 1534 ~  CQ DJ8QX JO31
145130 -16 -0.9 1754 ~  CQ PA8MC JO20

Solar flux was 71. Not a hint of anything outside Europe.

40 MHz band added to DXMAPS

It looks as if the new 40 MHz or 8-metre band has just been added to the DXMAPS website.

This website which is maintained by Gabriel EA6VQ is one of the main VHF websites in Europe and is very useful for tracking Sporadic-E propagation during the Summer months.

It's probably safe to say that the vast majority of radio amateurs in Europe or the USA have no idea that there is even an allocation at 40 MHz anywhere in the world. By having it listed on a website like this, it should at least raise the bands profile somewhat.

Up to now, 40 MHz spots on the DX Clusters such as DXSUMMIT or DXWATCH have been hard to find as it's such an unusual band. Lots of people do searches for 50 MHz or 28 MHz and of course, the 40 MHz spots fail to appear in these.

It's a small step but hopefully a few more might try transmitting and listening on the band during the Summer months.

FT8 signals heard on 144 MHz... 18th & 19th Feb 2019

I got a good dose of reality over the last two days listening for FT8 signals on 144 MHz! i.e. If the band is flat then I'm not going to hear much.

These were the only signals heard on the 18th of February...

114500 -12  0.1  734 ~  CQ M1MLM IO83
133015 -21 -0.2 1227 ~  CQ G1IVL IO82
134945 -18 -0.1 1799 ~  M6NVE G0OMF 73
204500 -16 -0.1 1438 ~  CQ G7RHF IO82

The 19th of February was much the same...

135715 -14 -0.2 1233 ~  CQ G1IVL IO82
154815 -17 -0.2 1792 ~  CQ G0OMF IO83
155615 -20  0.2 1338 ~  CQ G8IXN IO70
194815 -15 -0.1  748 ~  DL5KCD G4RRA -18

It would seem that the number of stations on the band is highly dependent on whether there are good conditions or not.

FT8 signals heard on 28 MHz - 16th & 17th Feb 2019

Another two days on 28 MHz and nothing much to get excited about.

On Saturday the 16th of February 2019, a handful of FT8 signals were heard from around Europe. Hardly a major opening.

Stations heard on the 16th of Feb...
090100 -19 -0.1 1970 ~  CQ DJ5JD JO33
092030   3 -0.1  860 ~  CQ EG2ETS IN83
115815 -10 -0.1 1230 ~  CQ 2E1RDX IO92
121045 -15  0.5 1695 ~  CQ HB9DFP JN37
124200 -16  0.0 1088 ~  CQ EA5GOR IM98
125915  -8  0.0 1635 ~  CQ ON6CQ JO11
130115 -18 -0.2  515 ~  CQ DG1RUG JO30
142300  -4 -0.3  600 ~  BEACON PD1DL
151300  -7 -0.4  598 ~  CQ PD1DL JO22

Sunday the 17th of February 2019 wasn't much better except that all of the signals seemed to come from an easterly direction.

The small number of stations seems to be a combination of a lack of propagation and the low number of stations actually using the band.

Think I might switch back to 2 metres for a while.

FT8 signals heard on 144 MHz - Fri 15th Feb 2019

This was a day of two halves with plenty of signals heard on 144 MHz in the morning and hardly anything in the evening.

It's a pretty amazing map considering I'm just using a Slim Jim antenna resting up against the rafters in the attic of my house. When I look at the map and remember that this is 144 MHz, there is a bit of a 'wow' moment.

There are the stations heard...

Opening on 144 MHz - Thurs 14th Feb 2019

After several days of dire conditions on 28 MHz, I noticed a post on Facebook about a lift on 2 metres. I decided it was time for a change so I monitored 144 MHz instead for the day.

The level of activity was certainly a marked change to 28 MHz! All of those signals were heard with a simple Slim Jim vertical half-wave in the attic of my house.

It should be noted that this was a Thursday, not the weekend. I was suprised that there were so many stations on the band.

I don't have any evidence but I suspect that a LOT of guys are now using FT8 on 144 MHz with vertical aerials. I don't believe that everyone shown above is using a beam or is horizontally polarised. I suspect a lot of people are just using simple verticals and a few watts to get the most out of the band.

FT8 signals heard on 28 MHz - 9th, 10th & 13th Feb 2019

Conditions on 28 MHz have been dire for the last few days.

On the 13th of February, I heard one lone FT8 signal on the band after listening most of the day.

The 11th and 12th were just as bad and I didn't bother making maps.

On the Sunday, there were a few signals and it was probably due to the fact it was the weekend and people were on.