Wednesday 5th May 2021: This was an unusual day on the 28 MHz band in that the main opening seemed to be to the east with very little from the south. The furthest station heard on FT8 was UA0SU near Lake Baikal in Siberia.
As for the propagation mode? Probably multi-hop Sporadic-E but you can never rule out F2 on 28 MHz over those kind of distances.
A total of 157 stations in 25 countries was heard on FT8 on 28 MHz.
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.
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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!
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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.
For every day during the month of April 2021, I listened from about 08:00 to 22:00 UTC every day for FT8 signals on the 28 MHz band. For the first few days, I heard only a few countries every day. The chart below shows from the 7th to the 30th of April.
As can be seen from the chart, the second week of April continued at a low level with just a few countries heard every day. The 10th was one of those exceptions in that I didn't hear a single signal despite listening all day.
The chart clearly shows that the Sporadic-E season started on the 15th of April with the third week being in marked contrast to the second week.
Lyrid Meteor Shower: For Sporadic-E to occur, there needs to be a supply of metallic dust from the residue of meteors burning up in the atmosphere at a height of about 100kms. The first real meteor shower of the Spring is the Lyrids which goes from the 18th to the 25th of April and peaks on the 22nd.
Was the early arrival of the Lyrids responsible for the Sporadic-E season starting on the 15th and 16th. The exact start and finish of the shower seems to be different depending on what source you look at.
The 23rd of April is for me always a main date for Sporadic-E. I just noticed every year from my logbook that it was a date that stood out. It's probably no accident that it comes just a day after the peak of the Lyrids.
Methodology & shortcomings: In hindsight, I probably should have recorded the number of stations and countries on a day by day basis but I wasn't really planning to record the start of the season. The chart was just an idea I had once the month was over.
I was able to extract the number of countries heard on FT8 from my previous blog posts but the exact number of stations heard wasn't good enough that I would have confidence in the data for a chart.
As we are still near the bottom of the solar cycle, most of the signals that were heard were via Sporadic-E. It might be more difficult to repeat this test near the sunspot peak as there could be a F2 propagation in the mix as well.
I'll make a note in my calendar and I might repeat the exercise in 2022 and see if the results are the same.
Tuesday 4th May 2021: The 28 MHz band was open more or less continuously for about 9 hours from about 13:00 to 22:00 UTC with signals from most of Europe coming through via Sporadic-E.
A total of 358 stations in 42 countries were heard which is usually a sign of a reasonably good day.
The main Sporadic-E opening seems to have been to Italy as can be seen from the concentration of stations on the map. While I wasn't able to do that many scans of the band, I did hear two Italian beacons on CW...
Radio ZS is the journal for the South African Radio League and the April 2021 edition is now available online and free to download.
Link HERE
The PDF publication is 72 pages long and there is a lot there that would be of interest to the wider amateur radio community.
Monday 3rd May 2021: Just another typical Sporadic-E day for the start of May with 234 stations from Europe heard on FT8 on the 28 MHz band.
The pattern has been much the same for the last two weeks. It starts off with FT8 stations appearing on the screen that were buried in the noise and I couldn't hear.
Eventually the FT8 signals get stronger and I can actually hear plenty of them. I do a scan of the beacon band from 28.150 to 28.300 MHz and I hear nothing.
At some stage, the FT8 signals get stronger and I can see the S-meter moving up to S5 and above. When I do a scan at that stage, I might hear a weak CW beacon. I'll try WSPR and hear nothing. Once I go back to the FT8 frequency, it's full of signals.
Traditionally, CW beacons were used to show that a band was open and stations would call then on SSB or CW. They seem to have a lot less relevance now.
I heard just one beacon on the 3rd of May.
EI7GL 28237.4 LA5TEN/B 18:41 03 May IO51TU<ES>JO59JP Norway
A few days ago, I had a post up about the new S55ZMS 8-metre beacon in Slovenia on 40.670 MHz and how it was on-air now from its new location on the 30th of April 2021. Post HERE
Just two days later on the 2nd of May, Tim EI4GNB near Dublin reports hearing it.
The signal was down at -9dB and buried in the noise but it still made it through. The distance was around 1745 kms which is pretty normal for one-hop Sporadic-E.
S51FB in Slovenia also reports hearing it on the 1st of May but that would have been via tropo.
S51FB 40670 S55ZMS 08:31 01 May 21 beacon Slovenia
If you hear this or any of the other 40 MHz beacons then be sure to spot it via the DXMaps website.
For a list of beacons on the 8-metre band then check out my 40 MHz page.
Saturday 1st May 2021: In contrast to the previous day, the 28 MHz band was pretty poor with just a weak Sporadic-E opening to the northern parts of Spain and Portugal.
Surrey Amateur Radio have just released the May-June 2021 issue of the Communicator, their bi-monthly online journal.
It has 110 pages and there is plenty in it of interest. You can get the link from this blog post.
Friday 30th April 2021: This was the first real big Sporadic-E opening on the 28 MHz band for 2021 with a total of 403 stations in 39 countries heard on FT8.
Just 4 of those were outside the normal Sporadic-E range and were probably via F2 propagation.
Update - 16th Feb 2021: The S55ZMS beacon is currently under test. The power output is 4-watts into a multi-band dipole. The plan is to eventually increase this to 10 watts and to move the beacon to the S53M contest location which is situated on top of a hill. A proper 40-MHz dipole is planned for the site but its exact location on the site and its orientation hasn't been finalised.
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More good news for the new 8-metre amateur radio band! A new beacon in Slovenia is now operational on 40.670 MHz.
The callsign of the beacon is S55ZMS and it has an output power of 7 watts into a dipole. The transmissions are in both CW and on PI4, a digital mode designed for beacons.
The beacon is located near Bakovci in the far eastern part of Slovenia near the border with Hungary and its locator is JN86BO.
The licensing authorities first gave permission for 8m beacons in Slovenia back in June of 1998 but not much happened at the time. This new beacon in the 40 MHz ISM band (Industrial, Scientific & Medical) is now the third operational 8m beacon in Europe joining OZ7IGY in Denmark and EI1KNH in Ireland.
The map above shows the location of the 8m beacon in Slovenia and the distances from it. It's very likely that it will be heard around Europe during the Summer months by Sporadic-E propagation. The range is likely to be in the region of 800 to 2100 kms.
The fact that the new beacon from Slovenia is also further south than the beacons in Ireland and Denmark is also significant. As we move further into solar cycle 25 and the flux rises, there will be times when 40 MHz signals will be heard much further away in places like North & South America, Africa and Asia.
It's also highly likely that the 40 MHz signal from Slovenia will be heard in South Africa through a combination of Trans-Equatorial Propagation (TEP) and Sporadic-E (Sp-E).
For more information on the 40 MHz band, visit this page on the blog... https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html
Borut, S50B in Slovenia informs me in an email message that he now has a 4-element Yagi (YU7EF design) for the 40 MHz (8m) band.
The South African ZS6WAB beacon on 40.475 MHz has already been heard by several stations in the south of Europe. See previous post.
As the map shows, the ZS6WAB is about 4000kms from the Geomagnetic Equator. Slovenia (S5) or Croatia (9A) seems to be around the same distance to the North so TEP (Trans-Equatorial Propagation) contacts should be possible.
40 MHz is also a band where there are even more Sporadic-E openings than 50 MHz (6m) so multi-hop Sp-E is also a possibility.
It's only a matter of time before we see the first contact between Europe and South Africa on the new 8-metre amateur band.
The main Sporadic-E opening was to the west of the Iberian peninsula with 11 stations heard from Spain and Portugal. Like the higher VHF bands, the Sporadic-E footprint on 28 MHz can often be quite localised with a certain area of a country being heard and nothing from the rest.
The only DX station was ZD7JC on St Helena Island in the South Atlantic. It's probably no accident that it lines up exactly with the Sporadic-E opening.
It is probably likely that the signal from St Helena traveled to Spain/Portugal via either F2 or TEP propagation and from there to Ireland via Sp-E.
As we move into May, we can expect the big openings on 28 MHz and above to start.
Frank Donovan, W3LPL is one of the top contesters in the USA and is a key forecaster of upcoming conditions on the HF amateur radio bands.
In a recent forecast (April 2021), he made a forecast about how good upcoming Solar Cycle 25 would be based on the Solar Flux numbers at the end of December 2021. I have put together a graphic which shows this above. The starting point for April 2021 is a solar flux index of 77 which is roughly the average for the month.
W3LPL wrote... “If the SFI persists below 90 through December 2021, then propagation should improve gradually until a solar maximum weaker than Cycle 24’s arrives in 2024.
If the SFI persists above 110 through December 2021, then propagation should improve rapidly until a solar maximum similar to Cycle 24’s arrives in 2024.
“If the SFI persists above 125 through December 2021, then propagation is likely to improve more rapidly until a solar maximum stronger than Cycle 24’s arrives in 2024.”
(SFI = Solar Flux Index)
As with everything on the sun, there is always an amount of uncertainty in solar forecasts but it will be interesting to revisit this at the end of the year and see where we're at.
Wednesday 28th April 2021: This was a reasonably modest day on the 28 MHz band with 71 stations in 21 countries heard on FT8.
There was some Sporadic-E propagation to Europe with EA7GPW in the south of Spain being the last station heard at 21:44 UTC. There was also a modest opening to South America.
I didn't get a chance to do any scans of the band as I was out for a long walk for most of the day. One of the advantages of FT8 is that you can check to see what propagation conditions were like on the band without actually being there.
The solar flux on the day was 79 which is not much above what it was at sunspot minimum.
I came across details of this QSO recently which I thought was interesting. While long distance contacts in the region of 700kms on the 70cms UHF band are probably not that unusual in the Caribbean, this one was of interest as it was via D-STAR, a digital voice mode.
On the 18th of April 2021, Brett PJ2BR on Curacao completed a successful contact with Jose WP4KJJ on Puerto Rico on 432 MHz using D-STAR. See video below.
It's very easy to find videos or information about D-STAR being used for working through local digital repeaters or local contacts but it's unusual to see it being used for a long distance contact on the 70cms UHF band.
When you think you’ve done it all...Opening on 70cm to Puerto Rico. @WP4KJJ and I had a short DV/Dstar QSO on 70cm!! I am ecstatic! Distance 736Km, DV. Breaks the Covid lockdown routine 😁 One for the books. pic.twitter.com/iEVKESi2Re
— Brett Ruiz (@pj2br) April 17, 2021
Just two long distance FT8 reports were uploaded to the PSK Reporter website, LU9FVS in Argentina and ZD7JC on St Helena Island.
The main Sporadic-E opening to Europe was to the south of Spain. I did one scan of the beacon band when the signals appeared modest but heard nothing.
I really got the impression that FT8 signals need to be up around S5 before any CW beacons will be heard. Whatever people think about FT8, it's a great propagation tool.
A total of 45 stations in 13 countries were heard on FT8 and uploaded to the PSK Reporter website.
The Irish 4m beacon EI4RF has now been upgraded and is now transmitting on 70.013 MHz. It was previously operating on 70.130 MHz due to the limits of the older Irish 4m band.
It is still located to the south of Dublin in the locator square IO63VE.
It is running 25-watts into a 3-element Yagi pointing east (90 degrees). The map above shows the beam heading with the -3dB (half power) headings as well.
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| EI4RF: 3-element Yagi for 70 MHz |
The signal for the beacon comes from a GPS locked RFzero board and it uses the following format per minute: 3 x 15 second FT8 transmission and 1 x CW transmission.
Monday 26th April 2021: This was a pretty modest day on the 28 MHz band with just 46 stations on FT8 in 19 countries heard.
The one surprise was VP8NO on the Falkland Islands who somehow made it through on his own. Other than that, it was Sporadic-E around Europe.
Some of the signals were quiet reasonable. I heard one German station who was S7 on the meter but when I did a scan of the beacon band, I heard nothing. It seems as if the Sp-E footprint was quite small.
The other strong signals were from Norway and Sweden and I heard two CW beacons...
I think I might stay monitoring FT8 on 10m until the end of the month and then move over to WSPR.
