I have now updated the beacon list for the 40 MHz and 60 MHz bands.
If you hear them then please spot on the DXMaps website or DXSummit DX Cluster.
For more information on the 40 MHz band, go to https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html
I have now updated the beacon list for the 40 MHz and 60 MHz bands.
If you hear them then please spot on the DXMaps website or DXSummit DX Cluster.
For more information on the 40 MHz band, go to https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html
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.
Saturday 15th May 2021: The last few days have been very good for Sporadic-E propagation with the 28 MHz band staying open for most of each day. The 15th of May started with the band being open from the previous day and finally closed for me at 22:44 UTC. I heard 685 WSPR transmissions from 94 stations during the day.
This was the first day of the 2021 season that I heard a 28 MHz WSPR Trans-Atlantic signal. I got just one decode of Vernon, VE1VDM's signal in Nova Scotia. Vernon was using a QRPLabs U3S transmitter with a 4-watt amp. His antenna was a full size Windom.
Sometimes the interference you can see on the waterfall display can come from your own monitor. In this post, Tim EI4GNB suggests some ways to reduce it.
I have been reminded of just how VGA displays can mess with radio signals. See the two waterfall displays when my radio is on 40 MHz / 8-metres.
A) The photo above show the waterfall when the display has a refresh rate of 59 & 60 Hz.
B) The photo below shows the waterfall when the refresh rate is at 30 Hz.
Also note I have reduced the 'waterfall zero' in WSJTx to make the lines more faint, but I assure you they are strong QRM.
This only seems to be a problem with VGA + Cables, and some other ops have noted this also, fixing with more robust leads with better shields. HDMI and inbuilt laptop displays seem to avoid this.
Some people never see this, as the bands they work are not harmonically effected, but for me, it's seems to appear worst on 8m when using a refresh rate of 60 Hz or 59 Hz. I mistook it for the usual ISM stuff on 40 MHz, but it's 100% caused by my VGA display!
Screen set to 59 Hz |
Screen set to 30 Hz |
It's like WHACK-A-MOLE, as if you switch to a refresh rate to clean up one band, then you may see the lines again on another band. So, I have several profiles in my display control panel to switch between.
I know I should move to HDMI, but I run 4 PCs here through a KVM, sharing a monitor, keyboard and mouse between them, so that is not an option for me.
People having QRM issues on 40 MHz / 8m might want to try messing with their display settings to see if things improve.
Tim, EI4GNB
Thanks to Tim for the above tips! Remember that interference like this may apply to any radio band. A quick way to check is to turn off your monitor for 10 seconds and then turn it back on. If your monitor is causing interference to your radio then you should see a 10 second gap in the interference lines.Friday the 14th of May was another day where the 28 MHz band seemed to be open for nearly 21 of the 24 hours.
I left the radio on the WSPR frequency all day and heard 903 WSPR transmissions from 86 stations on 28 MHz.
The most interesting signals were again the closest ones due to very short Sporadic-E skip.
These were the WSPR stations that were heard just from England alone...
After the aurora and disturbed conditions on Wednesday the 12th of May, the 28 MHz band opened on that evening at about 18:00 UTC. What was really unusual was that the band stayed open that night and all through Thursday the 13th of May... roughly 36 hours. This is in marked contrast to the Sporadic-E openings for the previous few weeks where the band might open at some stage during the day and then close late in the evening.
As the 28 MHz band was open all day, I left the radio monitoring the WSPR frequency for the 24 hours. I heard a total of 945 WSPR transmissions from 87 stations around Europe which is very encouraging as it looked a few week back that there was very little WSPR activity.
The map above shows what I heard. What makes it different from FT8 is that there is a wide distribution of FT8 stations spread across Europe that are trying to make contacts. WSPR however is concentrated in pockets of activity based around mainly the west of Germany, the Netherlands and the south of England.
What I found of interest was the short skip opening to the UK...
Distances of about 1000 to 2200 kms are pretty common on 28 MHz during Sporadic-E openings but the opening needs to be really intense for the skip distance to drop down to 500kms or less.
Tim, EI4GNB reports making a FT8 contact on 40.680 MHz with 9A5CW in Croatia during the big Sporadic-E opening on the 7th of May 2021.
The screen composite below shows the FT8 contact from Tim's station.
While this wasn't the first 40 MHz contact between Ireland and Croatia, I think it may have been the first time 9A5CW has worked Ireland on this new amateur radio band.
This is the screen from 9A5CW...
It's good to see activity on the increase on 40 MHz from Croatia.
For more information on the 40 MHz amateur radio band, go to https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html
Wednesday the 12th of May 2021 was an unusual day. The first half of the day seemed to be dead on 28 MHz with very little happening which was probably due to an aurora in progress. From about 18:00 UTC onwards, it sprung into life. This is what I heard on FT8 up until 18:30 UTC...
Once it was obvious that the signals were getting stronger, I moved over to monitoring for WSPR signals...
What was also unusual for me was that I was hearing the SE of the UK which is about 650kms away for several hours. These are some weak QRSS signals I got a grab of...
What was unusual was just steady the signals were. Normally with short skip on 28 MHz, the signals are fading. QRSS signals come in and fade away. On the 12th, the QRSS signals from the UK just seemed to be there at a pretty consistent level for hours. They never got that strong as can be seen from the WSPR reports below but the QRSS signals never really faded out either.
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.
After the big Sporadic-E openings over the weekend, Monday the 10th of May was pretty subdued on 28 MHz with just 7 stations heard on WSPR. Tuesday the 11th of May was however somewhat better with 29 stations heard on WSPR on 10 metres.
It was nice to hear the ZB2TEN WSPR beacon eight times which I think might be running 200mW rather than the 100mW listed. 'Hear' might be a bit misleading in that the strongest signal was -24dB which is about 10dB lower than what I could hear by ear. It just goes to show the power of WSPR fir digging out those weak signals.
It still amazes me that I am listening to a signal coming from their little SOTABEAMS WSPRLite transmitter shown above into a wire antenna.
When there were no WSPR signals for a while, I switched over to monitoring FT8 and it seemed to be mainly the south of Spain, the south of Germany and the north of Italy. The only signal of note was 9G5FI from Ghana.
Sunday 9th May 2021: While the 9th didn't seem to be as good as the 7th & 8th, there were still lots of Sporadic-E signals on 28 MHz for most of the day. Again, I spent most of the day on WSPR with the receive map for me shown above.
This time, I heard 7 stations running 50mW or less.
On the 8th of May 2021, the PSK Reporter website hit another milestone when it passed the 20 Billion reception records mark. As the image shows above, it was recording almost 1000 reception reports per second on Saturday afternoon as it whizzed past 20 billion.
The vast majority of these reception records are of course due to the hugely popular FT8 mode.
Jeff, F0FYF in the south-east of France reports hearing the new S55ZMS 8-metre beacon in Slovenia on 40.670 MHz on Friday the 7th of May 2021.
F0FYF wrote... "recycling is good .. an old 4-element antenna for Swiss TV, somewhat retouched for 40 Mhz with its reception amplifier and the beacon #S55ZMS is received intermittently #hamradio#radioamateur" (via Google translate) (Radio = Yaesu FT-897)
The beacon transmits in CW and PI4 and some of the decodes by Jeff are shown below...
The distance was in the region of 775kms which suggests that the propagation mode was short hop Sporadic-E.
In terms of short hop Sporadic-E, the 40 MHz band is worse than 28 MHz but better than 50 MHz. Under exceptional conditions, anything down to 500kms might be expected at 40 MHz.
Since this new 40 MHz beacon moved to its final location at the end of April 2021, it has been now been heard in Ireland, Portugal and France.
For more information on the 40 MHz band, go to https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/p/40-mhz.html
Friday 7th May 2021: This was the second big Sporadic-E opening on 28 MHz with 568 stations in 52 countries heard on FT8 (30th of April was 403 in 39). This wasn't even the full extent of the opening as I spent maybe 2 hours listening for beacons or WSPR signals.
The map above shows the big Sporadic-E opening to the centre of Europe and you can see the arc of double hop Sporadic-E stations further east.
The one signal of interest for me was VO1CH in Newfoundland, Canada which was probably double hop Sp-E and a hint of things to come towards North America.
Beacons: I also managed to log 11 beacons on CW...
Mid-Ulster Amateur Radio Club in the north of Ireland hold online ZOOM presentations every few weeks which they then post to their YouTube channel.
This week, they had a presentation by Dick Pasoe, G0BPS about the history of QRP (low power) radio operation.
Many radio amateurs prefer the challenge of building their own low power radios and have the satisfaction of using something they built themself rather than buying a 'plug n play' commercial radio.
The video gives a general overview of what is involved.