Today there was some good ES on the VHF bands. I managed to do some QSO. The FT8 monitor received quite an amount of stations. MUF moved >200MHz and there were some spots of stations from EA/CT… I did not receive anything on 2m.
worked stations: EA6XQ, EA3WD, EA5DF, EA6SX, OK1AGE, DL6AKK, CT1BXT, EA5TT
There was some SSB traffic as well. I did not have time to try. Some SSB stations call above .200 and cannot be answered anyway by DL stations.
German BNetzA released notifications 414/2018 and 415/2018. Those extend the permission for class E operators to work in the 13 and 6cm band as well give a new permission for 4m band access in DL. On 4m class A will be allowed from now on to Dec.31 2019 to work between .150 and .200 with 25W ERP max.
Recent days showed some more sporadic E conditions. I worked EA and LZ. Monday evening i went away from the PC and when i returned i saw a CQ from 9K2YM. Unfortunately it was too late. Later on i also catched a CQ from S01WS. PSKReporter showed some really interesting spots by DK2EA. He received stations from the Carribean sea and others received transmissions from Japan and eastern China.
CQ of 9K2YM
4m ES condition on July22 2018.
BTW: the very nice and useful DXMaps page has changed to openstreetmap. Now its possible to show screenshots which was not possible because of license restrictions before. Thank you very much!
This week some people from here work from Estonia under the call ES0UG (and ES0UG/8). Since there are no good ES conditions currently we tried MSK144 meteor scatter. I did not think there will be a lot success since i can only run 25W ERP. But finally i god some of their CQ.
ES0UG/8 calling CQ in MSK144 from KO18
During my lunch break i did not have success. In the evening we tried again and were able to complete the QSO to KO18 field within about 1.5h.
Since yesterday evening the crew is qrv from the next island in KO19. We tried again in MSK144 and this time we had bursts rather early. It still took more than an hour to complete the QSO and this time i have a nice screenshot.
ES0UG in KO19
Since i did not expect that it will work at all i am quite happy with my first two QSO via MS. I also got some spots from G3SHK. Many thanks!
This evening great ES opening to EI and G. And a surprise in between with S01WS.
It started in CW with EI4DQ in IO51WU and then i worked:
EI8IQ,IO62
GW6TEO,IO71
G0MJI,IO83
G4BRK,IO91
GW3TKH,IO81
G4FKI,IO92
G4APJ,IO83
G3SHK,IO90
GD0TEP,IO74
G0CHE,IO90
S01WS,IL46
G0RNU,JO01
GI0RWO,IO74
MM0INH,IO85
SV3/SM4KYN,KM16
GU6EFB,IN89
G8TTI,IO81
In the screenshots 23cm is displayed as QRG. This is because i use a wrong transverter setting in my SDR software which is taken over by WSJT via hamlib.
finally worked S01WS
big signals on 4m
This evening pretty good ES opening into several area of Europe. Also the 4m band was in quite interesting condition.
I worked some EA station + OH + SP all in FT8. Seems most of the stations are in this mode now.
Signal were pretty amazing strong. Also heard G and several times the OY6BEC beacon in IP62 as well as a LA beacon.
4m_FT8_20180601
4m_ft8_20180601_2
17:24:20,EA6VQ,JM19,-16,-17
17:36:00,EC1AJL,,+3,-06
17:44:18,EA1AF,IN71,+06,-05
19:55:31,DK2EA,JO50,-18,-12
20:15:00,OH8WW,KP24,-01,-11
20:52:58,SP3RNZ,JO92,-11,-06
Yesterday the 4m TX permission in DL ended for this year. Hopefully we get another one next year. For me it was the first time and it was rather interesting to compare real band opening with the propagation prediction on dxmaps. Unfortunately i missed the big ES in June. I was on vacation and also my transverter was not ready that time. But still i made some QSO.
A frequent “beacon” on the band was DK2EA. We had several short qso and it was always a stable connection although we both used low power and small antennas.
During the ES openings i worked EA, EI, SV and LZ. I also worked some OK stations and some local stations as well.
While i was using my FT-817 as IF TRX last days i hooked up my HiQSDR to the transverter.
The day before yesterday i noticed some band opening to G. I heard the beacons GB3ANG and GM8RBR. You can see the screenshot below. While GB3ANG was rather stable over a long time GM8RBR more in the north was fading in and out all the time.
4m ES 2017-08-30
Find the audio files here:
GB3ANG/B 20170830
GM8RBR/B 20170830
GM4ZMK 20170830 calling CQ
DG3LSM 20170830 local
Now i will disassemble my 4m station and switch to other activities. Hope to hear you on this nice band next year.
Last week i met another ES opening and worked LZ1ZP and LZ1ZX. I also heard the LZ2HV beacon and once again SV2JAO/B.
LZ1ZP was extremely strong. Here you can find a short video of his signal in SSB (29MHz = 70MHz with transverter):
Below you find some audio snippets of ES signals i recorded the last weeks.
2017-08-03 4O0BCG/B
2017-08-03 SV2JAO/B
2017-08-25 LZ2HV/B
2017-08-25 LZ2HV/B
2017-08-25 LZ1ZP CW
2017-08-25 LZ1ZP SSB
Today i was lucky again. During lunch i worked LZ1AG and OK1VBN. Heard the beacons SV2JAO/B and 4O0BCG/B. Also 9A/S51DI/P came back to my CQ, but i did not manage to copy the complete call. Sorry! Unfortunately i did not have a 2m rig available since the band was also open on 144MHz.
Today some nice qso during Lunch time.. ei3io and ei4gnb both in io63. And heard ei4rf/b from the same field…