January VHF Contest - notes

 I didn't put an effort into this contest, the only working band right now is 6M. I spent most of the time (per usual) cleaning up the shack/office. Here are my notes:

- VP9NM: Bermuda was in for a while on Sunday. I was hearing him regardless of direction. 

- PV8AAS: Seems like we got a little TEP. I only got a single decode, but lots of other stations were working him:

- Had a lot of band noise pointing towards the Caribbean and South America. 

- Finally got the LP-100A power meter installed on 6m. Wow, this thing is nice!

- Final score was 34Q in 16 grids for a grand total of 544!

Winter Sporadic E - shack rebuilding

 Last August I had some system integration issues with my station that kept me off the air for a number of months. May last log entry was from August 5th, with N2RJ on 6m FT8. I had a really tremendous 6m season in 2021, but my shack was in an epic wiring nightmare. Halfway through the season I integrated my Larcan 1KW and and also moved to using an Airspy R2 for my main RX. 

The result of both integrations was rats nest of splitters, pre-amps, relays, control boards, and DC wiring. Work and life got busy, I pushed it aside and started dreaming of the 2022 Es season. 

This past week I decided that I really missed having a working station, so I every so slow started to pull all the cables apart. At the same time I started integrating a new station computer, a mini system that has a ton of CPU and memory, but the size of a mac-mini. 

A clean slate. I got the 6M station wired up to the power supply and antenna and audio interface. Simple, nothing fancy. I could heard signals again!

I was somewhat surprised at the level of local 6m FT8 activity, it seemed like much more than last winter. This is a good thing. 

This Saturday evening, around 9pm local, I started to hear some mid-west stations calling and I managed to get a few in the log:

K9WKJ   EN44 
WO0Z   EN34 
K0DAS   EN42 
K9DLI   EN42
AA9JS   EN51
KX9X   EN50
WA8TTM   EM79
N0LWF   EN10
WB8EJN   EM48
K4XXX   EM77
KC9VVX   EN60
W4RXR   EM65
N9FN   EN60
KG5JJ   EM26
XE2X   EL06
WT9J   EM59
K0GU   DN70
NG1H   EL06
KC0MAS   EM28
WB8ZBT   EM55

N3CY   EM74

K0PHP   EM38

K4NO   EM64

N5BO   EM60

Not bad for January!

FN45 completed - 6m and 2m

 

This past saturday I managed to check off FN45 for both 6m and 2m. Peter, KA6U, is on an epic road trip from Floida to Maine, and back, all for the purpose of getting as many states as possible on 222 EME for Worked All States. My 222 system is offline, but luckily for me, he also brought 6m and 2m with him for the non EME times. 

"I plan to be QRV from FN45 Quill Hill in Maine tomorrow morning, Saturday from about 1130UTC until about 2130UTC.  I will be on a 2100 foot hill in a flat open plain in Maine.  I will be running a KW, 3 el 6M M2 Yagi at 30 feet with EME quality preamp.  I may also run my 2M station 7 el M2.  In particular I will look for long haul opportunities to the west and southwest.  I will monitor PJ and Slack assuming I have Internet access which is likely (have not been there before).  There is a possibility I could return to the site again early in the week if there is interest."

2021 CQ VHF WW Wrap Up

 I got back from Vacation on Friday in time for the 2021 CQ VHF WW contest, which ran Saturday and Sunday. I had a few things to do on Saturday so I didn't really put in a big effort, we had some sick family members that needed attention and my contest logging situation needed to be worked on. I ended up putting in a pretty full effort on Sunday 'till the end of the contest at 5pm local. Here are the results:

 Band   Mode  QSOs     Pts  Grd  Pt/Q

    50  FT8     63      63   36   1.0

    50  USB     25      25   18   1.0

   144  FT8     24      48   13   2.0

   144  USB      2       4    0   2.0

 Total  Both   114     140   67   1.2

Score: 9,380

1 Mult = 1.7 Q's

6M was open most of Saturday, at least for single-hop. Because I spent a bunch of time getting my logging situation worked out, I didn't end up working as many grids as I could have. I did, however, spend a bunch of time calling CQ on SSB. You can get better rates that sticking with FT8. 

The best contact for the whole weekend was a very brief 2M Sporadic E opening to Minnesota! I worked W0VTT in EN33. I was on vacation the previous week, which was apparently one of the best 2m Es opening since the 1980's here in New England. Timing is everything in life, I guess. 

The APRS map was the first indicator 2m was open

The MUF map showed a high spot over IN/OH

Finally, the stations that I heard/heard me in MN

Epic Day on 6m: 7/8/2021

 The day started with a pretty solid opening into Europe, with a very specific reflection off of an E cloud that gave me a bit of a spotlight into G/PA/DL:

There was activity most of the day, but the early buzz was about HV0A, Vatican City. I only ended up getting a single decode, so there is hope that it could happen eventually:

my sole decode from HV0A

lots of folks calling the pope

There was spotty activity for most of the day, but in the late after noon Europe really opened up, and this time it opened in a way that I hadn't seen in a while. At one point both 50.313 and 50.323 had full pages of decodes, 30-40 per page. There weren't any new DXCC entities but I managed to pull in 20-30 new grid squares. There was a more northern skew to the propagation this time, I was working many OH/SM/LA stations, more than ever before, which should have given me the clue for the main event to come!

The big guns on the ON4KST chat page started talking about JAs. When this happens I foolishly point my antenna to 335 degrees and pray. A few days ago I actually heard a station in Japan, but even with my 400W amp on, nobody was hearing me. I have a fairly modest station, so I didn't expect it to ever happen....until it did! As I was working OH/LA stations I zoomed out on the PSK-Reporter map and noticed that there were stations in Japan receiving me, even though I was pointed at Finland!

four stations in JA were decoding me while I was pointed at OH/SM/LA

 I immediately swung the beam around, added a little more power and started calling. It didn't take long before JP1LRT to reply back to me. Without actually breathing, I waited for each 15 second sequence to finish until I saw an RR73 from him! I could have been happy with that, but then I started getting called by more JA stations. 

In the end I worked 7 total: JP1LRT, JL1RUC, JG1TSG, JE1BMJ, JA2CXH, JR1LZK, and finally JK1BPA. Then, as soon as they came in, they faded back out. I would have been happy just to work one, but I ended up with seven

The band stayed open to Europe for quite a while after that. My final contact was with Bert, S57RR, in Slovenia. It was 3am in his time zone, but he was still working guys stateside. 

What a magic band!

Flags in all directions!

 

Occasionally things open up in funny ways. Tonight we had paths to Northern Ireland and Scotland, while pointing to the Caribbean. Simultaneously, there was a big opening to Asia from the SE and Central region (not here in New England). 

Update: July 5

 Since my last post on June 19th there was a terrible drought on 6m right during the peak of the season here in FN42. This, unfortunately, happened the same time as the N4EME team was operating from their second grid in the big expedition. Some highlights:

- Working two new grids on 2m and 6 with N4EME (FN57, FN66)

- Working Market Reef on 6/18 on 6m

- Decent EU openings on 6/19 and 6/21

- Working Mauritius on 6M finally! (5T5PA on June 27)

- Working OX3LX (Bo, in Greenland) on 6m SSB

The drought to EU finally broke big on July 1st and I worked quite a number of new stations and new grids. Then on the night of the 1st and into July 2nd we had consistent openings into the PNW and I worked quite a few new grids, which pushed my VUCC totals over 500. We had another small opening to EU on July 3rd. 

Some misses:

I had one decode from OH0Z and OH0100AX operating from Aland Island. That certainly would have been a new DXCC entity for me, but they faded before I could work them. I only got a single decode:

JAPAN!

I actually decoded Japan on 6m, which blows my mind a bit.

    

I had no chance of working the, since most of the continental US was hearing them. Here is just one sample of who was trying to work them at the same time:

I also had my second decode from Kuwait from earlier in the day on the 2nd:

I need to get more aluminum in the air, higher in the air!

Market Reef on 6m!

 I had to spend most of the day away from the radio working on other projects (always a risk during 6m season). I got back in the late afternoon and sat down to see what I missed, which wasn't much thankfully. I managed to time it just right to see an opening into the Baltics, which doesn't happen frequently for me. I managed to work 2 stations in Estonia (ES6RQ, ES5PC) and one Latvian station (YL2CP). I wasn't able to work a few Finnish stations, but we'll get them next time. 

The big news, however, was that as I was working the Estonian stations, the rare DX entity, Market Reef came up and I was able to very quickly work them.

(my color scheme was quickly adjusted after I made this contact, this was a +05 signal report)

Looking at LOTW, it seems there are records from this callsign in 2019, so there is hope they will confirm via LoTW!

The new Q65 protocol is some sort of black magic!

 The N4EME grid expedition to FN57/FN66 is in full swing, this week finishing up their FN57 stint. I worked them on 6m MS shortly after they arrived at that location. Later they got 2m working and we tried doing some MSK meteor scatter, but that didn't end up working. 

I got on the chat page again this morning and tried with them, no luck. K1OR, who was at the keyboard, suggested we try the new Q65 protocol provided by Joe Taylor in WSJT-X. After fumbling around with the radio and setting I finally got it together and successfully worked N4EME! 

There are several things worth notiing, first of which is they are roughly 380 miles to the north. That's a pretty tough path on a good day. Second, I have a fairly modest station, 200W into 12 elements at only about 25-30 ft. 

After a few sequences I noticed I decoded them, but I hadn't entered their info into WSJT-X, so it was not using A Priori decoding. It took me by surprise because I didn't see anything at all on the waterfall display!

But, if you look very closely, you can see a slight disturbance in the noise around 1500hz. If I zoom in you can see it, barely:

Apparently that is enough signal for WSJT-X to decode!

From what I understand (I have a lot more reading to do) the q3 indicates that it's using message re-construction from previous (in the sequence) decodes. 

Thanks to John and Paul for getting me a new, very rare, grid on 2m. With any luck we'll do the same next week when they are in FN66. 

-Steve

6m DX the week of June 7 2021

 6m here in FN42la was somewhat dead for 6 days in a row, which is somewhat unusual for the month of June. The previous big opening here was on June 4, which I talked about in my blog post "Another big US-EU opening 2021 June 4." 

Finally, on June 11th, we started to see some signs of life, including some DX excitement. I was decoding TZ4AM in Mali, but he wasn't hearing me. Still, very exciting:

Next up, as I previously mentioned was S01WS in Western Sahara. I managed to get a single sequence back from him, but never got 73's, so I logged it but didn't expect it to be valid. 

Luckily, I was able to work him again on Sunday June 13th. The propagation path was very specific, it was hitting the Azores and the Canaries, with a little bit of southern Spain, then mainland Africa. 

Meanwhile, in the other direction it was wide open, including some double-hop to the west. 

-Steve