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

Busy June 2021 contest weekend

 This was a busy radio weekend. First, the N4EME crew set up in rare grid FN57 in Northern Maine. I tried with them on FT8 on Friday night but wasn't successful. The next morning I got on the chat server and saw they were working folk on 6m meteor-scatter, MSK144 on 50.260. I don't have a lot of meteor scatter experience, but I gave it a shot an was decoding them on pretty regular pings. I was able to quickly work them and then focus on getting ready for the ARRL June VHF contest. 

The June Contest is usually dominated by 6m activity, and now with FT8, that can make it somewhat boring. I love operating 6m FT8, but it's not super fun during a contest. I find there are soo many people on that I have a hard time completing contacts. So, off we went and of course, we ended up having a massive opening to the Caribbean, which normally is great, but a lot of times the DX stations aren't running in contest mode, so you have to either switch WSJT-X out of contest mode or run JTDX at the same time (Which is what I did). In the end I worked number of the DX stations, including:

TO11A - Guadalupe

PJ2BR - Curacao

VP9NM - Bermuda

HK3O - Colombia

PJ4NX - Bonaire

HK3W - Colombia

9Y4D - Trinidad and Tobago

8P2K - Barbados

J79WTA - Dominica

PV8DX - Brazil

NP3YL - Puerto Rico

I had recently been complaining that we hadn't had much activity in the Caribbean this season, but this list seems to say otherwise. 

The big DX news for the weekend happened further to the north. I was able to work Bo, OX3LX, who is operating in Greenland. Bo has been there since the previous Tuesday, but I hadn't been able to hear him at all. We finally got the opening during the contest and I was able to grab him before he had a big pileup. 

After that the other DX was Western Sahara in Africa, S01WS. I've been seeing other folks work him on and off for a while, and I've occasionally had a few decodes from him, but again, was finally able to work him. I had a busted QSO earlier in the week, this times I was able to confirm it. 

The contest was a low priority effort for me. My main goal was to get my voice capabilities working again for 6m, which I was successful at doing. Calling CQ on 6m SSB was a lot more fun than operating FT8, and it produced a number of contacts, faster than digital. 

The end result was about 14k points

 Band   Mode  QSOs     Pts  Grd  Pt/Q
    50  FT4     17      17    8   1.0
    50  FT8     47      47   36   1.0
    50  USB     54      54   31   1.0
   144  FT8     20      20    9   1.0
   144  USB      5       5    3   1.0
   420  USB      7      14    6   2.0
 Total  Both   150     157   93   1.0
Score: 14,601

Middle East on 6m

 

I was up early Saturday morning and was chatting on the ON4KST region 2 chat page. There wasn't much activity for me, but I did see WW1L and K1TOL talking about middle east stations. I couldn't stick around, I had a T-ball game for my 5 year old at 8:30am. 

When I got back from the game around 9:30, I was gobsmacked to find that I had decoded 9K2 on 50.323!

What makes this really special is that I have a very modest station. I have a M2 6M5XX up around 25 feet, no tower, no dual stack!

single story house with the 6M5XX strapped to the chimney

This particular propagation path was really unique since there was ZERO other stations decoded. I would have expected at least some EU stations to be hear, but nothing. The really interesting thing was that XE2X was also decoding the middle-east stations, and I was hearing him call them back!

Soon after I looked up and realized that I was copying OD5KU in Lebanon! WoW! Now, here's where it gets painful. I cranked the amp up to 800W and started calling him back. I must have called at least 10-15 sequences. I looked back at the chat page and VE1SKY told me I was calling him back on 313 not 323 (where he was!). AAAARRGHH!!! By the time I switched the TX over to 323 it was too late. 

Shortly after I copied 4X4DK in Israel calling another OD5. This time I was prepared, but even with the 800w he wasn't hearing me. There's a good chance the OD5 wouldn't hear me as well, but It would have been nice to try!

Hopefully there will be many more days like today!

Another big US-EU opening 2021 June 4

 

Another incredible opening happened on Friday, June 4th. It started early in the AM and lasted 'till just about 8pm local. It slowed down during the day, but picked up full-force around 4pm local. I was able to work a number of new grids, and new DXCC entities. Here is the breakdown:

119Q's in total

By DXCC entity:

9A (1)

9H (1)

DE (14)

EA (5)

EA6 (1)

EI (7)

F (17)

G (9)

GD0  (1)

GI (2)

GW (3)

HB (3)

I (21)

IS (1)

LA (4)  ** New DXCC

LX (1)

OK (1)

ON (3)

OZ (5)

PA (3)

SM (4)

SP (2)

SV (1)  ** New DXCC

TA (1)  ** New DXCC

TK (1)  ** New DXCC

UR (1)

VE (1)

YT (1)

Z3 (1)  ** New DXCC

I haven't figure out how many new grids that was, but at one point I was only working new ones. 

It was a very different opening that I've experienced before. The propagation seemed to be very sharp at times. Where normally I only hear OZ occasionally, this time it was it was many at time! LA was a new one, but I heard 5-10 total, mostly at the same time. It would be all Italians, then all French, etc. 

At times both 313 and 323 were full of stations, and now that I'm using my new SDR setup it's easy for me to switch back and forth. Here is what JTDX looked like:

The next morning I was able to go back and look at PSK Reporter and you can tell where the strongest path was:

(not sure why PSK-R wasn't showing the 21 Italian stations that I worked)

It was really impressive to see full pages of decodes with all of these stations, at one point the docodes were scrolling off of the screen:

The end result was pretty impressive, I hope we get to see many more opening like this one: