Category Archives: Sporadic E

6m Squares Worked

This is a great website (http://wg7j.reinalda.net/gridmapper/gridmapper.php) that enables you to display the 6m grid squares that you have worked. Actually you can display for any band, mode etc but I use it to show the 6m squares as think it’s really interesting to see where the Es cloud have formed.

Below is a picture of all the 6m squares I have worked (224) since being licensed (click to see large picture). A red square means the QSO is unconfirmed in LOTW whilst green is confirmed.

6m squares

Band I Italian STL

Tuesday 16 June 2015 saw a big Sporadic E opening in the UK. I managed to work SV2RJO on 6m cw which was confirmed on LOTW – super fine business! He’s a distance of 2,154 km from me which is about the furthest I’ve worked on single hop Es. Last night we had some interesting short range Es and I worked F2DX in Sorges France which is a distance of 704 km – two 6m single hop extremes!

I’ve almost achieved my very modest goals for this season which was to get to 60 DXCC on 6m (achieved with Macedonia and Greece) and 225 locator squares (1 to go).

On Tuesday I checked for Italian STLs on Band I and found:

52.60 Radio Radar, Castel di Casio/Casola (bo)
54.37 Simply Radio (tivoli) (rm)
56.50 MEP Radio Organizzazione (P. Net), Rieti/Frazione Campoforogna (Monte Terminillo) (ri)

http://www.fmlist.org/fm_logmap.php?datum=2015-06-16&omid=2121&band=ALL&target=ALL&rxin=ALL

No sign of the two Jonica Radio outlets or AFN on 48.50.

First Band I Video of the Season

Had a decent opening on 14 May with TV DX from Belarus and Ukraine seen, as well as some OIRT logged and 6m stations from Latvia, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland! As we know my Band I video pass band is full of carriers, baby alarms etc and I was playing with a HS Pubs R1 Notch filter. The first video below is without the filter in line. The second video is with it in line and after I had played with the notch frequency and depth in order to try and reduce the patterning interference (from a baby alarm I’m sure).

 

R1 Ukraine 1+1 TV (no notch filter)

R1 Ukraine 1+1 TV (notch filter in line)

Here are the same two videos but using an older avi to mp4 converter app.

No Notch

Notch

Update – mainly Band I related

Well it’s been a while since the last post. DX activities have been neglected in favour of the excellent World Cup and this year’s cricket test match series which has seen the beleaguered English team actually deservedly win a couple of matches.

Sporadic E wise I have easily surpassed my season’s targets (200 squares and 50 DXCC) on 6m. At the time of writing I have 214 squares and 58 DXCC. Still got some supposedly easy ones to go as well such as Z3. I’m well pleased with this year’s season and feel set-up for next year to stretch and get beyond 225 squares and 65 DXCC.

We have had one or two excellent TV DX openings and OIRT as well. Here’s a couple of videos from 3 July 2014 and the mainly Belarus OIRT logs on the same date can be seen at:

http://www.fmlist.org/fm_logmap.php?datum=2014-07-03&omid=2121&band=ALL&target=ALL&rxin=ALL

R1 Ukraine 1+1 TV

An oddity of Band I are the number of Italian STLs (studio to transmitter) links you can hear. On 21 July I heard Radio Delta from central Italy:

http://www.fmlist.org/fm_logmap.php?datum=2014-07-21&omid=2121&band=ALL&target=ALL&rxin=ALL

I had a triple whammy identification process: audio was parallel to web stream at http://www.streamsolution.it/onair/RadioDelta.asx, RDS PI Code 5362 appeared on XDR GTK display and there was a clear jingle id!

FMLIST is a simply superb resource. It does get very slow at times and I wish the operators would accept donations or adopt a membership scheme – something like £20 or €25 per annum would be excellent value to take advantage of this resource. Something akin to the QRZ.com XML subscriptions for automated lookups which are around $30 per annum.

I have not bothered too much with Band II this season. It’s a zero-sum game in London with Ofcom’s abdication of its responsibilities for keeping the band clear. In any case my priorities were 6m and some Tv DXing before the latter becomes impossible due to the digital uhf take-over.

It’s mid-August and the NA MF season has started already! We’re still getting some LA DX as well with a  good Peruvian opening on 5 August. More details on that one in the next update!