Posts Tagged ‘6m’
Sunspots,10m and 6m
June 6th, 2014 | 
Author: Sunspot count is 102 today (higher than of late) and 20-30MHz propagation is forecast to be “good”, so better than of late. 10m could be better for F-layer propagation today.
So far, it has been quiet on 6m again with just locals spotting me on WSPR – G4IKZ (18km) and G4KPX (14km). No sign of Es yet at 1040z.
6m – results so far this spring
Just seen how many spots I have had of my 1W ERP 6m WSPR signal so far. 28 unique reports in 3 continents with best DX 3519km from 4X1RF.
Not bad with an FT817 set to 2.5W, V2000 vertical and coax with a loss of more than 3dB.
 |
| 6m unique spots with 1W ERP this Es season so far. |
Doppler on locals and a VERY quiet day on 6m
Today, so far, it has been exclusively local G4IKZ (18km) on 6m WSPR One thing I have noticed both on his spots and those by G4FFC (45km) yesterday is that when there is a lot of Doppler my reports are poorer. I assume the aircraft reflections sometimes result in destructive interference and an effective drop in S/N.
This month, so far, sunspot numbers have been lower (70 today), although 20-30MHz propagation is described as “normal”. I think the slide downwards is starting, sadly. But, even next autumn 10m should still be good though – we are a LONG way from the minimum yet. I think long distance 6m F-layer propagation openings will be few unless one is lucky enough to be closer to the equator and may catch TEP openings. CN8LI and stations in Israel were managing to catch 6m TEP openings quite recently, as were some VK and JA stations.
UPDATE 1700z: Just G4IKZ (18km) spotting me since I switched on 6m WSPR at 0556z – a very very quiet day on 6m so far today: no Es and no GDX seen here, so far. There is at least one “wandering” signal that has been seen several times drifting across the band but with too much drift to decode. Strong, but no Doppler. At one point it was stable enough to decode but the signal faded out after 1 minute. I think this was an Es signal. May never know though. I am tempted to QSY to 472kHz WSPR this evening unless things markedly improve on 6m.
UPDATE 1808z: another new local(ish) station has just appeared on 6m spotting me: M0MVB (30km) up in the Fens. Still no 6m Es here.I presume M0MVB is just in from work and just turned the gear on.
UPDATE 1925z: Still no 6m Es here today. Tomorrow can only be better.
UPDATE 2050z: I stuck with 6m, but only locals today. Very disappointing indeed.
Quiet 6m evening
Apart from G4IKZ (18km) and G4FFC (45km) all has been quiet on 6m WSPR since the 14 spots exchanged with CN8LI (2113km) – last spot 1558z.
On 2m late afternoon stations were calling “CQ sporadic” on SSB, although when I listened no DX was heard from Europe. I think the Es MUF must have exceeded 144MHz briefly.
Odd start on 6m today
As 0438z OZ7IT (853km) spotted my 1W ERP 6m WSPR signal by very early morning Es I assume. Then, just spots from local G4IKZ (18km) until I spotted G3RCE (185km) a little while ago, presumably by tropo with some aircraft reflection (2Hz Doppler). Interesting that a lot of the local spots by G4IKZ had a fair bit of Doppler too.
My first contest
I am a complete novice at using HF, in fact I am a complete novice at transmitting anything!
My Chinese Baofeng handhelds have pretty much collected dust since getting my licence. However with the purchase of the FT-857D I must, despite my trepidation, step up to the microphone.
I had hit a snag when testing out the new radio, my antenna was showing high VSWR on 6m, even with the ATU I was struggling to get it to 2:1, therefore I decided to construct a simple dipole and sling it up with an ugly choke 'balun' I had constructed.
Due to some unexpected delays I was running out of time but eventually did manage to get something up, it was only around 2 meters off the ground and the VSWR still wasn't ideal, but I was ready.
At the appointed time, well nearly an hour late I started turning the dial and was met with a load of static, wasn't hearing anything! This continued for a quite a time then suddenly I started hearing "CQ Contest CQ Contest" I listened in for a while to try to get the gist of the exchanges, wandering up and down the band.
Then I decided to have a go at a QSO, giving my callsign out, I waited nothing! "QRZ CQ Contest CQ Contest" another go.. still nothing.. and so on..
Changed frequency to another stations, tried again and I was heard, but they couldn't make out my call sign despite several attempts.. another change of frequency and the same results.
Now I know I had only got it set a 5W, the lowest I can till I get some confidence in my set up and am not going to damage anything! But I was a little disappointed, but I persevered until suddenly I was in the middle of my first contest QSO and my brain turned to jelly..
Thanks to M0MDY and his patience and prompting I successfully completed the QSO, details suitably written down. I carried on with no luck and called it a night just after 10pm, and went back in the house and manually entered the details of my solitary contact on the RSGB Contest website www.rsgbcc.org
Checking this morning and there I am at the bottom of the list, but not the very bottom, with a whopping 48 points.
http://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/claim.pl?Contest=50MHz%20UKAC&year=2014
Roll on next week, it is the 144MHz UKAC and I have a proper 2m YAGI... just got to work out how to mount it up on the poll and how to rotate it..
73s
K3 vs KX3 on 6m
There was a good opening on 6m this morning which lasted until early afternoon. I’d just been reading some list traffic on how good the KX3 receiver is so I thought I would plug it in to the antenna and see what I could do. After all, Six is the magic band, who needs 100 watts?
Listening on the two receivers was like night and day. On the KX3 the band sounded much more lively. Stations that were only peaking an S7 on the K3 were S9 plus.
On the KX3 with just 10 watts, just because a station was loud it didn’t mean I could work them. I got some 59 reports but with several stations they didn’t hear me even if I had no competition. The loudest stations had a lot of callers and they just didn’t hear me over the crowd. You wouldn’t think 9dB would make all that much difference but it does!
I’ve seen comments about the K3 being deaf on 6m, or even 10m, but I had never really bothered about it until now. If I can hear them on the K3 I can usually work them even though I generally limit the power to 80 watts.
But I ended up a bit dissatisfied with the K3’s receive performance on one of my favourite bands. The simple solution – fit a preamp between RX IN and RX OUT – isn’t an option for me as I need those ports to plumb in the MFJ noise cancelling device. It’s a pity no-one has come up with a mod to boost the K3’s fairly useless internal preamp on 50MHz.
