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Lærerikt - K4M and 160m into Western Europe

Lagt til av LA0FA. Dato lagt til 01.11.2009 15.08.45

Hi friends topbanders:

Dave G4GED wrote: " Art, Please tell us who these 150+ Western EU stations
are then?

Gary W5FI gave us some figures on zone 14, 15 and 16. OK.

Zone 16 is Russia, hardly Western Europe, and 2700 km (1700 miles) from W.
Europe. The same difference as between US West coast and e.g. Illinois. I
think you appreciate that the propagation from a 12000 km or 7500 miles
distant DX (right over the magnetic North Pole) into California is NOT the
same as into Illinois. This makes a day and night difference. That is the
same difference we have between zone 16 and West Europe.

At distances above approx. 11000 km (6800 mi) propagation is theoretically
impossible via multi-hop (this is what the mathematics tell us if you add up
the reflection losses in the ionosphere and on earth), and over these very
long distances some kind of signal ducting is involved most of the time. The
exact limit of course depends on many factors such as the reflection loss on
Earth (over land path or over sea path).

Zone 15 comprises North-East Europe, East Europe and South-East Europe. It
is certainly not (part of) Western Europe. In Finland they made 54 topband
QSOs between 14z and 17z, a +/- 3 hours lasting opening during the European
evening path. In W. Europe common darkness lasted between a few minutes and max. 1 hour. Not to forget that the path (into central Finland) is "only"
9700 km (6000 mi), which is 2300 km (or 1500 mi) shorter than the path into
e.g. central France. Taking into account that approx. 11000 km appears to be
the max. limit for multi-hop propagation, the situation in Finland as
compared to West Europe is VERY different.

Zone 14 INCLUDES Western Europe, but IS NOT Western Europe. I would by no means call SM, LA, OZ Western European countries, not at least if we are considering a 160 m path in mind going toward the center of the Pacific
Ocean. In Europe we all know that propagation to countries in the central
Pacific area from the Eastern part of zone 14 is very different from
propagation from West Europe (EA, CT, F, ON, G, GM, EI etc.).

I am sorry to say, but Gary's statement " But even leaving out 15, 16 there
were 75 Z14 Q's." is not convincing at all. Zone 14 is NOT West Europe, and
only A PART of Zone 14 is West Europe. I hope I made that clear above. Dave said "West Europe" and not zone 14, so the number of QSOs made from West Europe with K4NM is not 75 but barely 11. I think that makes a huge
difference.

Four QSOs were made on the Eu morning path (1G, 1GI and 2 GMs) and 7 on the Eu evening path. Why so few (both morning and evening)? BECAUSE IT IS A VERY DIFFICULT PATH.

Let me give you my own experience: I have listened every day in our local
evening, when we had approx. 1 hour of common darkness. I only heard them
ONE DAY (Oct 16) and that day I heard K4M twice for a few seconds: once for ~15 seconds, and once for ~30 seconds, and I made contact. In Belgium, both myself and my good friends ON4WW and ON4MA made the QSO, but not on the same day. The 3 of us were in contact on 70cms when I made the QSO. The amazing, thing (but not surprising to me) is that when I made the contact ON4WW did not at all hear K4M, but ON4MA did. I made a recording of K4M, and I can clearly copy every single letter of my call. A few minutes later K4M peaked up for maybe 20 sec to a very solid Q5. To my surprise no one answered his CQ (as witnessed on my spectrum adapter), proving no one else was hearing him exactly that time. I called him with my contest call OT7T, and we made a QSO after having given my call twice. The QSO lasted only a few seconds. Shortly after I heard ON4WW and ON4MA calling, telling me on UHF they were copying K4M, while I was not hearing a beep from K4M. And we are, all 3 of us, less than 6 miles apart! We all 3 used a Beverage beaming due North.
This was clearly a typical example of spotlight propagation resulting from
signal ducting. In such circumstances the fast varying exit conditions from
the duct cause the fast moving spotlight phenomenon (like a waveguide with
some holes in it).

I was not on the air the day when there apparently was a good morning-opening to the G-area, but I must agree with Clive, GM3POI, that an expedition of the K4M stature should keep an eye on the areas where sun is rising/setting every day, and especially, after having heard one European station breaking through the USA pileup they should have called CQ Europe only for a while.

We did not have that problem during the European evening opening, I must
say. The fact that only 7 West-European stations made it during the European
evening opening proves that the K4M operators really tried hard to make even
the most difficult and most marginal contacts.

To all the operators from K4M, and especially the topband specialists, thank
you for a new country. And let's hope that we all have learned lessons from
this operation. On both sides.

73 to all and good luck on working Chesterfield on topband.

John, ON4UN

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Skrevet av: LA0FA, Dato: 09.05.2009