The activators who worked the 2m band today, would have experienced some interesting conditions. There was some ducting but it seemed limited to to the West side of the UK. From G/SP-004, I worked all four countries G, GW, GM and GI today on 2m FM with the vertical …rare to get GM on the vertical from SP-004.
Plenty of s2s the best being G/DC-001 and the trip to GW/SW-018 was a surprise, also worked by a couple of other chasers 'tup North. Not quite the bonanza I was hoping for, however next week looks interesting.
I was speaking to you from our kitchen on the handheld with slightly better than normal signal from you.
However, just after I went to make coffee I could easily hear Paddy, MW0PAD. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he’s in Holyhead which I believe is ~130 miles from me. Now that’s NOT normal using a handheld in my kitchen!
No sign of any real ‘lift’ conditions around here (Cheltenham) over the last two days, but I see that Hepburn’s shows that there is a possibility of some over the next 3 days.
Well, conditions continue to be “interesting” if somewhat erratic on 2m.
From SP-004 and SP-013, working with the triple 5/8 collinear, contacts were made down to London, GI, GD, Isle of Wight, Cornwall, what would be normally an impossible contact on a vertical with MW0CTX near LLanelli and and a nice 300km hop with EI9GLB in Wexford…
Admittedly, many of these would be routine contacts on a beam, but then again, none of the hassle of turning a beam for me.
Conditions look set to improve for the weekend. However, those amongst you who follow Hepburns, will be well aware, predicting tropospheric conditions more than 24/48 hours ahead, is a concoction of crystal ball and voodoo.
Conditions look set to improve for the weekend. However, those amongst
you who follow Hepburns, will be well aware, predicting tropospheric
conditions more than 24/48 hours ahead, is a concoction of crystal
ball and voodoo.
I gave up following Hepburn when on the last occasion I spotted that he had predicted enhanced propagation right in the centre of a stonking great Atlantic depression!
I gave up following Hepburn when on the last occasion I spotted that
he had predicted enhanced propagation right in the centre of a
stonking great Atlantic depression!
I’ve abandoned a couple of planned activations that were made on the back of Hepburn predictions 4 or 5 days in advance, Brian.
If a week is a long time in politics, it’s an eternity in terms of propagation predictions.
I used to compare Hepburns predictions with the 5-day weather charts issued by the met office, and often there seemed to be little correspondence between his predictions and the weather charts, I was already coming to the conclusion that his crystal ball had glaucoma when I spotted the Atlantic depression howler! I don’t mean the sort of enhancement you can get along the line of a warm front or warm occlusion occasionally, this was the sort of patch of enhancement that was more typical of an anticyclone, right where it couldn’t be!
The best predictor IMHO is an aneroid barometer and transceiver memories full of beacons!
Apropos, the sort of huge opening that brought in most of Europe at 59 over several days seems to be a thing of the past, a pity, we used to almost live for them! Still, I think Es on two is more frequent than it used to be, so its swings and roundabouts!
As suggested by you last night, I went out and had a play on 2m SSB in the contest! 84 QSOs across 12 UK squares and 10 QSOs into France, Belgium and The Netherlands, the DX gods are clearly with me.
Make a Halo loop Mike, Omnidirectional Horizontally polarised SSB and have a play!! I think you can buy them for about 20 pounds. I have never understood why people that don’t have the space (or neighbours) for a horizontal beam, don’t put up a Halo loop! They happily sit under a Colinear and give you 20dBs of gain that you lose on cross polarisation!!
Good luck Mike! If you’re still up there at 1730 local time i will give you a shout!
Perhaps you are just not in the right place at the right time Mike.
Last night I was operating from a hill top near Birdlip (IO81WU) with 50W from FT-847 and 9 Element Tonna I managed 80 QSO’s (I played S&P for nearly 2 hours, called for last 30 mins) - ODX 726Km, 2xDL, 1xF, 2xGM - 17 UK Squares.
