ZL Hunting

This week was the week to try a bit of Antipodean chasing. Ben @GW4BML was in VK and ZL, kindly posting alerts with support from @VK3ARR and @ZL1THH. Now that was worth a summit chase….

It deserved a high peak like GW/SW-001 Pen y Fan and that was the plan. Until I realised that this was going to be really difficult at the planned times:

  • 23z on Monday: Very unlikely to be propagation and
  • 17z on Thursday: no chance to escape work so early to climb a big hill
    So it was another trip up my favourite ‘local’ Beacon Batch G/SC-003 for midnight coffee on Monday and sunset on Thursday:

Monday at 23z as expected, every band bar 40m was dead. And 40m was full of US activity with quite a few hams discussing the Trump inauguration :rofl:

Thursday was a different story with 20m and 10m in really good conditions, with lots of great contacts and summits from
Carlos @PY2VM on 10m in Brazil on PY2/SE-026 and @KC2WLM on 10m in Maine W2/GA-297

And the prized 11,433 mile SSB summit to summit with ZL on 20m!

Was this long or short path ? I do not know…

Sadly by the time we tried 10m the band was closing in the UK. I did feel it was possible and probably something to try in the coming months….

Can you get further than this ?


20m 1/4 vertical using 80W

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Great work! You’re absolutely obsessed! :rofl:

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And you’re quite Keen too :rofl:

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On HF? Yes. You can work yourself with round-the-world echoes on the higher HF bands. I estimate I’ve heard my own signal do 125000 to 175000 miles (5 to 7 loops). Works best with rigs with QSK. This last year I worked Victor GI4ONL on 10m CW but it was a mix of short and long path and round-the-world echoes. It was challenging to copy the signal amongst the echoes. The distance was 85miles direct with the first echo distance being 24774miles.

However, I’ll agree that’s contrived. Your distance is getting on for about the max you can do from the UK without being able to prove long or short path. The antipodal point to the UK, and thus the longest path you can work without knowing short or long is in the Pacific ISTR, so there’s unlikely to be another ham there!

It’s good fun this specific path working. “I shoot an arrow in the air. Wither it lands I know not where” is a fine description of a lot of ham radio and specifically SOTA. We tend to use omni antennas or maybe low dipoles which are quite omnidirectional so we fire RF out and work the random callers. And we’re happy with that. It’s much harder doing specific paths like EU<>NA West coast. It’s not just the possible site choice and antenna choice but also getting everyone up a hill when you’d much rather be home in bed. Or at least sat in front of the fire with a large whisky. :slight_smile:

Hams have been working G<VK/ZL paths for a long time but normally from home with beams etc. just a case of right band at the right time. So doing S2S with possibly one end QRP and simple antennas is always much, much more satisfying especially when you’re out in poor light etc. You should treat yourself to some custard to celebrate. Shadow doesn’t look so impressed though.

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Well done Tim, Ben. Bet your both well chuffed.

Don.

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Hi Tim,
Good for you planning and executing the G/ZL S2S.
73
Ron
VK3AFW

Andy,

ZL3/SL-329 looks like the antipodal summit for the UK. Any ZL3 summit is close. For me it would be a peak on the Azores. I think my longest path for S2S was into Spain - it’s further than any in the UK.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

Would Tim and Ben’s S2S be the longest (with only a single trip around the Earth) recorded? From the UK? From all SOTA activations?

Well it will be up there with the longest from the UK. It’s 18398km officially or 11426.4miles.

What I forgot to say is the DB does all the S2S calcs on the fly. So if you ask to see your S2S log it finds the S2S QSOs (easy) and for each one works the distance and displays it. That takes uS to calculate per QSO which is negligible compared to the lookup times and generating the webpage view so saves lots of storage space. That’s why we do it like that.

What doesn’t exist is a simple way to query the S2S tables in the DB and calculate all the S2S distances. It involves a lot of table scanning which is slow and expensive so we don’t do it.

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Maybe I’m missing it, where does it display this info - distance ? I usually rely on my logging app.

I imagine! with 100s of thousands of QSOs, several tables to join and a distance calc !

I was just wondering if there was a way to do this one off for fun and to see ! Maybe we have a S2S from like Hong Kong to Argentina !

Not so sure. There were a lot of us doing this a couple of years back at the spring equinox.

Well as it’s you I had a quick look :wink: I started with this Antipodes map to see likely places that could support long S2S distances. What I’d never considered was that most of the North American continent doesn’t have a land mass antipodal point. Means I can ignore lots of QSOs !

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Antipodes_equirectangular.svg

There are only 2 G<>ZL S2S in the DB, yours and Richard G4TGJ’s.

G5OLD>ZL1/G4BML G/SC-003 > ZL1/AK-023 @ 18398km
G4TGJ>ZL3GA G/NP-028 > ZL3/CB-746 @ @18831km

I have not done an EXHAUSTIVE search but maybe there will be some Japan/Korea to Brazil/Argentina/Chile QSOs in the same range.

n.b. I’ve not verified my SQL so it could be “lacking its custard”
i.e. inaccurate or full of bugs. :slight_smile:

A look through the logs of likely G/GM types shows plenty of S2S distances in the 16900->17400 km range.

Look at the actual S2S QSOs for the person involved… you can change the callsign in the URL to select others quickly. Then use the date drop-down to select a time frame.

i.e
for you G5OLD S2S logs
for me MM0FMF S2S logs

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Being in GM is a disadvantage here…

While being on the south island, ZL3 is a opposite - big advantage !

Thanks @MM0FMF for the DB query, was interesting to see. And congrats to @ZL3GA @G4TGJ for at least the G-ZL record…

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Interesting map … an EA - ZL QSO is probably the most likely chance to be a record holder , if there is one ?

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I’m amazed that I was the first in G to do this.

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If people want to look for maximum length S2S distances, EI / ZL9 Campbell Islands looks good as does GM (Orkney) / VKM (Macquarie Island).

I spotted that and ran an EA / ZL S2S check. None logged so far. EA7 around Marbella to ZL1/WK is probably the easiest to arrange as both are mainland summits unlike getting islands like ZL9.

I thought there would be many more. That’s why I still suspect bugs in the SQL or maybe some S2S QSOs have not been logged.

He wasn’t. Faffing on Beacon Batch mean’t he was 2 hours later for his dinner. He was pretty upset I hadn’t considered this and I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a formal complaint… :rofl: :dog2:

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Hi Tim,
Bravo Tim for the S2S link last night with Ben.
I contacted Ben on 20m a few minutes before you then 1/2 hour later on 15m, with an S of 5 on both bands. For me it was a short path. But there is little difference in distance between the short and long path… not the propagation !
73, Regards,
Chris F4WBN

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Well - you got me out of bed to see what my longest distances were (never knew SOTAData showed distances!).

image
ZL antipodes shown on a map of Europe. Ignore the pin - it’s just the centre of ZL. Courtesy of https ://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes/new-zealand

@EI9KY takes the prize for me. Like Ben and Tim’s this was a pre-arranged S2S which makes it feel more like a joint-effort achievement than the lottery win of an unexpected S2S.

My home QTH antipode is in the sea between Portugal and Ireland, so I can probably only marginally improve on this.

DistanceKM Date Time Callsign1 Callsign2 Summit2 SummitName2 Summit1 SummitName1 Band Mode Points2 Points1
19244 2022-05-14 05:24 ZL4NVW EI9KY/P EI/IS-011 Knockmealdown ZL3/OT-339 Summit Rock 14MHz SSB 10 4
18658 2022-05-01 05:30 ZL4NVW HB9GVW/P HB/NE-001 Mont Racine ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 0 0
18627 2022-04-14 06:13 ZL4NVW DL20SOTA DM/BW-001 Feldberg ZL3/OT-360 ZL3/OT-360 14MHz SSB 10 4
18599 2022-05-01 05:55 ZL4NVW HB9EAJ HB/SO-009 Hohe Winde ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 2 0
18540 2022-05-01 05:33 ZL4NVW HB9DIZ HB/LU-023 Dotteberg ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 1 0
18466 2022-05-01 05:59 ZL4NVW DL20SOTA DM/BW-099 Achalm ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 6 0
18465 2022-05-01 05:52 ZL4NVW IW2OBX I/LO-278 Monte Megna – Quota 1069 ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 2 0
18285 2022-05-01 05:48 ZL4NVW DJ2MX DL/MF-082 Schwarzer Berg ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 1 0
18283 2022-04-23 05:35 ZL4NVW DL3EC DL/MF-112 Westerberg ZL3/CB-451 Ben Ohau 14MHz SSB 4 0
17308 2022-05-01 06:04 ZL4NVW SV2CNE SV/MC-014 Kastania ZL3/OT-474 Flat Top Hill 14MHz SSB 6 0
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