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| In September, 10m propagation from the UK generally favours north-south paths. |
Nice to see 10m
starting to open up again this Autumn. With the solar flux index
(SFI) at around 160, I was testing a new antenna yesterday and heard
3B9FR (Robert) on Rodriquez Island in the Indian Ocean.
I bagged him first
call on CW and thought it might be an opportunity to see what else
was on. Two minutes later I had the ARRL centenary station W1AW/5 in
the log from Texas on 10m.
I also heard
low-power 10m beacons from Florida, Alabama and New Hampshire.
Luckily, I heard all this before the X class solar flare hit us at
17:45UTC. The associated coronal mass ejection (CME) will no doubt cause us
problems in the next 24-48 hours.
It is a little early
in the season for the Northern USA on 10 metres to be reliable (see
my prediction charts), but it bodes well.
In view of the date
today, it did remind me of that fateful “9/11” back in 2001.
On that day the SFI was 250 and I was working in my shack in the UK listening
to the KQ2H repeater in New York on 29.620MHz, I heard the whole
scenario played out.
From the first
conversations suggesting that a Cessna had crashed into the WTC, to
the full horror some time later. Eventually all communications ceased
– I only found out later than the repeater was actually on top of
the WTC itself, which explains why it went off the air.
Nowadays KQ2H is
still on 29.620MHz, but is located in the Catskill mountains of up
state New York. When conditions are right it is very loud indeed and
a great indicator of good 10m propagation into the USA. I expect we
will be hearing more of KQ2H in the UK over the next month or so.
This is a good time
to prepare for worldwide 10m openings in the coming months. Don't
miss them!
Well, 'downstairs' has opened up in spectacular form on 12m past few days. Bodes well for 10, where I have heard a few middle-distance Russians (out to about 2000km). There's a huge amount of backscatter past three days, concurrent with good contacts into Antarctica and South Africa - both always very welcome in the log! Good luck with 10, where I may one day be better equipped!
ReplyDeleteI was only using a new dipole antenna - 26ft across the top and eight feet of 300 Ohm ribbon, then 50 Ohm coax, all at 8m as an inverted V. It was exactly the same signal strength as a dedicated half-wave dipole for 10m. No towers and beams here!
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