Wednesday 14 December 2016

Working Santa's elves in Lapland, Christmas 2016

Every week I produce the HF propagation report for the RSGB's GB2RS news. This week I thought I would do something a little different. If you have children or grandchildren they might find it interesting. I worked them on 20m SSB on the 14th and they were LOUD! Here is the report:

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This week we have a slightly different approach to the HF propagation news. We want to help you and your family contact Santa's elves in Lapland, Finland.

The station Oscar Foxtrot Nine X-ray (OF9X) is once again on the air this Christmas from Santa Claus land in the Arctic Circle.

Twelve elves are operating OF9X (that is, “Old-Father-Nine-Christmas”) from the city of Oulu in Finland for the entire month of December

To work the elves at OF9X, the best starting point is the DX cluster or reverse beacon network to see where they are operating. They have been spotted on many bands and modes over the past week.

The HF predictions suggest seventeen or twenty metres (18MHz or 14MHz) both give a good possibility of a contact with a probability of greater than 90% during the hours of daylight. Even 15m may be possible around midday.

Forty metres (7MHz) should also give a high probability for the whole 24 hours, while 80m and 160m may also be open during the hours of darkness in the UK.

But get in quick, NOAA is predicting unsettled geomagnetic conditions from December 19th to the 23rd due to a recurrent coronal hole.