While I’ve been having a great time working satellites and chasing grids there, six meters remains the magic band for me. In the past week that’s included meteor scatter and transequatorial propagation.
Meteor Scatter
On October 14, Dave KG5CCI set up a rover operation in EM43, a new grid for me. So very early that morning I started shooting RF his way. Ok, it wasn’t much RF with my 100 watts and a moxon at 25 feet. But it did use MSK144 to get some tiny reflections off meteor trails or perhaps airplanes. And, it worked. You can see the screen capture nearby with just two decodes that secured our QSO and a new grid. Thanks, Dave, for rovering and persisting in working my small signal.
Transequatorial Propagation
I’ve previously worked TEP on six meters. See my blog posts Transequatorial Propagation — Wow! and Six Meter Magic. This time I was watching an SO-50 pass on October 16 and glanced at DX Maps for six meters. I noticed quite a few spots for TEP. So I fired up six meters, pointed my antenna south, and listened on the FT8 frequency of 50.313 MHz. Here’s the list of stations I worked with that 100 watts and moxon:
- LU5FF
- LU1FM, new grid, too.
- XQ3MCC
- CA3SOC
- LU8EX
- CE2AWW
That was pretty much everyone that I heard.
TEP can be a really fantastic experience. If you’re interested in learning more about it, there is a good discussion of the principles at https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-propagation/ionospheric/transequatorial-propagation.php
That’s the news here from K5ND and my ham radio adventures.
[…] a list of firsts. That includes my longest contact, ZL1RS, as well as a few firsts including Transequatorial Propagation and Meteor Scatter. Here’s the […]
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