XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated

EI7GL....A diary of amateur radio activity

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S55ZMS 8m beacon heard in Ireland - 2nd May 2021

Posted: 03 May 2021 03:00 AM PDT https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/05/s55zms-8m-beacon-heard-in-ireland-2nd.html




A few days ago, I had a post up about the new S55ZMS 8-metre beacon in
Slovenia on 40.670 MHz and how it was on-air now from its new location on
the 30th of April 2021. Post HERE
Just two days later on the 2nd of May, Tim EI4GNB near Dublin reports
hearing it.

The signal was down at -9dB and buried in the noise but it still made it through. The distance was around 1745 kms which is pretty normal for
one-hop Sporadic-E.
S51FB in Slovenia also reports hearing it on the 1st of May but that would
have been via tropo.
S51FB 40670 S55ZMS 08:31 01 May 21 beacon Slovenia
If you hear this or any of the other 40 MHz beacons then be sure to spot it
via the DXMaps website.
For a list of beacons on the 8-metre band then check out my 40 MHz page.

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Modest opening to Europe on 28 MHz - 2nd May 2021

Posted: 03 May 2021 12:16 AM PDT https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/05/modest-opening-to-europe-on-28-mhz-2nd.html


Sunday 2nd May 2021: This was a reasonably modest day on the 28 MHz band
with 198 stations in 37 countries heard on FT8. The map above shows what I heard. It's interesting just how the Sporadic-E footprints can be pretty
small and clusters of signals from a certain region make it through.
Notice the batch of signals from Sardinia and yet there was hardly anything from France for most of the day.

I did a few scans of the beacon band and I heard two...
EI7GL 28243.0 F5ZWE/B 15:49 02 May IO51TU<ES>JN02TW France
EI7GL 28271.0 OZ7IGY 12:07 02 May PI4 -14 dB Q=74 1393 km <es> Denmark
As you can see from the second spot, I was messing about with the PI4
software to decode the signals from the Danish beacon.
I tried listening on WSPR for a while but it was useless. On 28 MHz, WSPR
is fine if the band is open to say the UK, Netherlands and Germany because there are a lot of stations there sending out WSPR transmissions. There is
a major lack of active WSPR stations on 10m in France, Spain and Portugal
which means the mode is of little use for propagation tests in certain directions.

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