XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated

EI7GL....A diary of amateur radio activity

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Antarctica heard on 28 MHz - Sun 10th Oct 2021

Posted: 10 Oct 2021 10:45 PM PDT https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/10/antarctica-heard-on-28-mhz-sun-10th-oct.html



Sunday 10th October 2021: I got a bit tired of listening for FT8 signals on
the 28 MHz band so I decided to go back to WSPR instead. As I had expected,
the amount of activity on this digital beacon mode was drastically lower.
I had the radio on from about noon on and as you can see from the map
above, it's a bit sparse. I know that if this had been FT8, there would
have been lots of stations heard.
The BIG surprise however was the German research station DP0GVN in
Antarctica! Wow!

It's always interesting to see Antarctica coming through but it's really
nice on 28 MHz. According to their WSPR page, they run 5-watts on WSPR.
The signal however was very weak here. According to the log, I had one
single decode at -26dB which is well below what is audible by the human ear. Looking at the map, there is other evidence of F2 propagation as well.
During the Summer months, I used to hear VE1VDM in Nova Scotia via
multi-hop Sporadic-E. On the 10th of October, it was very likely due to a single F2 hop as the solar conditions improve.
The solar flux on the day was at 85.

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