• [EI7GL] That 3000km opening to the Azores on 144 MHz that didn't happen

    From EI7GL via rec.radio.amateur.moderat@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 17 15:11:16 2021
    XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated

    EI7GL....A diary of amateur radio activity

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    That 3000km opening to the Azores on 144 MHz that didn't happen

    Posted: 17 Apr 2021 05:39 AM PDT https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/04/that-3000km-opening-to-azores-on-144.html


    This is a story about why you should be very careful taking unusual VHF propagation reports at face value. Someone sent me an email to say that the
    PSK Reporter website had shown the reception report of CU3HN in the Azore Islands by a Dutch radio amateur on 144 MHz.

    At first glance, this looked like an incredible 2m reception report with a distance of just under 3000 kms. I checked the PSK Reporter website myself
    this morning and it said that four stations had heard CU3HN on 144 MHz!Rcvr
    Band Mode Distance Time (UTC)
    G8ECI 2m FT8 2635 km 22:21:44
    PA3GNZ 2m FT8 2898 km 22:21:30
    PA2CV 2m FT8 2969 km 22:09:15
    DF8JO 2m FT8 3016 km 22:21:44
    I then checked the tropo forecast from the website of Pascal, F5LEN. While there was a sign of some conditions near the Azores, it looked poor at the eastern end of the path near the Netherlands and Germany.
    I then checked the PSK Reporter website to see what bands CU3HN was on by
    using 'All' instead of '2m' and it shows a lot of reports for 14 MHz (20m)
    late last night.
    I sent Fábio, CU3HN an email this morning and he confirmed that he was NOT
    on 144 MHz last night.
    So what was going on??? ...I can think of two possible reasons.
    1) Someone near the Netherlands was pirating CU3HN's callsign and locator
    and transmitting on FT8 on 144 MHz. Maybe it's possible but I would have expected more stations to hear and report the bogus signal if that was the case.
    2) Some sort of glitch in the PSK Reporter website where CU3HN was reported
    on the wrong band? The thing here is that some of the receive stations
    listed above were not reporting 20m at any stage.
    I'm not 100% sure how it happened but it goes to show that you always need
    to be careful and question any reception report that looks out of the
    ordinary.

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    Another opening on 28 MHz - Fri 16th April 2021

    Posted: 16 Apr 2021 10:46 PM PDT https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/04/another-opening-on-28-mhz-fri-16th.html




    The 16th of April 2021 was another reasonable day on 28 MHz with 86 FT8
    reports from 20 countries. There was a bit more Sporadic-E compared to the
    15th with stations from plenty of German stations making an appearance in contrast to yesterday.
    I also managed to hear two beacons on the band... one from Madrid and one
    from Gibraltar.EI7GL 28167.4 ZB2TEN/B 14:03 16 Apr IO51TU<ES>IM76HD
    Gibraltar
    EI7GL 28251.0 ED4YAK/B 13:58 16 Apr IO51TU<ES>IN80FK

    That was my first time hearing those two beacons this year. I also heard
    EA8DHV on CW who was a reasonably strong signal ~559.

    EI7GL 28016.0 EA8DHV 17:22 16 Apr IO51TU<>IL18UL Canary Islands

    I'm not sure what the propagation mode was for the EA8 station. It's too
    far for one hop Sporadic-E so it either involved more than one hop OR it
    was from the F2 layer. That's the thing about 10-metres, sometimes you can never be 100% sure what the mode of propagation is.

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