No real news to most of us but maybe more striking in signal-poor South East Asia-- contests GET HAMS ON THE AIR. Then, no contests equals lots of artificially dead bands. Many times in week days, I
Well said, Charly. For most of my ham life I got into contests *in order to* work DX, because I was stuck with low power and wire antennas in the trees behind our townhouse. I think what we need is a
Well said, Charly! Bill, N3RR No real news to most of us but maybe more striking in signal-poor South East Asia-- contests GET HAMS ON THE AIR. Then, no contests equals lots of artificially dead band
Some of this is perhaps the attitude "if it isn't on the cluster there is no propagation" which is not always true. Many times in years past I would tune across 10M and not hear a signal. So I would
It isn't jut southeast Asia.. The bands are dead here in the USA also. I remember when I first got licensed in 1975, you on any day would not have aqso without some qrm on one side or another of both
After reading Charlie's comment this morning, I tuned across a 'dead' 15 mtr band, then called CQ. After working over 40 dx stations, had to get off because of storm moving in.. Thanks Charlie, Marle
Another thing I've found is that sometimes a rare DXpedition has pileups reduced in size during contests because a considerable number of people are doing the contest. It is sometimes easier to work
I think what we need is a way to get the word out about what times of day and on what bands hams in the rest of the world can expect to hear (and maybe even work!) Southeast Asian stations like yours
To be honest, given the rather widespread use of SDRs and the availability of RBN data, I'm surprised that nobody has yet documented that fact in measurable terms over the course of a complete year.
I'm a subscriber to the VOACAP mailing list, and here's a recent (just a few weeks ago) comment from George Lane, one of the key original members of the IONCAP development team. "Beware of using CCIR
It's also worth mentioning that REC533, upon which Zoneprop is built, is intended to be used to estimate long-term averages, not to make short-term predictions. Using short-term Kp and running freque
Back in 2008-2009 at the bottom of the cycle when I operated form KH6, I often would find 15, 12 and 10 "dead". To check prop I would sometimes "self spot" on the lowest freq band not "open". I know
This is a perfect example of: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". 73, Luc __ PW7T Team member WRTC.2006 Brazilian Referee WRTC.2010 Brazilian Team Leader PY8AZT (also PT7AG, R37U, ZY7C
Great point. IONCAP and it's derivatives VOACAP and REC533 were NEVER meant to represent anything other than a generalized propagation prediction using monthly average data. Updating propagation pred
I believe Rick had an exchange in 2008 with Gwyn, G4FKH, about the issue of using REC533 in Zoneprop. Gwyn is a member of the RSGB propagation committee and he writes the monthly propagation report f