Topband: K4M and 160m into Western Europe
john.devoldere, ON4UN
john.devoldere at pandora.be
Sat Oct 24 02:59:34 PDT 2009
Hi friends topbanders:
Dave G4GED wrote: " Art, Please tell us who these 150+ Western EU stations
are then?
Gary W5FI gave us some figures on zone 14, 15 and 16. OK.
Zone 16 is Russia, hardly Western Europe, and 2700 km (1700 miles) from W.
Europe. The same difference as between US West coast and e.g. Illinois. I
think you appreciate that the propagation from a 12000 km or 7500 miles
distant DX (right over the magnetic North Pole) into California is NOT the
same as into Illinois. This makes a day and night difference. That is the
same difference we have between zone 16 and West Europe.
At distances above approx. 11000 km (6800 mi) propagation is theoretically
impossible via multi-hop (this is what the mathematics tell us if you add up
the reflection losses in the ionosphere and on earth), and over these very
long distances some kind of signal ducting is involved most of the time. The
exact limit of course depends on many factors such as the reflection loss on
Earth (over land path or over sea path).
Zone 15 comprises North-East Europe, East Europe and South-East Europe. It
is certainly not (part of) Western Europe. In Finland they made 54 topband
QSOs between 14z and 17z, a +/- 3 hours lasting opening during the European
evening path. In W. Europe common darkness lasted between a few minutes and
max. 1 hour. Not to forget that the path (into central Finland) is "only"
9700 km (6000 mi), which is 2300 km (or 1500 mi) shorter than the path into
e.g. central France. Taking into account that approx. 11000 km appears to be
the max. limit for multi-hop propagation, the situation in Finland as
compared to West Europe is VERY different.
Zone 14 INCLUDES Western Europe, but IS NOT Western Europe. I would by no
means call SM, LA, OZ Western European countries, not at least if we are
considering a 160 m path in mind going toward the center of the Pacific
Ocean. In Europe we all know that propagation to countries in the central
Pacific area from the Eastern part of zone 14 is very different from
propagation from West Europe (EA, CT, F, ON, G, GM, EI etc.).
I am sorry to say, but Gary's statement " But even leaving out 15, 16 there
were 75 Z14 Q's." is not convincing at all. Zone 14 is NOT West Europe, and
only A PART of Zone 14 is West Europe. I hope I made that clear above. Dave
said "West Europe" and not zone 14, so the number of QSOs made from West
Europe with K4NM is not 75 but barely 11. I think that makes a huge
difference.
Four QSOs were made on the Eu morning path (1G, 1GI and 2 GMs) and 7 on the
Eu evening path. Why so few (both morning and evening)? BECAUSE IT IS A VERY
DIFFICULT PATH.
Let me give you my own experience: I have listened every day in our local
evening, when we had approx. 1 hour of common darkness. I only heard them
ONE DAY (Oct 16) and that day I heard K4M twice for a few seconds: once for
~15 seconds, and once for ~30 seconds, and I made contact. In Belgium, both
myself and my good friends ON4WW and ON4MA made the QSO, but not on the same
day. The 3 of us were in contact on 70cms when I made the QSO. The amazing,
thing (but not surprising to me) is that when I made the contact ON4WW did
not at all hear K4M, but ON4MA did. I made a recording of K4M, and I can
clearly copy every single letter of my call. A few minutes later K4M peaked
up for maybe 20 sec to a very solid Q5. To my surprise no one answered his
CQ (as witnessed on my spectrum adapter), proving no one else was hearing
him exactly that time. I called him with my contest call OT7T, and we made a
QSO after having given my call twice. The QSO lasted only a few seconds.
Shortly after I heard ON4WW and ON4MA calling, telling me on UHF they were
copying K4M, while I was not hearing a beep from K4M. And we are, all 3 of
us, less than 6 miles apart! We all 3 used a Beverage beaming due North.
This was clearly a typical example of spotlight propagation resulting from
signal ducting. In such circumstances the fast varying exit conditions from
the duct cause the fast moving spotlight phenomenon (like a waveguide with
some holes in it).
I was not on the air the day when there apparently was a good
morning-opening to the G-area, but I must agree with Clive, GM3POI, that an
expedition of the K4M stature should keep an eye on the areas where sun is
rising/setting every day, and especially, after having heard one European
station breaking through the USA pileup they should have called CQ Europe
only for a while.
We did not have that problem during the European evening opening, I must
say. The fact that only 7 West-European stations made it during the European
evening opening proves that the K4M operators really tried hard to make even
the most difficult and most marginal contacts.
To all the operators from K4M, and especially the topband specialists, thank
you for a new country. And let's hope that we all have learned lessons from
this operation. On both sides.
73 to all and good luck on working Chesterfield on topband.
John, ON4UN
-----Original Message-----
From: topband-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com]
On Behalf Of Art
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 5:58 AM
To: G4GED Dave
Cc: TopBand List
Subject: Re: Topband: K4M on TopBand
Dave
Here's one analysis, I do hope the formatting comes thru so you can see
how many Q's per zone. I do not know what you think of as western EU. To
many if not most around here it includes Z14, 15, 16. I've deleted
non-EU zones from Gary's post for brevity. With thanks to Gary. I
include the email trail, without which this wouldn't make much sense.
Looks like I understated the case, its actually 227 QSO. But even
leaving out 15, 16 there were 75 Z14 Q's.
73 Art
I have been running some numbers for my local DX club the Magnolia DX
Association and since this issue has come up here on topband, I thought that
many in this group might also be interested in the numbers. These numbers
are derived from the ClubLog official on-line website for both DXpeditions.
[snip]
73 W5FI Gary
The numbers reflect the total DXpedition QSOs by the end of the operations
of K4M
Zone 14
Band
10 0
12 0
15 9
17 68
20 1511
30 1713
40 1003
80 178
160 75
Zone 15
Band
10 0
12 0
15 9
17 53
20 1704
30 1461
40 864
80 319
160 132
Zone 16
Band
10 0
12 0
15 158
17 324
20 1152
30 596
40 598
80 337
160 120
Total K4M QSOs 60,735
G4GED Dave wrote:
> Art K6XT wrote>>>
>
>
>> Except that K4M devoted much effort to, and did in fact work a number of
>> west EU stations on topband. Someone tallied them up earlier. Do I
>> recall 150+ QSO's? Surely FT5GA (which would have been new for me as
>> well) had no such score with west US.
>>
>
> OK Art, Please tell us who these 150+ Western EU stations are then?
>
> Because when I look in the K4M on-line log I see for 160m; 1 x G, 3 x GM,
0
> x other
> G entities, 0 x F, 0 x EA, 0 x EI, 0 x CT, 4 x PA, 4 x ON. Pardon me if
> I've missed anyone but that's not far off what we here consider to be in
> western EU for ham radio propagation purposes.
>
> So please tell us who the other 138+ are?
>
> Maybe you're confusing political EU with geographical EU?
>
> 73
> Dave
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