Topband: Summer in the Northern Hemisphere

[Milt]

Gary,

I agree with Don on the one point of lightning AND your proximity to it.

For example, Al, K7CA operated portable CE1 for a number of our northern 
hemisphere winters during the middle of the South American summers.  Al 
operated from north central Chile, on the coast in a city named Huasco.

Here is one bit of info about summers in Chile.  There hardly exists any 
T-storm activity.  I personally lived in Chile for 2 1/2 years and during 
that entire time I heard ONE clamp of thunder.  To the point, Al did NOT 
have to endure local QRN from T-storms.  However, Al often commented about 
the difficulty he had of hearing WEAK signals through the EQUATORIAL static 
belt, from T-storms a couple of thousand miles distant in the northern 3rd 
of the continent.

However, Al always placed very high up in the standing of overall single op 
scores.  In fact Al won #1 World a couple of times in the SPDC.

My personal experience was with the VP6DX expedition to Ducie Atoll in 
February, 2008.  I operated as a single op in the CQ WW 160 SSB contest. 
Even though this was in the middle of the South Pacific summer (equivalent 
to August in the northern hemisphere) and I had lots of QRN from the 
equatorial belt, I enjoyed the most fantastic result any operator could ever 
hope for.  I not only won the #1 world plaque, but the score is the only 
single op score in the history of that contest to be above 1 million points. 
And only one other operation, a multi-op from Morocco, has ever scored 
higher.

Why was this possible.  Obviously two things come into play, both with my 
VP6DX operation and Al's CE! operations.  An excellent station AND LOTS of 
stations to contact.  This fact is supported by the exact operations you 
mention; the recent VP8 outings to South Thule and South Georgia.

This leads me to reason #2 that so few of us can enjoy Top Band DX during 
the northern hemisphere summer.  There is a very low quantity of southern 
hemisphere stations that can be heard through the northern hemisphere 
summertime QRN.

There are so few southern hemisphere stations operating compared to the 
numbers in the northern hemisphere is the primary portion of that reason, 
AND of those few stations a very minor percentage are equipped antenna wise 
for intercontinental communication under normal atmospheric and ionospheric 
conditions.

During recent contests, the well equipped Uruguayan station of Jorge, CX5W, 
was able to work MANY NA and EU stations.  But, he had thousands of stations 
to choose from and I will say hundreds of well equipped stations who could 
'cut the mustard' of getting a signal to Jorge's receiver.

Jorge was one of a small hand full on the whole continent who were active on 
Top Band, and he was in a relatively quiet QRN zone.  The more northern SA 
stations around the equator, in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru had much more 
difficult receiving conditions because they were within the active lightning 
zone.

I have tried operating in the Oceania DX contest (winter there, summer here) 
and I usually wind up contacting a few KH6 stations and a random ZL and VK 
at best.

IF, an 'if' that will never happen, there were the quantity of Oceania 
stations operating on Top Band during the Oceania DX contest that we have 
operating in the northern hemisphere during the ARRL DX and CQ WW contests, 
you and I would be able to make a goodly number of contacts through our 
summer time static.

The fact remains that the discrepancy of overall quantity of, and the 
quantity of well equipped, Top Band stations in the southern hemisphere vs 
the northern hemisphere, is the prime reason northern hemisphere stations 
have difficulty in working southern hemisphere DX during the northern 
hemisphere summer.

Mis dos centavos.

de Milt, N5IA


-----Original Message----- 
From: Don Kirk
Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2016 12:21 PM
To: Gary at ka1j.com
Cc: topband
Subject: Re: Topband: Summer in the Northern Hemisphere

Hi Gary,

As far as I can tell, it's all lightning related (regardless time of
year).  I suggest you look at one of the world wide real time lightning
maps on the Internet (if you don't already) and that might help answer your
question.  When I hear static crashes I know there must be a thunder storm
somewhere in or near the US (I often hear static crashes from as far away
as 1500 miles or more).  Everyday evening I look at the real time lightning
map of the US (http://thunderstorm.vaisala.com/explorer.html) to see how
bad the QRN will be on 160 meters and from what direction (regardless of
Summer or Winter).

Just my take on the situation.

Don (wd8dsb)

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Gary Smith <Gary at ka1j.com> wrote:

> Something that has always puzzled me is summer operation on 160 in
> the northern hemisphere.
>
> Here in Connecticut 160 in the summer is so full of crashes that
> picking out any DX is next to impossible. But, during the winter the
> crashes are sometimes totally absent and the band is almost dead
> silent except for ham operation. However, summer here is winter in
> the southern hemisphere. I'll just use Argentina as the southern
> example.
>
> Quoting from Wikipedia on Argentina:
> "Argentina has four seasons: winter (June-August), spring
> (September-November), summer (December-February) and autumn
> (March-May), all featuring different weather conditions. The hottest
> and coldest temperature extremes recorded in South America have
> occurred in Argentina."
>
> So what is amazing to me is how difficult it is for me to hear
> southern hemisphere DX in Connecticut, in July, yet they are hearing
> our winter 160 contest signals, wonderfully in the middle of what is
> their summer. The two recent VP8 DXpedetions were in their local
> summer yet they were knocking NA & EU off one after another on top
> band.
>
> My HI-Z Rx is so very helpful on 160 (& other bands as well) but it
> sure doesn't let me hear SA DX in July. I'd like to have a clear
> picture of how it is that Southern Hemisphere 160M DX can hear so
> well in their summer when I'm deaf as a doorknob in mine.
>
> 73,
>
> Gary
> KA1J