Topband: Ooops - Good reason for multiple Stews/Stew Beef

[Steve Ireland]

G’day

Oops. I meant from Western Australia the time between the Spring and Autumn (in southern hemisphere terms) equinoxes is by far the best time to work into North America and Europe, i.e. during our spring, summer and autumn.  Yes it as noisy as all hell, but the prop is there.

However, while the southern hemisphere winter (June, July and August) is very poor for VK6 stations to work across into the northern hemisphere, the east coast of Australia (in particular, VK3, 4, 5 and 7) can work across the equator into North America regularly during this time. 

Despite what the commonly used Mercator Projection map of the world shows, Australia is as about as big as the continental USA – and eastern Australia has very different propagation to Australia’s ‘left coast’, as the USA’s east coast does in comparison to its west coast.  

My recollection of what the great Stew himself wrote in his newsletters (and my general experience) is that around the equinoxes is the best time to work 160m for just about everyone worldwide.  

I think four Stews is just perfect for increasing activity levels and attracting DX, but if we were ever to talk about two, IMHO think these being close to the two equinoxes would be the fairest solution.  

Vy 73

Steve, VK6VZ

From: Steve Ireland 
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2016 8:58 AM
To: topband at contesting.com 
Subject: Good reason for multiple Stews

G’day

As a long-time supporter of the Stew Perry TBDC and donor of Royal Flying Doctor Service caps, it has been great fun reading the various responses to the Boring Amateur Radio Club’s innovation of the Spring Stew. Owing to the organisers’ sense of fun, even the criticism was funny and fun to read!  

One of the great things about the Stew Perry (or any contest for that matter) is that it gives us a chance to operate for a whole night-plus and experience conditions over this period – and learn.  

This year was no exception – I’ve never experienced an all-night pipeline into the Baltic in 20 years of 160m operation from Western Australia and to be able to observe how the strength of the pipeline ebbed and flowed was fascinating.

A Spring (northern hemisphere) Stew is going to be very interesting experience and I look forward to it.

Rick N6RK (I think) made a good point about southern hemisphere conditions.  In VK6, the period between spring and autumn equinoxes is the best time by far for working into Europe and North America, but it is the noisiest half of the year by far.  We have many thunderstorms and the general atmospheric noise level is high.  Please run QRO in the Stew so we can hear you all ‘down under’/’down south’ – that will help to maintain/increase participation.

Vy 73

Steve, VK6VZ   



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