[UK-CONTEST] 28MHz Propagation

[Mike Farmer]

A very non-eventful weekend!! followed by 3 interesting posts by Clive,Doug and Dave.  Here in North Shropshire (< 52 N) and using 100w to a Force12 C19 (5ele on 10m) at 60feet,  I managed to work every station (except a VU2) that I heard for a grand total of 64 QSOs!.   Comparing this with the previous 3 years shows the effect of the sunspot cycle on 10m:

 2001 - 1305 QSOs (Both days and all between 07:00 and 19:00) - 1st G & 7th World
 2002 - 1050 QSOs (Both days and all between 07:00 and 18:00) - 1st G & 8th World
 2003 - 173 QSOs (Day 2 only between 08:00 and 16:00) - 1st G
 2004 - 65 QSOs (Both days and all between 07:30 and 16:00) - 1st G

I was listening for long periods both side of the above times but heard nothing!

As usual I did some propagation predictions prior to the event and this years (summarized) went:

00:00 - 08:00   Not a lot
08:00 - 10:00   Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, second hour may see some openings to Central Africa
10:00 - 12:00   Southern Europe, Africa and Western part of the Indian Ocean
12:00 - 14:00   Southern Europe, South America, Africa possible Central and southern part of North America
14:00 - 16:00   South America
16:00 - 18:00   Back to not a lot

There will be very little to be had north of the equator,  the SFI appears to be heading towards 90 with a K in the region of 4/5 and that limits any openings to North America as well as totally killing anything to/from the Far East.   Prospects (in theory) are not good but a contest brings out more operators and that improves propagation chances.  Believe me 10m is fun.

Having had a look at what actually happened my prediction of 90 was reasonable as was the K index guess.   A look at the MUF (not OWF) shows paths to UA0, UA3, W with MUF over the 48 hour period all below 26Mhz. Paths to Africa actually made 28Mhz around 12:00 whilst the path to LU was over 28MHz between 14:30 and 15:30.  So why do we expect propagation above the MUF!!

In simple English I wish there were more amateurs in the southern hemisphere and it is likely to stay this way till the next sunspot cycle starts!

As for skewed and 1 way propagation,  I believe that using low powers (ie non commercial communications) the chances of 2 way communications is dodgy and my 100w ain't going anywhere. I recall the wonder of the military forward scatter when they threw Mega, Mega watts at the pole and got reception all over Europe (VHF). However, it needed big base stations with seemingly endless supplies of electrical power!!

So for us lesser mortals if you can work what you hear - be happy, try pointing your beam towards the sun and see what happens!!

73 de Mike