[UK-CONTEST] FW: [FOC] ARRL 10M Test

[Clive Whelan]

[ Please excuise my laziness, this will serve as my report on the contest
73  Clive]
-----Original Message-----
From: Clive Whelan [mailto:clive.whelan at btinternet.com]
Sent: 11 December 2006 11:00
To: FOC Members
Subject: RE: [FOC] ARRL 10M Test


Hi Tom and Puck

As usual a Beatles lyric comes to mind viz

...you don't know how lucky you are boy, back in the US, back in the US,
back in the US(SR)........


What a difference a relatively few degrees of latitude makes. Here at 52
degrees+ North ( equivalent to VO2?) the band was indeed virtually dead. Of
course the big guns will always open it up with back scatter from their big
arrays. so I managed the grand total of 95 QSOs in both days, just pottering
around. These were mostly to Eu stations further South than the UK, and it
was possible to see from the serial numbers, that Italian and Balkans
stations had been filling their boots with QSOs. From here working UT and
UA6 was just about possible, but I managed a single QSO with UA3, ditto with
the Baltic countries. I shudder to think what the and sounded like to our
friends in GM!

The band opened briefly into CX and LU for a couple of hours on Saturday
afternoon from about 13:15z, and a couple of minutes on Sunday. A solitary
HS0 showed up on both days but nothing else at all from Asia. Of course
there were the usual (small) handful of African sta\tions

However, a most unusual thing happened on Saturday evening. As it was
getting dark- ca 17:00z, instead of the band fading rapidly, Eu signals rose
from S4 to S9, and the band remained open past 20:00z until the terminator
had crossed the far West coast of Africa. I have little doubt that this was
due to some kind of enhancement occurring along the grey line which was
running roughly NW/SE at the ( close to) winter solstice. The received
wisdom of course is that the grey line is an LF phenomenon, but I have
previous experience of the HF effect back in 1998 when enhancement occurred
along the grey line into South America in the WPX contest. This latter of
course was in mid summer, so the grey line was then running NE/SW.The latter
was undoubtedly F layer, but the former could conceivably have been E layer,
who knows. The fact that were there so relatively many HAs audible
throughout the day, tends to make me believe that E layer propagation was
involved, since my 6m experience teaches me that HA is bang on the target
distance for E layer propagation from the UK.  I also have some evidence of
the grey line acting as an "iron curtain" when firing at right angles to it
from the darkness side, but that's a whole 'nother QSO!

Worked a couple of members, but that's about it :-((

Of course, it could be said that this was self flagellation, or at least the
wearing of a hair shirt, However suffering such slings and arrows yet again
taught me something new about radio after 47 years on the bands!
Nevertheless I do look forward to some more sunspots in the near future;
bring it on!


73


Clive
GW3NJW

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