No Sun Spot DX

[W7is]

For the past few weeks I've been working DX all day long on  20M.  
And all during this time there are no sun spots.  
As today --  at 1830Z,  I  worked DK9PY using 10W and he was  20 over 9.  
And a few days ago I worked Africa at about the same time of day with
the signals practically pegging the S meter.    
 
I just leave the barefoot K2 monitoring the low end of 20M CW.  
The propagation has just been amazing.   Where I work into Europe  almost
at will all day long.     I am using a 2  ele Quad with a clear take off angle
over fresh water here.  Which does help a great  deal.   But it still dosnt
explain the great prop without sun spots.   Anyone have an  ideas?  
 
Frank W7is  
 
 



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[N6TR]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 02:47:37PM -0400, [hidden email] wrote:

> I just leave the barefoot K2 monitoring the low end of 20M CW.  
> The propagation has just been amazing.   Where I work into Europe  almost
> at will all day long.     I am using a 2  ele Quad with a clear take off angle
> over fresh water here.  Which does help a great  deal.   But it still dosnt
> explain the great prop without sun spots.   Anyone have an  ideas?  

A lot of people thing you need sunspots to have good propagation.  This is
certainly true if you are talking about 10 meters.

20 meters is a band that seems to do okay without sunspots.  As you go lower
in frequency, certainly by the time you get to 40 meters, the bands actually
seem to do better without them.  On 160 meters, this is the "sunspot peak"
from the perspective of openings from my QTH to Europe.  During the years
where there are lots of sunspots - you simply can't work Europe hardly
ever.  Last week, I worked RA4LW on seven consecutive nights.

Tree N6TR
[hidden email]
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[Gary D Krause]

I know what you mean.  I've been hearing Russia and Europe coming in here.  I
live in Wyoming and I use a vertical.  I managed to work Russia last month
with only ten watts.

So much for propagation and sun spots.  It must be the K2 mojo!

Gary, N7HTS


On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:47:37 EDT
  [hidden email] wrote:

>For the past few weeks I've been working DX all day long on  20M.  
> And all during this time there are no sun spots.  
> As today --  at 1830Z,  I  worked DK9PY using 10W and he was  20 over 9.  
> And a few days ago I worked Africa at about the same time of day with
> the signals practically pegging the S meter.    
>
> I just leave the barefoot K2 monitoring the low end of 20M CW.  
> The propagation has just been amazing.   Where I work into Europe  almost
> at will all day long.     I am using a 2  ele Quad with a clear take off
>angle
> over fresh water here.  Which does help a great  deal.   But it still dosnt
> explain the great prop without sun spots.   Anyone have an  ideas?  
>
>Frank W7is  
>
>
>
>
>
> ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
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[WB3AAL]

Hi,

 This past weekend I played around in the WAG Contest, Worked All Germans.

Just doing a hunt and peck for a total of 2 hours I worked the following on
the bands.

40m = 5 Q's

20m = 13 Q's

15m = 7 Q's

I used my K2 @ 5 watts. On 15 and 20m I used my tri-band beam at 33 feet. On
40m I used my ground mounted Butternut HF9V with 120 radials.

In all the Q's there were only 2 that I had to repeat my SN.

Last week I worked a station on 20m in Algeria which is in Northern Africa.
Told him I was QRP, 5w, he told me I was a strong 579.

Just wish more people would check 15 meters and send a CQ. You never know
who will come back to the call.

72 and Thanks,
Ron Polityka
WB3AAL
www.wb3aal.com
www.n3epa.org/

K1 - SN 01011
K2 - SN 01392


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[Julian, G4ILO]

I ran the beacon monitor Faros by VE3NEA for a few weeks and it was
quite amazing how often DX beacons were detected even on the higher HF
bands even using my modest antenna. I would have loved to be able to
have it running 24/7. It was a real eye-opener. But of course, you
can't work beacons...

--
Julian, G4ILO K2 s/n: 392  K3 s/n: ???
G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com
Zerobeat Ham Forums: www.zerobeat.net/smf


On 10/22/07, Ron Polityka <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>  This past weekend I played around in the WAG Contest, Worked All Germans.
>
> Just doing a hunt and peck for a total of 2 hours I worked the following on
> the bands.
>
> 40m = 5 Q's
>
> 20m = 13 Q's
>
> 15m = 7 Q's
>
> I used my K2 @ 5 watts. On 15 and 20m I used my tri-band beam at 33 feet. On
> 40m I used my ground mounted Butternut HF9V with 120 radials.
>
> In all the Q's there were only 2 that I had to repeat my SN.
>
> Last week I worked a station on 20m in Algeria which is in Northern Africa.
> Told him I was QRP, 5w, he told me I was a strong 579.
>
> Just wish more people would check 15 meters and send a CQ. You never know
> who will come back to the call.
>
> 72 and Thanks,
> Ron Polityka
> WB3AAL
> www.wb3aal.com
> www.n3epa.org/
>
> K1 - SN 01011
> K2 - SN 01392
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Post to: [hidden email]
> You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
> Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.):
>  http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
>
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm
> Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
>

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[Paul Fletcher]

I can confirm that the propagation has been good enough from the UK on 20m
also. A couple of weeks back we spent a week in the Outer Hebrides solely to
play radio (helped being on an island with antennas optimised for low angle
radiation) and we worked Japan (never heard a pileup from JA before) New
Zealand, Australia, Borneo, etc etc. We did not have a great takeoff to the
west so contacts in that direction were limited but we did work the west
coast of the USA several times including Alaska. All of this was on SSB with
no more than 100W.

We more than doubled our last year's QSO total, notching up 4500 contacts.
Sadly non on Elecraft radios as I didn't take my K2 along.

73 Paul M1PAF

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[Bill VanAlstyne W5WVO]

[hidden email] wrote:

> But it still dosnt explain the great prop without sun spots.   Anyone
> have any ideas?

Frank,

The sun still puts out some solar flux even without visible sunspots. Solar
flux rises and falls with visible sunspots over the 11-year cycle, but it's
the solar flux that is actually responsible for charging the F layer, and
there's always some of that coming our way, even during the solar minimum.

The other factor is absorption. High numbers of sunspots and the associated
high solar flux level increase the efficiency of the ionosphere, but the
increased solar activity associated with high sunspots (like solar
flares/storms, CMEs, etc.) also causes disturbances in the Earth's geomagnetic
field. Such disturbances absorb radio signals, making ionospheric propagation
very unstable or completely unuseable. Absorption tends to be a bigger problem
in the lower HF region (80M, 40M, 20M) than in the higher HF region (15M,
10M). On the 20M band, therefore, weak signals can be heard more reliably when
absorption is low, even when propagational efficiency is also fairly low.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we don't love those sunspots!  :-)  But it's
a double-edged sword to be sure.

Bill / W5WVO

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[Mark J. Schreiner]

In case you all find the following boring, at least go to the last
paragraph for the whole point of this email!  The following is related
to Elecraft because it describes QSOs I've made mostly with my K2.  It
is even more appropriate, as you will see if you make it all the way
through and to the end of this diatribe.

I was quite busy on the radio about one year ago, when the sunspots were
few, and sometimes zero.  Lately I haven't been so active on the air due
to a variety of things, but certainly not due to the lack of sunspots!  
I was pleasantly surprised to get an envelope full of QSL cards from the
8th Area QSL Buro via the mail today.  These are the real thing, not
those eQSLs.  These have photographs printed on card stock that feels
good in your hands and will be fun to look at many years from now.  I
looked through them all and they were either for QSOs that I had while
HF mobile (DQ2006X for a special event station during the 2006 World
Football Cup, that is of course Soccer) or operating from home with my
Elecraft K2 at 5W (or less).

Some of the dates and QSOs looked pretty familiar, such as October 15,
2006 (QSOs with F6FHO for my DX multiplier on 20m CW and VA2SG on 40m
SSB), the weekend of last year's PA QSO Party when I operated from my
home QTH in Lehigh County instead of heading out to Potter County or
like this year to Mifflin County.

Another familiar date was November 11, 2006, the weekend of ARRL
November Sweepstakes Phone (QSO with VY2TT on PEI on 40m SSB).  This
looks like quite the contest station which is available as a rental
property!  Hmm, another vacation idea!

Not all my QSOs are during contests, of course, and a couple of my most
memorable DX contacts were also worked QRP with my K2 at 5W from home
with a Carolina Windom 160.  One of them was QSL'd as HA7TM/HI9 on both
40 & 160m CW (I've noticed that antenna works best on those bands and
not so good on 80m, I guess it shows).  My best long haul DX QSL card
was a QSO I remember well (oh, from April 2005, I thought that one was a
bit farther back in the logbook) on 40m CW early one morning before I
went to work, working grayline to the Fiji Islands and snagging 3D2NA on
Mana Island.  It was especially memorable as I could barely detect a
signal on the frequency and as I continued to listen and as the sky
continued to brighten slightly I heard the signal level coming up and
out of the noise until I figured I had nothing to lose, gave a call, and
was pleasantly surprised by a reply!  Hey, you never know unless you
try!  There was also Special Event Station VC3O for the 150th
anniversary of the discovery of oil in Canada.  This QSL has a nice
photograph of a drilling rig shack used to keep the men out of the cold
while drilling and then it is moved to the next location.  It would have
made a nice antenna tower as well had radio been around back in the 1850s!

Okay, but I saved the very best for last.  I hope you all made it to
this point.  This was truly a nice surprise and it was the last QSL card
in the batch that I looked it, so was truly the best for last for me as
well.  This is a callsign we are all familiar with, and it featured a
photograph of three things that are near and dear to all of us who read
this.  The first item of note was young boy, obviously in training for
ham radio and hopefully a future generation ham in the making.  The
second was an Elecraft K2 and the third was an Elecraft Hex Key!  Oh,
the callsign, none other than VA3JFF/QRP, Jeff Hetherington, Contest
Manager for QRP-ARCI!   Thanks, Jeff, for the QSO, QSO, and hopefully
for providing a future generation of hams to keep this wonderful hobby
alive!

72 to all those whom I've QSO'd, QSL'd and hope to work again, at the
bottom of the cycle to the top of the next!

Mark, NK8Q
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