|
Home | Articles | Projects | Products | Bookmarks | About |
Posted at - 7th January 2018
Since we are approaching the solar minimum, whose apogee is expected during 2019-2020, I wanted to see how radio propagation looks like for the next following months. The prediction was made using the VOACAP prediction tools. Things doesn't look good at all, the radio propagation (ionospheric conditions) get worsen month by month.
Therefore, I tried to predict a point-to-point propagation path for Bucharest to East Coast of USA. Using VOACAP I used the following settings to a close match of my real conditions.
NOTE: My antenna is actually a sloped wire about 18-20m long (which is too short for 80m band), surrounded by big buildings nearby, height for one end is about 12m and for other 5-6m above the ground, therefore it will perform worse than a halfwave dipole at 10m height.
The green-yellow spot on the image above tells us that there is a window about one our around 5:00 o'clock UTC at 4-7MHz, so today I have tested it! Woken up in the morning, connected to K3FEF's WebSDR located in Milford, Pennsylvania - Northeastern USA - FN21MH (http://k3fef.com:8901/), transceiver and antenna tuned to 3.539KHz. Transmit power around 40-50W PEP and because my homemade transceiver doesn't support true CW, I whistled a little, sorry for that. So, here is the result:
Nice!! But very very weak, maybe more power and digital mode is needed for me to work USA in nowadays of solar minimum. So I hope you guys with good antenna to try North America DX in January mornings. Good Luck!!
|
Home | Articles | Projects | Products | Bookmarks | About |