29 Mar 2012

ZL9 Campbell Island (near New Zealand)

There is to be a DXpedition to Campbell Island (OC-037) in November this year. See http://dx-world.net/2012/zl9hr-campbell-island-dxpedition/ .  This reminds me of the excellent conditions on 20m AM back in the 1960s when I remember hearing a station on Campbell Island working the UK with S9 signals early one morning. In those days I'm sure the prefix was ZL4 though.

Is it just me, or is it much more difficult to hear and work DX stations these days compared with back then? Some believe that the ionosphere has actually deteriorated in the last 40 odd years so that, despite rising sunspot numbers, conditions are not as good as they were years ago.

2 comments:

XV4Y-Yan said...

Hi Roger,
I think ZL9 is near your antipod, isn't it? So S9 signals are not anornal for this area...

Roger G3XBM said...

Yan thanks for this. Yes it is almost on the antipodes. Not being too great an HF DXer I did not realise that this would result in strong signals.