11 Jun 2014

6m - CN8LI lots of times today

6m has been good with lots of spots both ways of CN8LI (2113km) during the day. So far, he has spotted me ten times (see below)  and I have spotted him 5 times by 1435z. The common wisdom is this is Es but he is the ONLY DX spot so far and this is long distance for single hop. There is no sign of stations half way if this is double hop Es. Could it be F2-layer 1 hop? He has spotted me twice since (by 1525z).
Spots of my 1W ERP 6m WSPR signal by CN8LI (2113km)

4 comments:

Steve McDonald said...

"this is long distance for single hop. There is no sign of stations half way if this is double hop Es. Could it be F2-layer 1 hop?"

Roger - the 2100km hop to CN8 is typical of long single-hop Es. You can rule out F2 on 6m for 100%, especially at this time of the year. Even in mid winter with high SFI numbers, getting the F2 muf to creep up as far as 50MHz is a monumental task at our high latitudes. Even at the peak of this cycle, there were just three days of transcontintel F2 from here and it was poor and short-lived....and that was in the month of November. The F2 muf did get into the 40MHz regions here on several occasions but sadly ran out of gas most days. Hopefully Cycle 25 will be better as I don't have many cycles left!

73 Steve VE7SL

Roger G3XBM said...

Thanks Steve. You are probably right but have been puzzled by skip length to CN8LI (2113km) and even more so to 4X1RF (3519km) when not a single intermediate range station copied. Of course, if both there are long single hop all is explained.

Steve McDonald said...

Roger - I suspect the jump to 4X is true normal length double-hop. Perhaps the lack of spots at the end of the first hop is just the lack of WSPR activity there...or, it is landing on water. I often hear double hop from here to Florida and absolutely nothing in the middle....and that is over the mid USA! Perhaps these footprints are very small as well, if there really is any "hopping" involved....and sometimes I wonder about that "given" !

Roger G3XBM said...

I think the lack of active WSPR stations at intermediate hops is a reason I'm not seeing stations at the first hop. Israel is a LONG way for multi-hop Es and when he was copying me he spotted me many times on the same day. I am also not entirely convinced that some of the transatlantic (so-called) Es openings are Es. It is almost like an E-layer duct.