6m WSPR has come to life with spots exchanged several times this afternoon with
EA1KV (1304km).
DL4MFC (916km) spotted me on 6m WSPR at 1356z. Perhaps the 6m Es season is taking off at last? I notice there is thunder over central Europe. I wonder if this is helping? Sprites? I know one of the theories for Es involves thunder activity and
upward movement into the E layer. Es is pretty complex.
No idea if the better equipped stations are working from Western Europe to Japan on 6m. This path seems to open every year around now, and some theories suggest reflections from mesospheric noctilucent clouds which are more common around this time of year. I suspect reflections would be possible right up to microwaves, but I doubt anyone is trying. See
https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/vuhf/noctilucent .
I am very suspicious of some of the multi-hop explanations for
very long path Es. To me, there has to be a better explanation. Es yes. Multi-hop? Really? I have my doubts. Some Europeans may indeed be multi-hop but some of the openings to South East Asia, Africa and South America? I
really doubt that many of these are multi-hop Es in the way most understand this. Some sort of chordal hops perhaps?
My best DX so far on 6M WSPR with a spot from 4X1RF this afternoon. My 6M WSPR station after a few hurdles is stable running on a Raspberry Pi 2 with my FT-817 as the transceiver. One hiccup I had was that I cut down a cheap micro usb lead to connect to a power supply. The cable colours inside are standard red, black, green and white. Red/black are power and green/white are the data. On connection the cable didn't work, when I buzzed it out, I found that the black and white wires were transposed, fortunately the Pi did not mind this and was ok when I swapped them over. The best thing about the Pi 2 is that the power consumption is about 2 watts, which is ideal if it is running all the time.
ReplyDeleteThe WSPR software has to be compiled from source and while there are a few guides available, all of them seem to miss at least one step so they have to be read in conjunction with each other.
Well done on the 4X1RF spot today Nick. This is a very long way for 6m Es. He copied me several times last summer and again a few weeks ago. Still not convinced this is multi-hop Es.
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