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Video: Iceland by drone and operating as TF/AE5X

✇AE5X
By: John AE5X
21 June 2024 at 14:49
I am amazed at the stunning scenery of Iceland - the trip was bucket-list incredible.The video below is about 2/3 drone video (followed by 1/3 radio) of the places we saw as we drove around the country.In all, we put 950 miles (1500km) on the car and I activated 4 parks. Each park was a first-activation for that park. I had no trouble making contacts but my time at each park was limited. The KX2

Today's park activation from Iceland

✇AE5X
By: John AE5X
13 June 2024 at 21:03
I've activated two parks in Iceland since arriving 4 days ago - both times were first activations for those parks. It's been tough to put the camera down. Iceland is an amazing country and I'll have more to say about it later.Today's activation of IS-0092 Blábjörg Natural Monument was a lesson in Exceeded Expectations 101. Just when you think you can predict certain aspects of this radio stuff,

The gradual normalization of automated FT8

✇AE5X
By: John AE5X
6 June 2024 at 13:03
The one-man FT4GL DXpedition on Glorioso is ground-breaking.As Wayne N0UN notes on his blog (and others elsewhere), the single operator has been making FT8 contacts for over 134 hours straight, making digital contacts on multiple bands simultaneously.This is discernible by looking at each days' activity on ClubLog. Click on the "Total QSOs" for a particular day, then mouse over the hourly

UHSDR aligned: Where does the mcHF clone excel?

✇AE5X
By: John AE5X
20 March 2024 at 21:15
I spent about an hour and a half today with the mcHF clone on the bench undergoing a full alignment. The radio, not me.Alignment of this radio is simple and the instructions are menu-driven & easy to follow - but there are a lot of optional settings that go a long way toward configuring the radio to operate in a manner that makes ergonomic and operational sense.If I had not owned a mcHF

DXing: KX2 masquerading as a KH1

✇AE5X
By: John AE5X
22 November 2023 at 02:18
A cheap 51" (130cm) telescoping CB walkie-talkie antenna and conditions on 10-15 meters gave me the idea to treat my KX2 like a KH1.Tuesday mornings can offer slow POTA activity but I was pleased with the results anyway from a peaceful little park about half an hour from home.The weather was perfect and this project served as the perfect excuse to be outside.In the following video, I made 10

1st outting with new KX2 - mucho DX on 10/12m

✇AE5X
By: John AE5X
3 November 2023 at 09:30
I ordered a KX2 back in mid July - by mid-October, it had still not arrived...but an 'For Sale' ad was placed by a local ham for a 4-month old KX2 that he decided he didn't want. It had all the options I wanted and none of those I didn't.My order with Elecraft was quickly cancelled and the new-to-me KX2 was soon on its way.Today was my first outting - a POTA activation - with the KX2 and, man, I

Auroral Zone Case Study

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
1 January 2023 at 22:36

I haven't had much time for radio these days.  At this latitude, the return of the sunspots put the kibosh on my 160m dxing and with 322 (mixed, current) DXCC entities confirmed there haven't been any workable new ones available for me.  My Station 2021 project has been languishing and even my existing station has fallen into disrepair.  My rotator quit working in 2021 and this spring I accidentally overdrove my amp and blew something.  Life was busy but sooner or later something would come along that motivated me to get back on the air.  I still followed the DX news and was keeping an eye out for any new ones coming along.  I followed (and donated to) the 3Y0J expedition to Bouvet Island, still on track for the end of January 2023, and also took note of the one-man operation heading for Crozet Island.  When Thierry F6CUK arrived on Crozet and began operating as FT8WW over the Christmas holidays I knew that it was time to get it together.

When swapping out a couple of boards in the amplifier didn't solve the problem I determined it had to be an issue with my homebrew T/R switch and attenuator.  After removing it and putting it on the bench I found that a 50 ohm resistor in the attenuator had failed.  Stands to reason that accidentally pumping 100 watts into a 30 watt resistor too often would eventually lead to problems!  I was already planning to replace one resistor in there to adjust for my new 10-watt IC-705 but I didn't have any spare non-inductive 50 ohm resistors.  Nothing in the junk box either but I did find an old splitter/combiner set that each had a 25 ohm resistor so I put them in series and voila- problem solved.  Fortunately, the antenna with the broken rotator is pointed North over the pole so I didn't have to climb the tower in the dark and 40 below, at least not until the Bouvet activation later this month. 

Once all that and all the other minor repairs and software upgrades were done it was time make a contact!  Well, that part was not going to be so easy.  FT8WW was so far only using a low wire antenna .  The active solar conditions would make signals very weak as the path between here (at 68 degrees North) and Crozet (nearly antipodal from here) travels straight over the North pole (which means passing through the aurora TWICE) and then all the way down the other side of the world.  At least we marginally shared a grey line between midnight zulu and 0200z.  That would be the best time to try.

The entire eastern hemisphere is straight over the pole from here and Crozet is no exception.

Conditions were lousy all week.  The elevated X-ray Flux attenuates signals like crazy up here!

I was in the shack every evening watching for him.  He was operating mostly FT8 digital mode and alternating between the 30m band and the 20m band.  FT8 is great for making contact with weak signals but it is strongly affected by the multipathing and phase shifting from the aurora.  The sun was spitting out B and C-class solar flares every few hours.  The aurora was blazing overhead and the absorption was extremely high.  Most of the time I could only decode a few of the hundreds of other stations calling FT8WW.  You could even see on the waterfall display how the geomagnetic activity messed with the signals.  Instead of straight lines on the scope they would often "bend" in the middle like digital macaroni.  Occasionally I would see a weak trace on the scope that I assumed was FT8WW but the horrible conditions prevented successful decoding.  I could see the KL7 stations in Alaska calling and giving him good signal reports but even stations only a few hundred miles south of here have a path to Crozet that manages to skirt the edge of the auroral oval and follows the grey line perfectly.

Nevertheless, I persevered. Finally, on New Year's Eve, FT8WW was on 30m around 0100z and as I watched the signals all started to get a bit stronger.  Then I finally got ONE decode of FT8WW, only -18dB.  Three minutes later I got another decode, this time -15dB.  I started calling him.  4 periods (2 minutes) later he decoded again, this time I got both of his streams (he was using MSHV and running two carriers).  Then nothing again for another 5 minutes.  I could SEE his transmissions on the display but they just weren't decoding.  Finally, I got another decode and it was the one I wanted to see. He was answering me!  I acknowledged my report (sent RR73) and right away received an RR73 from him.  Done and done.  And that was it!  I didn't get any more decodes after that.  I only received a total of 7 transmissions from him and between calling and answering I transmitted 13 times over six minutes.  

So what actually happened in that very short time span?  Here is what I think was going on.  The first thing was the auroral oval.  Here is the NOAA Ovation forecast for that period around 0100z:


You can see that there is a gap in the oval around solar noon.  I was just inside the gap which probably helped to get his signal down to me.  The path between us (marked in red) also crossed a slightly narrower auroral band on the other side of the pole.

Shooting through the gap helped but the real answer was the solar wind.  Like earthly wind, it "blows" fast or slow depending on the level of solar activity.  The stronger the solar wind the worse the space weather is for HF radio in the polar regions.  And again like the earthly wind, it also has "gusts" but these variations aren't changes in the speed.  They are changes in the magnetic polarity.  In the Northern auroral zone, the more negative the magnetic polarity the stronger the geomagnetic badness is.  Here is the NOAA real-time solar wind plot for the time of my contact:


You can see right at the time I started getting a few decodes from FT8WW, the magnetic polarity (Bz) of the solar wind peaked in the positive direction which momentarily eased the distortion from the electromagnetism.  This effect is especially pronounced on the lower HF bands.  Our contact was on the 30m band which tends to share characteristics of both the lower and higher bands.

#323 finally in the log!

As an aside, for those radio Luddites out there, CW transmissions are also affected by the geomagnetic field here in the same way.  For anything faster than about 15 words-per-minute, the multipath distortion makes CW sound like a weak RTTY signal.  The differences between dots and dashes is virtually indistinguishable.  Think about that the next time you're in the ARRL CW Sweepstakes looking for that NT multiplier but blasting away with the keyer set at 30wpm!

Next up at the end of January is a two-fer: Bouvet Island and Burundi, both of which I have been waiting for a chance at for a long time!  The last attempt at both of those did not end well but I have a feeling that 2023 is going to be the year they finally make it into the log.  Fingers crossed!







DX Year in Review

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
3 January 2021 at 18:33

Shortly after I wrote my last annual 'DX Year' post in early 2020, things changed pretty fast once all the travel restrictions came into effect from the global pandemic.  Nevertheless, despite the lack of DXpeditions, in November I finally managed to break my two year dry spell and worked JX2US on Jan Mayen Island for an all-time new one #322.

Despite its relative proximity to me, there has not been much activity from Jan Mayen in the last 10 years and I somehow managed to miss every dxpedition and the occasional operator at the Norwegian weather station there.  Ken LA7GIA put in a brief appearance (only a couple of hours) from there in 2019 but was planning a much larger operation for 2021.  Then Eric, LA2US, was posted to the island around the same time the dxpedition was announced, and eventually it was cancelled when Eric announced his intention to make an effort to fulfill the needs of DXers such as myself (which he did admirably!).  I never did catch him on 160m as I had hoped but I did manage a few contacts on 40m and 60m during his time there.

In early February I started to notice that I had amassed almost 1000 DXCC Challenge points and a little push was all it took to confirm enough on LoTW to qualify for the award.  A couple of years ago I had passed on the new plastic 5-Band DXCC Plaque (I ended up just getting the certificate and making my own 'old-school' plaque) but the new plastic DXCC Challenge plaque looks pretty nice hanging on the wall of the shack here.


 

I spent a lot of time on 160m this season (September through December) and picked up a dozen new ones there to bring my total up to 70 confirmed on that band.  Those four months are really the only productive ones for DXing on 160m from here.  I'm not sure why but long-distance 160m propagation always tanks right after the new year even though we still have lots of dark hours left.  It will be interesting to see what happens next season with the increasing solar activity.  I'm not expecting conditions to be very good on Top Band from under a mostly disturbed auroral oval. 

That said, in keeping with the start of the new solar cycle I'm already making plans for higher bands and some other interesting activities.  Stay tuned!

73

Here It Comes!

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
1 December 2020 at 00:27

On November 16th, 2020 the reported sunspot number was zero.  Since then it has rocketed up to an astonishing 83 as of November 29th.  The sunspot number wasn't forecast to hit that level until 2023 but, ready or not, here it comes: solar cycle 25.  The starting date of a solar cycle is actually determined retroactively and a few months ago it was determined that cycle 25 really began a year ago in December 2019.  For hams, though, the real beginning of a new cycle is when the solar flux starts getting high enough for the upper HF bands to open up and starts generating stronger signals than we are used to on the middle bands.  I had noticed quite a few times recently that the 12m band was open, mostly to the US west coast and Asia.  Last Friday, however, even 10m was open and I made my first new contacts on that band since 2015.  Just for fun, I even made a series of QSOs that started on 10m and progressed through each band all the way down to 160m (I didn't have any luck on 60m, even though I was hearing a few weak European stations).  A couple of days before that I had worked a guy in Washington state on 40m FT8, off the back of my beam, only running driver power (15 watts) and I got a report from him of +23dB.  I was seeing him at +31!!  I can see how the effectiveness of the FT8 mode may soon become somewhat degraded as more and more powerful signals are crammed into such a tiny sliver of spectrum on each band.  Some expansion of the FT8 sub bands seems very likely in the coming years.

Ol' Sol has unexpectedly become quite active!

Its not all fun and games, though.  The more active the sun becomes, the more it tends to disrupt propagation for high-latitude stations like mine.  The more active part of the cycle is marked with lots of minor disturbances that stir up the aurora and generally degrade propagation.  Now the increased solar flux is making for stronger signals that can more easily break through the disturbed conditions.  On days when the absorption is low and the flux is high (like last Friday) radio conditions here can be outstanding.  There is also an increase in major disturbances like the little M-class solar flare that we saw this past weekend. I saw icons and colors on my propagation monitoring software that I haven't seen for years as the D-layer absorption spiked here and both the x-ray flux and proton flux climbed off the bottom of the scales where they've generally been sitting for the past few years.  I blogged about how this tends to degrade the signals here back at the beginning of the last cycle and the details haven't changed at all.  See here and here.  An active sun makes for some very interesting effects up here in the polar region.

Colorful, isn't it?  :(
When the last solar cycle was winding down in 2015 I put a lot of effort into getting my station ready for the sunspot minimum and it was well worth it. I received my 5-Band DXCC award by finally working the necessary number on 80m and I'm even up to 72 countries worked to date on the 160m band.  Now, with the changing of the radio seasons upon us, I'm thinking about putting up antennas for the high bands again.  I don't know yet how the coming of the new maximum will change my operating habits but it always has before.  I don't expect that this time will be any different...

DX Year in Review

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
8 February 2020 at 19:12
I suppose I could have just left the rest of this post blank.  For the first time since I was licensed (and active) there were no new DXCC entities worked in a calendar year.  Ducie Island in 2018 was the last one.  Things are looking up for 2020, however.  Preparations for the expedition to Swains Island in March are proceeding apace and has now been joined by a surprise announcement of a trip to St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, also in March.  And maybe, just maybe, this will also be the year that the Rebel DX Group makes it all the way to Bouvet Island.  Time will tell...

 In the meantime I've been chipping away at 160m and picking up the odd one here and there on 80m.  I just noticed recently that I'm only about 50 away from the DXCC Challenge award for working 1000 band/country slots.  Not quite sure how I managed that but I guess they do add up over time.  To that end, when nothing else interesting is going on I'll watch 40m and pick up new ones there if they pop up.

 Hopefully I'll have more to write about in next year's review!

 73 and good DX


Update: Since I wrote this less than two weeks ago BOTH Swains Island and St. Peter St. Paul Rocks expeditions have been postponed or cancelled!  I will surely be stuck at 321 forever :(

What Goes Around Comes Around

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
19 November 2019 at 18:39
At this point in the solar cycle (and especially from my high-latitude location) coronal holes on the face of the sun have the most effect on HF propagation.  The coronal holes spew high-energy streams of particles which are deflected by the earth's geomagnetic field and generally rain down on the polar regions causing high absorption and displays of Aurora Borealis.  On the lower bands the effect is especially pronounced.  An absence of coronal holes and weak solar wind makes for good radio conditions.

There was a recent mention in the K7RA Solar Update (and the Contest Update) of a NASA web page from a couple of years ago showing how different latitudes on the sun rotate at slightly different speeds.  It was an interesting thought exercise but most of the earth-directed solar badness seems to come around on a fairly reliable schedule every 28 days.  Equally as important, if not more so, is that exceptionally quiet solar conditions recur on the same schedule.

After finally working 100 DXCC entities on 80m last winter, this season I turned my attention to 160m.  So far, this has been a great season for "top band" propagation into the polar region.  Since the end of September I've been working a steady trickle of new ones on 160m CW and FT8.  One date, however, stood out.  Conditions were amazing on October 22nd!  I worked a total of FOUR new ones on that day and I immediately marked my calendar for November 18, exactly 28 days later.

The rest of October and early November were pretty good for 160m from the Arctic.  I typically spend an hour in the morning before work and an hour or two (or three...) at the radio in the evenings.  Sometimes a new one, sometimes just North American stations, sometimes no propagation at all.  Then, just like clockwork, that quiet spot on the sun finished rotating around and faced the earth again.  The solar wind and other numbers didn't really seem to be much different from the days before but, sure enough, band conditions were stellar.  I worked FOUR more new ones on November 18th!


The dates in this table are the UTC dates which roll over in the evening here.
If things continue like this it looks like another seemingly impossible task, DXCC on 160m from inside the auroral zone, should be wrapped up in the next couple of years.

Hope to work you on December 15th!
73
John VE8EV










For Sale

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
2 October 2019 at 16:24
I'll often hang on to extra things I have 'just in case' but with ham radio stuff I think its time to let go of some things. I've been procrastinating on posting my surplus equipment for sale for a while now but I recently firmed up plans for a couple of road trips so I might be able to deliver the heavier items or at least move them closer to civilization. It would be great to see these things get into the hands of other amateurs that can enjoy them.

I did up a separate web page of the for sale items: https://www.qsl.net/ve8ev/ForSale.html

Update 5/26/21: Everything is sold except for the monster amplifiers and the rx array system.

73

John VE8EV

DX Year in Review

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
2 January 2019 at 23:39
Well, another year gone by.  Surprisingly, even starting 2018 with 316 current countries already confirmed it turned out to be a pretty exciting year for DX, even at this part of the cycle.

My first surprise was a "pop-up" dxpedition to Somalia in January.  Ken LA7GIA and Adrian KO8SCA traveled there in conjunction with Medecins sans Frontiers for a week long stay.  Conditions up here were especially bad and I was thrilled to make a single contact on 40m CW as I don't recall hearing them on any other band.


The next surprise was from Newington.  The ARRL unexpectedly announced that (finally!) the Republic of Kosovo would be added to the DXCC list effective January 21, 2018.  A massive dxpedition was quickly organized and went on the air as Z60A within days of the announcement.  Conditions here were abysmal and I only had a few days to try and work them before I set off for Hamcation in Florida.  I managed to pull a single CW QSO through the aurora on 30m right before we headed off on our trip.  The op at the other end busted my call (always the same story,  they hear VE8 but then they think that can't be right and change it to something more common like VE7 or, in this case, KE8) but that was easily fixed after the fact with a quick note to the leaders.



Without a doubt, the most anticipated dxpedition of the year was 3Y0Z, the huge operation scheduled to operate from Bouvet Island.  Now, when I say "scheduled" maybe that overstates things.  Perhaps "forecast" would be a better word.  The "forecast" given before the operation had always been "January 2018".  Around November 2017 I had realized that my winter holiday to Florida might conflict with the 3Y0Z operation so I rescheduled our departure from late January to early February just to be safe.  Time stood still in January leading up to our respective trips.  In mid-January the dxpedition team arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile.  We waited.  Days went by.  Finally, a week later, they set sail for Bouvet Island.  Its a two-week journey and I knew that was only going to leave me a small window to get in their log before I had to head out myself.  I got psyched up.  I've made it into the log on the first day with several other dxpeditions before.  I'll stay up all night if I have to.  I can do this!  The days dragged on as the ship steamed across the South Atlantic.  Finally, only six days before I had to leave, the team dropped anchor off Bouvet Island.  I know they'll need at least a couple of days to get set up and on the air.  Things are looking up but then the weather tanks.  High winds and rough seas.  Fog.  The days tick by.  Two days before my trip the awful truth dawns: I'm going to miss Bouvet!  There's no way now that they can possibly get ashore and get set up before I have to leave on my vacation.  I felt sick.  When would I ever have another chance at Bouvet?  I'll never forget that Saturday afternoon.  I was sitting at a local pub, glumly nursing an ale, when I heard the breaking DX news: BOUVET CANCELLED!  The ship had developed engine troubles and the captain decided it was unsafe to continue so they left.  Everyone was shocked and heartbroken!  Well, almost everyone was heartbroken.  I tried my best to look sad...


When summer comes to the Arctic I'll often go for weeks at a time without ever turning on my radio.  The summers here are fleeting and I usually concentrate on outdoor activities.  This summer, though, I had put a reminder in my calendar for the end of June to have a listen for the Baker Island expedition.  Not the best time for that kind of operation but that is the only time the authorities would permit them on the island.  OK, well, the mid-Pacific is a chip shot from here and even though our sun never sets at that time of year I figured I could probably even get them on 80m if I got up in the middle of the "night".  I made it into their log on the first day and the next day I turned on the radio to see if I could pick up a few extra bands and modes.  For the better part of the past year I had also been trying to work the lone ham radio operator in Libya, Abubaker 5A1AL.  He was quite active but not often on 20m which was pretty much the only possible band to work a low-powered station with wire antennas on the other side of the world from here.  Since I was in the shack I almost automatically took a look to see whether he happened to be on the air.  At that particular moment he was on 20m FT8!  I swung the antenna around and switched to 20m and there he was!  Not strong, only -16dB but for the first time ever he was "audible" here.  I fired up the amp, switched it to "Trans-Polar Mode" (ie; full power) and 5A1AL answered me on my first call.  A little while later I noticed that the Rx window in WSJT-X also still had my QSO with Baker Island right above the contact with 5A1AL so I grabbed a screen shot.  I looked back in my logs and it had been years since I had worked a new DXCC entity in June and the last time I had worked more than 1 new one in June was back in 1995!  A couple of days after that I did get up in the wee hours and worked the Baker Boys on 80m CW.

 


The last one on my radar for 2018 was VP6D, the expedition to Ducie Island.  I still remember back in 2008 when I was playing Elmer for VE8DW.  He called me excitedly one day to tell me he had just worked Ducie Island.  I had a pretty good recollection of what was on the DXCC list and I figured it was just some IOTA station.  It wasn't until a few years later I realized that it was a new DXCC entity.  Now, 11 years later, I finally had another chance.  I wasn't at all concerned about this one.  No matter how bad the propagation was I was sure it would work out ok.  Ducie is straight south of us and October is about the best month there is.  Sure enough, I worked them on every mode and every band from 160m-17m.  I even tried them a couple of times on 15m but without a proper antenna up for that band they never heard me though the big pileups.


80m was very good to me again this year.  On November 22nd I worked my 100th country on that band.  Instead of a lifetime, I worked the last 70 I needed in only 13 months, mostly thanks to FT8 but the total does include about thirty in CW and a dozen SSB contacts.  I've got them all confirmed now too but waiting for just one more on LoTW so I don't have to deal with any paper cards to apply for my 5-Band DXCC award.  I've also started dabbling in 160m and picked up a bunch of new ones there also but I don't expect to put nearly as much effort into that band as I did for 80m.

With Ducie in the log I've now started the countdown: only 10 more to go until DXCC Honor Roll.  I really have no idea how long that is going to take.  So far there are only one or two on the horizon for 2019 but time will tell!

73 and good DX
John VE8EV


Haunting 80

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
31 October 2018 at 16:39
Solar activity varies over an 11-year cycle and that makes a huge difference on the HF radio bands, especially from up here under the auroral oval.  During the years of high solar flux levels the upper HF bands will regularly allow for global contacts but frequent solar flares and other disturbances will often cause complete radio blackouts that can last for days at this latitude.  At the other extreme, during the solar minimum, the sun is quiet.  There is little to hear on the higher bands but when the auroral absorption decreases some surprising contacts can be made from here on the lower HF bands.

 One of the best things about this hobby is that there are 100 different aspects of it that can grab your interest.  I've blogged about some of the different stuff I've been into over the years but most things related to the HF radio part of this hobby have better times than others to experiment.  During the last rise to the top of the solar cycle I had a keen interest in contesting and DXing.  I set numerous VE8 contest records and worked plenty of DX on the upper bands.  Now that we're at the bottom of the cycle, one of the things I was planning to do was to put aside HF for a while and re-build my VHF/UHF station.  I was looking forward to setting up for amateur radio satellites again and even trying some Earth-Moon-Earth and troposcatter communications.  Then I decided to put it all on hold for a while.

 Around this time last year I wrote about how I was working the 80m band with my upgraded antennas and the new FT8 digital mode.  After confirming only 35 countries on 80m over the first 24 years of my ham radio career, I realized then that I probably could work 100 countries on that band in my lifetime and qualify for the 5-Band DXCC award.  What I didn't know was that it was not only possible but I'll likely get there sooner than I ever would have thought.  80m is primarily a night-time propagation mode and we get a lot of that up here.  In the winter I spend an hour or so on the radio in the morning before work and a couple of hours in the evening as well.  Before I knew it, by spring time this year I had doubled my 80m country count to 70!  So far this past month I've already added 14 more and we're not even into the November-December-January "80m prime time" yet.  I'm 16 countries away from something I thought would take a lifetime and well on track to become one of the northernmost stations to ever make 5-band DXCC.

Every new one is thrill and the more DX I work the more I start to understand the low-band propagation up here.  First and foremost is the aurora.  If the K-index is 2 or more then forget about it, there's no DX to be had and often no signals to be heard at all.  Fortunately, at this part of the cycle a high K-index is usually caused by "holes" in the sun's corona.  Since the sun rotates on a 27-day cycle these come around on a predicable schedule.  After a coronal hole rotates out of view on the solar disk conditions will begin improve.  Every day the A-index (a daily average of the geomagnetic activity) will drop and after a few days 80m will come alive again.  Once the aurora is dealt with then there are daily variations to watch for.  For example, at this time our sunset coincides with midnight in the Caribbean and propagation from there peaks for an hour or so.  Since this is around early evening here I will often have the radio on while I'm preparing dinner. When the nice JT-Alert lady announces "New DXCC" I go in, turn on the amplifier, and (hopefully) work a new one.  Another regular enhancement is to the far East at our sunrise.  Last weekend I knew that the VK9XG expedition to Christmas Island was on 80m FT8.  I waited patiently and, sure enough, a few minutes before sunrise they popped up out of the noise and I made the contact.  Even better still, we get an opening  (when the A-index is low of course) over the pole to Europe at their sunrise.  There's still a lot of countries over there that I have yet to hear on 80m!

 The station continues to perform very well on the low bands.  I re-oriented the half-sloper coming off my 80-foot tower to improve my signal to the North and that seems to have made a big difference to Europe compared to last season.  I also took down the pennant receiving antenna that I put up last fall as it was much noisier than using my yagi for receiving.  With the addition of a good preamp, the 17/20/40m yagi works well as an 80m receive antenna and it can be rotated as necessary to minimize any local noise.  The TMR1090 amplifier is still working great although I often wish it was "instant on".  It takes about 30 seconds to initialize and come on line but as soon as it does it will push a kilowatt on FT8 all day long.  I've also been working on getting a small phased vertical receiving system put up that I hope will do better at signals that are arriving vertically polarized (I'll report back when I get that up and running).
 

 The sun is very quiet these days and about two weeks out of every four currently have an A-index low enough for 80m DXing.  The next few months should have the best low-band conditions since the last solar minimum.

 DX is!














DX Year in Review

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
4 January 2018 at 17:17
Every year I like to write a little post about the previous year's DXing.  It's taken me a while to get around to writing this because, frankly, 2017 was a pretty slow year for DX.  There were only two DXpeditions scheduled that would be new ones for me and most of my focus last year was on getting the station ready for the coming solar minimum. 

 I was relieved that I didn't miss anything important during my lengthy period off-air at the beginning of the year while I worked on getting the new tower set up.  The first expedition on the schedule was in March to the central African country of Niger.  A team of operators from Spain put together a great station and the propagation cooperated for me to get them into the log on both SSB and CW.
Mauritania was one of only a handful of African countries I still needed.  Being in the Northwest corner of that continent, it wasn't especially difficult from a propagation point of view but there were only two active stations there.  One was a beginner ham who ran low power into a small antenna and his signal was never audible up here.  The other was a somewhat cranky old-timer who only worked CW, only with a hand key, and made it very clear that he was not interested in exchanging quick "5NN" reports with anyone.  He wanted a full conversation with names, locations, and signal reports.  Given the generally poor signals and my rudimentary CW skills this was a pretty tall order for me.  Fortunately, I read that in April he and a visiting ham from Brazil would be participating in an obscure CW contest and the PY would also be operating SSB outside of the contest.  I never managed to catch their signals on SSB but on the scheduled day I looked up the exchange for the contest, pointed the big antenna over the pole, and worked him in CW for the ATNO.  As a sad footnote, the OT became a "silent key" just a few weeks after our contact.



The other scheduled expedition of the year was to Burundi in November when a group of guys from Italy activated this tiny, land-locked country in southern Africa.  Burundi was kind of a "do-over" for me.  I had confirmed and received DXCC credit for a couple of contacts with F5FHI during his travels to Burundi back in the 90's.  Unfortunately, sometime around the turn of the century, there was a problem realized with his documentation and the DXCC credit was withdrawn for everyone who had worked him.  Now, 20+ years later, I finally had another opportunity to get Burundi into the log.  When the expedition started conditions were lousy.  The SSN was sitting at zero and strong solar winds from recurrent corona holes were whipping up the aurora.  This wasn't the first time I had encountered lousy conditions during an expedition.  I knew the drill: pay attention and be listening during the predicted openings on the right bands and eventually it will come together and they'll go into the log.  Many times before I had managed to squeak out a single contact with an expedition during difficult conditions.  Not this time.  Despite all my best efforts (and the Italian's too, I suppose) their signals were never heard here strong enough to work.  It was truly a shock and disappointment to miss them and it was the first time in many years that I had set my sights on working a DXpedition and come up empty handed.  The radio propagation in the Arctic can be a cruel mistress and when the signals here get so weak at the bottom of the cycle sometimes some places are just not workable.


Despite the crushing Burundi miss in November, there was something else going on in my little DX world that soon returned a smile to my face.  For many years I had thought that getting my "5-Band DXCC" award (working 100 countries each on the 10,15,20,40, and 80 meter bands) just might be possible in my lifetime.  During the peak solar cycle years around 2013/2014 I had made sure to top up my 10m country count whenever I could so all that remained was to work 100 countries at the other extreme, 80m.  That, however, was a very tall order.  Between the high absorption up here on the lower bands and my modest efforts and antennas, I was usually only able to get one or two new ones a year on that band.  My calculations suggested that at that rate I would likely become a "silent key" myself before ever crossing that magical 100 country threshold.  This year I came to realize that things have changed.  The new digital FT8 radio mode (and all the activity it is generating) combined with my new low-band antenna setup has allowed a steady trickle of new countries on 80m to slowly start filling my log book.  I began 2017 with only 35 countries confirmed on 80m from my 20-plus years of being on the air.  By the end of December I was up to 50 confirmed and they just keep on coming.  With a bit of luck I hope to make it to 100 over the next few years before the solar cycle starts ramping up again in the early twenties.  Time will tell...

 2018 should be a great year.  Some big ticket Dxpeditions are scheduled to a couple of top-10 most wanted entities (Bouvet and Baker Island), hopefully a few smaller operations will come up to some of the two dozen left until I've "worked 'em all", and the continued drip-drip of new ones on 80m. Bring on the solar minimum, I'm ready!

 73
VE8EV


Get Busy Living

✇VE8EV - Amateur Radio From the Top of the World
By: John Boudreau - VE8EV
10 October 2017 at 19:01
I try to eat healthy foods and get plenty of exercise. I quit smoking years ago and drink in moderation. I follow news on longevity and try to stay out of the sun. The reason is simple: I want to get my 5-Band DXCC award before I die. At the rate I have been going, to work 100 countries on the 80-meter band from this far North, I will need to live to the ripe old age of 122 years.

Aside from the usual issues everyone has with the lower bands (room for large antennas, noise, etc.) I have a few things that make working 80m from up here particularly difficult. The first is the aurora, or more specifically, the absorption caused by geomagnetic activity.

Since the auroral oval is directly overhead it absorbs signals in all directions!

It takes at least two days with little or no geomagnetic activity before the absorption decreases enough to make DX on 80m possible. That limits the opportunities to only once or twice a month during the bottom half of the solar cycle. The second issue is the ground. At this latitude, the ground is permanently frozen. Only the top few feet thaws in the summer. It also doesn't get dark here during the summer so most of our nightime 80m operating is during the winter months when the ground is completely frozen and blanketed with snow. This makes for very high ground resistance and lousy fresnel zone reflectivity. Antenna ground radials will help with the near-field ground losses but there is nothing you can do about the far-field losses except try to operate when they are minimized by the ground being wet. The only time that coincides with darkness here is in the late fall right before the surface freezes again. The third problem is lack of 80m activity. It takes a decent station, usually working CW, to be able to push through the absorption and it seems the only time the "big guns" get on 80m is during contests. Having long since worked their fill of 80m, the old-timers seem to spend most of their nights obsessing over the 160-meter "top-band". On the other hand, DXPeditions will be active on 80m, just not very often at times that are convenient for a station like mine that, in addition to being quite far North, is also significantly far West (almost on the border with KL7).

So, DX can be worked on 80m from here, but for the most part only during a contest or DXpedition that happens to occur in the late fall, at the bottom half of the solar cycle, during exceptionally quiet geomagnetic conditions. With only 35 countries confirmed so far on 80m, picking up one or maybe two new ones every year will take me a very, very long time to earn 5-Band DXCC...

There are, however, a couple of things that might allow me to possibly eat a hamburger and skip a workout once in a while. My 80m half-sloper antenna on the new tower seems to work OK. I've been trying hard to reduce common-mode noise and the investment in ferrite is starting to pay off. A planned pennant receiving antenna will also help but the biggest cause for optimism is the new FT8 digital mode. Introduced a few months ago as a much faster version of JT65, this new digital mode has taken the HF bands by storm. Every band has a segment with FT8 activity and more and more stations are joining the fun every day. This past weekend was one of those rare "sweet spots" for Arctic low-band propagation. Very little geomagnetic activity for several days in a row, darkness during "prime-time" operating hours, soaking wet not-quite-frozen ground, and lots of activity on 80-meters. Friday night saw good 80m conditions and in addition to working VK, JA, and LA on FT8 I also picked up the RI1F expedition on several bands, including 80m. I have Franz Josef Land worked and confirmed on several bands from many years ago but never thought to get a QSL for 80m.  Conditions were even better on Saturday night. I was thrilled to work F5UKW on FT8 for a new one (and a new zone for him!). Once I made it over the pole the FT8 window had my full and undivided attention. With France coming through I knew that probably every one of the 65 more countries I needed were within range. What happened next, though, was not even within the realm of what I thought possible. Not too long after working F5UKW, I saw a KL7 station calling ZS1A. I laughed out loud and said "good luck, buddy!". Most of the active KL7 stations are a thousand miles south of me and I will often hear them calling stations that I can't hear. It looked like he didn't get an answer from the South African station and a few minutes later I saw a QSO sequence on the screen with someone else working ZS1A. That's when I did a double-take because the callsign on the right hand side of the sequence was ZS1A. In other words, I wasn't hearing someone else working him, I was receiving his signal directly! Not strong, only -22dB SNR on the display, but the next sequence came through as well. I switched the amplifier to full afterburner and as soon as he finished his QSO I double-clicked on his callsign. I was wide-eyed when I first started receiving his transmissions but nearly fell out of my chair when he answered my call! We completed the QSO and I sat back to ponder what that meant. Looking at my grey-line display I could see it was sunrise at his QTH near the West coast of South Africa. I've worked Argentina on 80m before and recently I've been working Australia more-or-less regularly. The addition of South Africa means that when conditions are right I must be able to work pretty much anywhere in the world on 80-meters. That might seem like a no-brainer to some but from up here it never seemed possible before. The farthest I had ever been able to reach over the top on 80m was Azores and Cape Verde which are both paths that skirt quite far to the south of the pole. 




With the addition of H40GC last week that makes FOUR new ones on 80m. At this rate, maybe I won't have to save quite so much for retirement now...

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