As some of you may know there is a major league ham radio expedition underway from St. Brandon island, northeast of Mauritius (some atlases show these islands as Cargados Carajos) in the Indian Ocean.
Their web site www.3b7c.com today shows the following notes (the web site operators in England get reports back by satphone): "160 meters SSB at the start of each hour worked reasonably well (freq is 1821 kHz) until Sept 17/2300z. At this point signals on CW became so weak, relative to QRN, that SSB ops were impractical. Many stations in Europe (and later, North America) were audible calling, but not strong enough for a long enough time to make a [contact]. Every 5 - 10 minutes a few stations would get 15 to 30 seconds of signal enhancement, just enough to get a call[sign] and exchange reports. But many times we would hear a call, or part of a call, and not hear any further response. A few stations experienced signal enhancements several times but were unable to copy us well enough to complete the [contact] despite multiple calls". On 80 meters they are finding an opening to WCNA in the 1700-1900z period with different propagation paths noted when comparing the 3500 kc CW range to the 3800 SSB range. The 160 meter SSB signal was heard in Zone 3 around 1800Z. Click "latest news" on the website home page. These 160m CX sound just like what we have on MW with signals bubbling atop and then fading back out, but that is just on one hop. So the fade mechanism for these multi-hop paths seems basically similar. Interesting. - Bob _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
