Re: Topband: Topband - Stew Perry event just 48 hours away
There are many more SDRs online than are actually of much use for weak signal DXing. The map at http://rx.linkfanel.net/shows many sites. What don't usually show are special temporary DXpedition operations. DXpedition set-ups are typically at low noise coastal or high-altitude sites not near urban RF congestion. "Real" antennas, i.e. with decent gain and directivity, are typically used. For these reasons the short duration DXpedition receivers usually blow the doors off what "permanent" sites offer. Long-standing, if not permanent, sites along the North Atlantic that I have found somewhat useful, such as when I have to disconnect my own stuff during lightning storms, include the following: Stratford, PEI, Canadahttp://47.54.214.91:8073/ Rockport, ME, USAhttp://rx2.wa2zkd.net:8073/ E. Falmouth, MA, USAhttp://kb1vwc.ddns.net:8073/ Elizabeth City, NC, USAhttp://kiwisdr.ku4by.com:8073/ Boca Raton, FL, USAhttp://boca.homeip.net:8073/ Kralendijk, Bonairehttp://bon.twrmon.net:8073/ --- Fuerteventura, Canary Islandshttp://ea8bfk.ddns.net:8075/ Bjargtangar, Icelandhttp://tangar.utvarp.com:8073/ Ireland (NW)http://irelandnorthwest.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/ = Antenna on most/all of the above should be considered non-directional, at least by what I'm hearing. There had been useful receivers at Key West, FL and in the Dominican Republic but those are no longer active. There was also something on the western shore of South Africa - that one also gone. There's one in Trinidad which should be useful but is deaf / noisy. Mark Connelly, WA1ION | South Yarmouth, MA | FN41vq -Original Message- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 11:10:36 -0500 From: Mike Waters To: Tree Cc: 160 , CQ-Contest Reflector Subject: Re: Topband: Topband - Stew Perry event just 48 hours away Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" My 160m antennas are all down, but I'd love to listen! Can anyone suggest a Web SDR with usable CW 160m reception? TIA! Mike W0BTU On Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 9:41 AM Tree wrote: > The "Low Band Jack" version of the Stew Perry contest will be held this > weekend, starting at 1500Z on Saturday. > -- End of Topband Digest, Vol 238, Issue 10 _ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector
Re: Topband: Wednesday CW DX Activity Night
British medium wave stations may be usable to indicate viable propagation. Here in Massachusetts, I frequently hear 693, 882, 909, 1053, 1089, and 1215 kHz. Absolute Radio on 1215 is probably the most consistent. Rock music format stands out. Its position halfway between two US channels (1210, 1220) helps. Depending on what your local interference is, one of the other channels may be better. Sometimes the aurora impedes northern European reception but the path to Spain and North Africa is still good. There are a number of stations from that area that can be checked. This might be useful: https://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/doc1/audio_2020.htm Local sunset here and just before dawn on the eastern end of the route tend to be slightly better than the middle of the night. Going the other way, Europeans may want to check for North American MW signals. 590 and 930 from Newfoundland are best. ME on 1390, MA on 850, and NYC on 1010 and 1130 are common. Propagation on those lower frequencies may or may not indicate 160m viability, but it can be a useful tool besides more customary things that depend on hams being on the air. Mark Connelly, WA1ION | South Yarmouth, MA, USA | FN41vq << Well activity is when there is Propagation, ie during the darkness hours, from your Sunset to Sunrise where you want to work. I personally come on from around midnight our time ( Z), and try and pop back on a couple of times during the night. Sunrise here in Britain is currently around 0700 Z. Roger G3YRO >> _ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector
Topband: Big 160m openings just before K index spikes
The "boost before bust" phenomenon has also been noticed by DX listeners of the AM broadcast band. Here on the US East Coast, some of the more reliable northern European signals are the UK stations on 693, 882, 909, 1089, and 1215 kHz. We used to have the Norway "flamethrower" on 1314 as a great propagation beacon but that station, like many others in northern Europe, has gone dark. When solar flares occur, radiation travels outward at the speed of light, making the trip in a bit over 8 minutes. Charged particles are also ejected: these may take a day or so to reach Earth's ionosphere. The effect of that initial arrival of radiation seems to be enhanced higher latitude northern hemisphere propagation. As the charged particles start coming in and the A/K indices rise, high latitude routes are attenuated. In the early evening here in Massachusetts, for instance on 750 kHz, you would go from good reception of a station in Newfoundland (CBGY, Bonavista Bay) over to a channel dominated by a station in Caracas, Venezuela (YVKS). Northern European signals go away. If anything is coming across the Atlantic at that point it would be African signals such as Mauritania on 783, Canary Islands on 621 etc. Mostly a lot would be heard from Latin America. Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Puerto Rico are quite prominent since many of the more-northerly interferers (US, Canada et al.) are blocked out. Mark Connelly, WA1ION South Yarmouth, MA, USA << Yes Lee I guess we have all seen as in my case enhancement from here to VK under those conditions including places like KH0, JD1 etc. locals for you guys. However the very best of conditions I have seen is when the K index stays very low at 0 or max 1 for several days. Then the big US openings can happen and I can end up working all states in a week contest. If it times correctly with a contest. Bring it on. 73 Clive GM3POI -Original Message- From: Topband [mailto:topband-boun...@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Lee STRAHAN Sent: 08 December 2017 17:38 To: topBand List Subject: Topband: Big 160m openings just before K index spikes I have also seen big openings here in Oregon just prior to a big solar event. If I recall correctly it was when I worked the A4 which is huge from the Pacific Northwest. Lee K7TJR _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband >> _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: Strange propagation
The strongest AM broadcasters across the Atlantic are often audible 3 or more hours before sunset local here on Cape Cod. Saudi Arabia 1521 has been logged at local shore sites between noon and 1 p.m. EST several times. Admittedly this involves big power at the transmitter end but 160m would have the advantages of potentially much less interference, better receiving antennas, and CW / digital modes for vastly superior signal-to-noise capability. So some midday QSO's over 5000+ mile distances should not be discounted in autumn / winter if the path is mostly salt water, some of the route is dark, and the stations on each end have decent power and good "ears" (antenna / receiver / operator combo.). Mark Connelly, WA1ION South Yarmouth, MA << This is very strange as Jeff, VY2ZM during the CQ 160 meter event works Western Europe at high noon PEI time. Herb, KV4FZ On 1/14/2016 9:35 PM, Larry Burke wrote: > I was specifically told by one checker that he doesn't even check the time > of a Topband QSO. Go figure. > > > Larry K5RK > > -Original Message- > From: Topband [mailto:topband-boun...@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Kris Mraz > Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 7:19 PM > To: topband@contesting.com > Subject: Re: Topband: Strange propagation > > Which brings to mind another issue: 160m card checkers will disallow a card > if the DX QSO occurred in the middle of the day since the path would be > impossible. > Can't make that assumption, anymore. > > Kris N5KM > > > _ > Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband >> _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: Skywave vs. Earth Conductivity
Higher angle skip, which is what the map of ' http://s20.postimg.org/f1z0o2e7h/WFAN_Skywave.gif ' represents within the contour for WFAN, would be affected by ground conductivity in a very minor way at best. Lower angle skip, such as WFAN being received in Europe, Africa, Caribbean, etc. would definitely be affected. In the extreme, the shape of the antenna pattern would look more like the one for groundwave, e.g. ' http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WFANservice=AMstatus=Lhours=U ' That one shows something that is far from omnidirectional. Based on receptions at shore sites here in MA with just an active whip on the car roof, observed pickup comes out with significant enhancement in the over-water directions. Medium wave (AM broadcast) DXpeditionsto places such as Newfoundland, PEI, Maine, Cape Ann, Cape Cod, etc. have taken advantage of this for many years. Some recent reports: http://www.bamlog.com/2014peidxped.htm http://realmonitor.com/am_logs_QH5.php http://chowdanet.com/markc/doc/log_20141108.txt http://www.radiodxing.com/LBI13Log.html Mark Connelly, WA1ION South Yarmouth, MA _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Topband: 160m RX antenna testing surrogates?
Here are two reports that will give you a lot of international AM broadcast reception information relevant to eastern USA and Canada. http://www.bamlog.com/2014peidxped.htm (Prince Edward Island DXpedition) http://chowdanet.com/markc/doc/log_20141108.txt (Cape Cod, MA) Note that, unlike a lot of stuff out there on the web, these are based on RECENT receptions. Old reports invariably list a lot of no-longer-active stations such as former blowtorches Norway 1314, Sweden 1179, Switzerland 765, et al. Though 160m may not be as fussy, the observation of these AM BC signals indicate that strengths drop like a rock as you travel inland. Smelling salt air and hearing seagulls seems a near prerequisite to strong DX signals below 1.7 MHz. Mark Connelly, WA1ION South Yarmouth, Cape Cod, MA _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Topband: Modeling the proverbial vertical on a beach
I'll just stick in a few responses to others' comments about what I wrote on the 'beach' thread and then I'll get out of the way. It is tricky to use receiving tests to gauge the effectiveness of proposed transmitting antennas for two reasons. You are probably listening on receiving type antennas rather than transmitting antennas. In that case, you have only shown that receiving antennas work better over salt water. Definitely, as I'd mentioned, less site-to-site variability would be shown with a full-size efficient transmitting type antenna, whether a vertical over a good ground system or a high (150 ft. elevation) horizontal dipole / yagi. Smaller receiving loops and active whips exhibit the greatest influence due to surrounding ground conductivity and elevation profiles. This is particularly the case on groundwave or very low angle skip. High angle skip is largely unaffected by the nature of the surrounding landscape; certainly by the time you get to Near Vertical Incidence, that can work even if you are surrounded by tall buildings or mountains. As some of the propagation paths we desire do involve things such as the ability to open the band pre-sunset on the US/Canada East Coast to incoming Europeans, skip propagation at very low angles is a matter of interest. If sunset is at 4 p.m. EST (2100 UTC) in December in MA/ME, for instance, the ability to work Europeans as much as three hours earlier than that is going to be more likely at a shore site for a given transmitter/receiver/antenna configuration. For such early QSO's inland I think a mountain top (and a heck of a lot of buried copper) would be needed. By an hour or so after sunset, the shore versus inland differences would reduce to barely perceptible as the optimum take-off angle would be considerably higher above the horizon. Still, having potentially two or more hours of useful communication at the start of an opening going east or the end of an opening going west is still not a trivial matter, especially in a contest scenario when every added QSO point matters. Extrapolating groundwave results from a proper-size broadcast vertical with radials exhibits that coverage even from a professional-grade antenna is affected greatly by surrounding ground conductivity. Keeping in mind that the following map for WOND 1400 (near Atlantic City, NJ) shows a pattern from a single-tower non-directional antenna, it's quite obvious that sea gain is for real: http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WONDservice=AMstatus=Lhours=U This station is easy daytime copy here on Cape Cod at over 250 miles. Going inland to the northwest of the tower, WOND has less strength at a mere 30 miles. Reciprocity would mean that the same tower used as a receiving antenna would have a similar pick-up pattern: far better sensitivity going east than west. This jibes quite well with what is observed routinely at seashore broadcast-band DXpeditions even when talking about afternoon low-angle skip from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Brazil. Second, are these comparisons based on S meter readings or signal to noise ratio? If the latter, then it could just as well be that it is very quiet on the shore because nothing is out there. Especially if you use directional antennas to listen. S-meter readings. Northeastern Brazil stations (Fortaleza / Natal / Recife areas) and deep Africans (e.g. the former BBC Lesotho on 1197 kHz) that could routinely hit S-9 on the Drake R8A or Perseus with car roof loop at shore sites in Rockport, MA and Orleans, MA were, at best, in the S-2 category (or more likely just non-existent) with the same mobile set-up at my former location in Billerica, MA (15 miles northwest of Boston; 15-25 miles inland on bearings of interest). Differences on western Europe (e.g. Absolute Radio UK 1215), especially after sunset, were a good deal less as the skip was at a high enough angle to be less groundwave-like. I believe that Nick Hall-Patch and others have done simultaneous inland versus coastal signal observations of Asian and Down Under signals received around dawn in BC, WA, and OR on a fairly regular basis. I think that, for them, coastal beats inland most of the time on both actual signal strength as well as signal-to-noise / signal-to-interfering stations metrics. Once in a while greyline does give you one of those high angle is best tilted-layer paths and the best location winds up being the one under the spotlight. In that case, coastal versus inland becomes largely irrelevant. BTW, what are the best California BC stations to look for? Its been decades since Ive heard one but I havent tried hard at all. Carl KM1H KNX on 1070 is about the only California station that has a ghost of a chance to make it to New England now that the former clear channels are plugged up with so many domestic and Cuban stations. Try just before dawn. A properly-aimed
Re: Topband: Modeling the proverbial vertical on a beach
Some long-time observations from about 55 years of AM broadcast band DXing MAY have some relevance to this discussion. That hobby has had a lot of simultaneous inland-versus-coastal signal strength comparison studies over the years, largely from the US and Canadian Atlantic and Pacific coasts but also from a variety of other sites around the globe. Nick Hall-Patch (VE7DXR) and Chuck Hutton (WD4ELO) who comment periodically on this list are both active in both amateur radio and broadcast DXing. They, along with Bruce Portzer, Guy Atkins, Gary DeBock, Pat Martin, Walter Salmaniw, Dallas Lankford, and others have done a lot of DXing at prime sites along the Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia coast. Here on the East Coast, many observations have been done by enthusiasts such as Bruce Conti, Neil Kazaross, Ben Dangerfield, Jean Burnell, Marc DeLorenzo, and myself. Both simultaneous listening at various sites and long-term observations from somewhat-inland and beach DXpedition sites have given rise to a number of findings. There could be at least a certain amount of crossover relevance to 160m and perhaps even 80/75m. Here are a few conclusions: * The advantages of being at the shore are substantial in the pre-sunset period along east-facing shorelines and post-sunrise along west-facing shorelines. Saudi Arabia 1521 (2 megawatts) can be heard up to 4 hours pre-sunset in autumn / winter right at the shore in New England and Atlantic Canada, even with modest antennas. At sites even just 10 miles (16 km) inland, two hours pre-sunset is about as good as you get on similar compromise antennas. Here's a typical Massachusetts coast recording of the 1521 flamethrower: http://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/audio1/dx_saudi_arabia-1521_20060503_2300z.mp3 . A small car roof mounted loop was all that was necessary. * The differences between shore and inland are less when efficient full-sized antennas (vertical at least 1/8 wave over a good radial system, or halfwave dipole mounted a quarter wave or higher above the ground directly below it) as contrasted with lower-efficiency / smaller antennas often used for receive (figure-of-8 or cardioid-pickup loops, active whips), especially if those antennas are near the ground. No surprise there. * The differences between shore and inland are less when the route is shorter, the path is all dark, and solar activity is low. New England to UK or Norway in autumn or winter might only show about a 6 dB advantage to a coastal site to a similarly-equipped station inland (meaning, roughly, more than 20 miles of average soil to the nearest salt water on the bearing of interest). Deep Africans and South Americans heard during auroral conditions, or anything from the Middle East and beyond ( 5000 miles) at any time, will show a strong enhancement, at least on smaller antennas, near the shore. For many years I have been noting what medium wave stations from places such as South Africa, Lesotho, Brazil, and Argentina can do at various sites in Massachusetts. Up to 2012 I lived in west-suburban locations near Boston. These are more than 30 miles from the ocean on the southeasterly bearings towards Brazil. In thousands of hours of listening over more than 50 years I think that four or five Brazilians would be the maximum logged in the 530-1710 kHz range. Where I am now in South Yarmouth, MA on Cape Cod - about two miles from West Dennis Beach on the range of Brazil-ward bearings - I've logged close to 10 Brazilians in about two years. My parents' house in West Yarmouth (1974-2001) and my brother-in-law's in East Harwich (1994-2004), also about two miles inland on Brazil bearings, performed similarly to my present QTH. But the big winner is listening from the car directly sited at beaches with open water to the southeast. I had more than a dozen Brazilian stations in a single two-hour session at Orleans, MA and, cumulatively, over 20 stations from Brazil in the logbook as a result of various MA beach DXpeditions over the years just using small loop or active whip antennas mounted on the car roof - antennas far inferior to what could be run at various house-based sites. The station from Fortaleza, Brazil on 760 kHz barely ever registers a peep in the suburbs west of Boston but it's often loud around sunset (after semi-local WVNE power-down) at shore locations such as Tonset Rd. - Orleans, MA (Cape Cod) and Granite Pier - Rockport, MA (Cape Ann). The shore-vs.-inland difference on that one is easily 25 dB. This is why, on both coasts of North America, year after year, broadcast-band DXpeditions produce loggings in a single night that the same DXers have not heard from home in a lifetime of listening, sometimes even if using better receivers and antennas. So many years of different DXers noting the same results take a lot of the statistical uncertainty out of the equation - it just can't be that every time
