The Bands are Back!
Steve Telenius-Lowe PJ4DX reports on a busy month, with good propagation and plenty of DXpedition activity
Welcome to the December HF Highlights and although it is still only mid-October when writing this, let me be among the first to wish all readers a happy Christmas.
After the extraordinary rise in solar activity in mid to late September, when the Sunspot Number (SN) rose to 124 for a couple of days and the Solar Flux Index (SFI) peaked at 102, it is no surprise that both measures are lower this month. Despite that, the overall trend is still upwards, as can be seen in Table 1 and this is reflected by much improved propagation on the higher HF bands in October.
Contest Season
Although this is the December issue of PW it should be with readers well before the CQ World Wide DX CW Contest, which takes place over the 48 hours of the weekend of 27/28 November. This is ‘the big one’ and there will be huge amounts of contest activity from all over the world. From here on Bonaire the new PJ4K contest station will be taking part in the Multi-Operator Two-Transmitter category. PJ4G will also be active in a multioperator category. Exchange an RST signal report and your CQ Zone (the UK and Ireland are in Zone 14).
I took part from my home station in the ‘sister’ event of the CQ World Wide contests – CQ WPX SSB – which took place at the end of March, and was lucky enough to take World 1st place in the Tribander/SingleElement ‘overlay’ category, Fig. 2. This allows those with rather more modest antennas than those at the big contest stations to compete against similarly-equipped stations, in this case, those using a tribander beam on 10-1520m and single elements (e.g. dipoles or verticals) on 40-80-160m.
DXpeditions Are Back!
The last month has seen a spate of DXpeditions to various exotic locations. Dom 3D2USU sailed from Fiji to Conway Reef and was active as 3D2CR, mainly using FT8, in mid-September. At the same time Janusz SP9FIH and Leszek SP6CIK were active from the Comoros as D60AC and D60AD respectively. Then in October there were not two, but three, simultaneous DXpeditions. First up was the Czech DXpedition Group who were active as S9OK from São Tomé and Príncipe, the small island nation off the west coast of Africa. They really hit the ground running, making nearly 10,000 QSOs on the first day of operation (I was able to work them on no fewer than 11 band-mode slots on Day 1 alone). After a few days they were joined by the Italian DXpedition Team from GuineaBissau as J5HKT (on FT8) and J5T (on other modes), as well as a Russian group operating as 3DA0RU from the Kingdom of eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland).
All of these DXpeditions provided a real shot in the arm for DXers who have had some lean times over the last couple of years, even if occasionally it was a little confusing with two or three operations on the same band and mode at the same time!
Readers’News
Jim Bovill PA3FDR wrote to say he has been a reader of PW for over 35 years and that he looks forward to it dropping through the letterbox every month. As far as I know, though, this is the first time he has contributed to this column, at least since I started to compile it in 2015, so a warm welcome to Jim! He said, “I recently exchanged my previous rig for an Icom IC-7300 and spurred on by the articles in PW about FT8 [see PW May and June 2021 – Ed] decided it was time to try this mode. The IC-7300 is ideal for this as it allows you to pre-set the rig for FT8 on the push of a button. Between mid-August and the end of September I logged over 400 QSOs, ranging from the west coast of North America to the Far East, the best one so far was VK7AC (QE38, Tasmania, 16,921km).”
Steph Foster G4XKH sent in a photo, Fig. 1, of members of the Riviera Amateur Radio Club in Torbay who operated GB8BB on 15 September. The special event station commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
On 1 September, Victor Brand G3JNB noticed TZ4AM in Bamako, Mali, calling North America on 17m CW. “Jeff was S9 when, suddenly, he said ‘EU UP’ and heard
my very first call with 12 watts to the vertical. His later email said his beam was actually pointing towards VK but that I had a good signal considering my low power and antenna. Then, next evening, Andy 5Z4VJ in Nairobi, working 20m split, gave me 339, a realistic report for us weak callers. On the third night of my ‘Bedtime DXing’, going for the ‘Hat Trick’... on 20m, Claus CP4BT Bolivia persevered until we finally made it through the horrendous noise and deep QSB. It took some doing! So, naturally, PM on the 4th I was back in the shack – but the magic had gone. Best I could do on the 5th was to work SX021IEEE (!) on 20m from their symposium in Athens. But by the 7th the SFI was up at 100 and ZX4AN in Brasilia was logged on 20m and 9K2HS also obliged with 17m on the 9th. At the unusually early hour of 0747UTC on the 10th, I checked in with Jeff TZ4AM, this time down on 30m, before enduring a couple of weeks with no shack time. In the closing days of the month there was little DX about, or so I thought. On the 28th, Wald XQ6CF was back on 17m but after my calls and his several ‘G?’s, he went QRT. Early morning on the 29th I was reading ZL3XDJ on 20m running a major pile-up that I could not break but, moving back down to 30m, there was a strong signal from TZ4AM who reassured me by replying first call. ‘You really had a good signal this AM’ said his subsequent email. Morning on 30 September and I was actually copying weak 12m signals from both 3W1T Vietnam and TZ4AM. So, take heart, the DX really is back again...”
John Rowlands MW1CFN/P sent “a very quick note from Anglesey this month. Propagation on the upper HF bands continues to show strong improvement”, he said. Working from the seaside with a ‘stick’ antenna on the car, Fig. 3, and no more than 15W, John reports that SSB QSOs have been enjoyed quite often recently with Japan on 17m, and China on 15m, from mid-morning onwards. “FT8, meanwhile, continues to regularly provide large numbers of DX contacts globally, even on 12m and 10m,” John added. He sent in the map in Fig. 4, which shows the results of about one hour of operating on the morning of 4 October. Kevin Hewitt ZB2GI also attached a map, Fig. 5, showing the FT8 QSOs he made as ZG2GI from 60 to 10m between 4 and 10 September. He reported that “Gibraltar celebrated National Day on 10 September to commemorate the sovereignty referendum of 1967. I used the ZG2 special prefix from the 4th to the 10th to mark the occasion. This year was the 30th National Day, I made 30 FT8 contacts on eight bands and 300 SSB QSOs... I also operated [as ZB2TEN] on 10m at the Quarry with John King ZB2JK on the 26th. Although conditions on SSB were poor, FT8 was open to South America.” Etienne Vrebos OS8D reports from an autumnal Brussels, Fig. 6, saying that he now has a new antenna: a Bazooka dipole for 7MHz at 12m high, which seems to be quieter on receive than the End-Fed wires he also uses. Etienne says he has had “a quiet period” but still managed to make around 450 QSOs in the month, with some great DX (see ‘Around the Bands’), including “a lot of traffic from Indonesia, nice to catch. UK QRP stations are still my favourites every morning.”
Tony Usher G4HZW has been feeling nostalgic so bought a Lowe SRX-30D receiver on eBay, saying “we had one back in the ‘80s, only £115 and it’s working well combined with the Wellbrook antenna. I’ve had it set to the 7MHz QRP frequency (7.030) while I’ve been FT8-ing on 28MHz. Plenty of slow CW, wide