Recently, I wrote some comments about the remainder of the current solar cycle. I am not overly optimistic about the possibility of good 6 m condx after this winter. A long time ago I came to the conclusion that predictions are unreliable at best. But it is nevertheless interesting to look at some data and… Continue reading »
There were times that reports were collected by editors of newsletters. PA0BN edited the Dutch VHF bulletin for many years and my observations were sent to him to merge with those of other active amateurs. The newsletters were a joy to read. Nowadays, there are many blogs and fora, resulting in a lot but distributed… Continue reading »
Our radio friends in New Zealand informed me that the article on 60 metre propagation was published in the NZART magazine “Break-In”. Below, a link to the article as I submitted it. 60_metre_EU_ZL_propagation_PA2S Summary (taken from the longer version of the study) The author, radio amateur, became intrigued by ionospheric propagation during the late 70’s… Continue reading »
With the development of the new solar cycle, conditions are changing. This is nothing new of course, but a distinct effect was found, that is really puzzling. Compared to last year, signals from Europe to New Zealand are not much different, but SNR reports of ZL stations are considerably weaker now. Using Proplab Pro, ray… Continue reading »
The past few years, a lot of time was spent into analysing ionospheric propagation on 60 metres. A number of observations were published on this website showing very remarkable effects, of which signal peaks at specific times were most pronounced. These peaks occur during openings from Europe to the Oceanic region. Long path propagation to… Continue reading »
An excellent opening to New Zealand was observed on 11 February 2018. The station was switched on around 0700 UTC and several ZL stations came in with good signals. At some point, I decoded 4 ZL stations at the same moment and the 4 calls shown on JT Alert was an unique and impressive experience…. Continue reading »
Currently, I am working on a paper regarding propagation on 60 metres. Transmissions with JT mode were used to collect spots and create datasets. A valuable datasource is wsprnet.org, to which WSPR spots are uploaded and fed to a database. The data can be downloaded. In order to support the study, I developed a WSPR… Continue reading »
One of the latest developments is a parser/analyser for the ALL.TXT files that WSJT-X and JTDX create. The ALL.TXT file contains all sent and received messages and as I wanted to have a tool to retrieve the data in a structured way, I decided to write a parser. It is made in Visual Studio 6…. Continue reading »
Today, another good opening to Australia was recorded. During the last month, quite a number of openings occurred, showing that propagation from Europe to Australia is not as rare as I initially thought. In a number of cases, a peak is observed around 19:30 UTC. At that time, in Australia the sun is already above… Continue reading »
Celebrating one year of 60 m in The Netherlands with a surprise from Antarctica!