Wow! I haven’t posted for quite a while, perhaps I’ve too busy actually being “on the air”, rather than spending all my time on various forums moaning about FT8 or some other nonsense? Anyway, I’d better generate a few updates and here’s the first.

First of all, of course, is the fact that I’ve finally made a 2-way qso with D4 on 2m. D4Z, in fact, operated by Mark, EA8FF, on-site in Cape Verde, HK76MU. This was on 5th August 2018 at 16:15z, using CW at 4163km. I was extremely happy to make this contact: it’s been a personal ambition of mine since I first became interested in VHF way back in the 1970’s – an awful long time to wait! At one time I even had genuine thoughts of living on Cape Verde to explore the V/UHF possibilities, although that never came to fruition…

Video or audio at both ends are here:

As for the qso, it was only a matter of time, having heard the beacon so many times in the past. For that very same reason, I personally didn’t make much of a “song and dance” about the fact it was, at that time, a distance record; I had no doubt it would easily be exceeded, sooner or later. Despite that, our qso did receive a lot of publicity, which was a great help in encouraging others to be aware of the possibilities. Since that day the distance record has already been extended several times by D4Z and D41CV, and it will be again, thanks to the great efforts of the team at D4C. I continue to be excited at just how far we, as a V/UHF community, can push the limits and will strive to make sure we do just that!

My own target now is to work towards a D4 qso on 70cm. Rumours are that would be a world record, not that I care 😉

It’s been some months since we’ve seen any sort of decent tropo opening on VHF/UHF, in this part of Europe at least. However, there really was no excuse for being unaware of this one in advance because the forecasting websites (F5LEN and Hepburn) had been predicting something nice for the end of September for at least week prior. It turned out to be exceptional!

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I’d been keeping an eye on the F5LEN and Hepburn Atlantic tropo forecasts prior to the 20th of May because they looked promising for good propagation towards the south:

Hepburn North Atlantic forecast 06z May 20, 2015

F5LEN Atlantic forecast 00z 21st May, 2015

Lots of bright colours over much of the North Atlantic! There looked to be some possibility of a repeat of Dave, PJ4VHF’s incredible reception of the Cape Verde beacon, over a distance of some 4700km (and perhaps further?), as well as a north-south path touching on Ireland.

Up until lunchtime on the 20th there was nothing other than a slight enhancement on my AIS receiver (a useful propagation tool at 162MHz, online at MarineTraffic) showing ships slightly further south of Cork than usual – certainly nothing exceptional. I wasn’t even hearing the stalwart ED1ZAG beacon in IN53 but the forecast maps were marginal for that direction.

At approximately 14:35z, a weak cw-keyed signal appeared just very slightly above 144.436MHz, rapidly becoming strong enough to identify as D4C in HK76mv! The Monteverde Contest Team’s beacon is at a distance of some 4165km from EI3KD, with a tolerance of five kilometers or so, which probably makes it the furthest tropo distance yet heard from within IARU Region 1.

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A baby 70cm station is born, ready for action!

2m (11el F9FT) and 70cm (19el F9FT) at EI3KD

Some months ago I added a 432MHz 19el F9FT antenna to the mast (approximately 4.5m a.g.l.), with the help of G4CLA – thanks Pete! My FT857D is capable of 20 Watts output on 70cm, but I did find an old sspa that, with a reduced drive from the rig, bumped it up to a massive 30 Watts! Every decibel counts, right? Anyway, the sspa’s built-in preamp was probably a small improvement over the rig’s front-end. Even with such a small set-up I’ve managed to give away a few points in the RSGB UKAC 70cm contests, and also had a few DX contacts during brief spells of enhancement. I also have a higher power sspa to modify for 432MHz, but that’s another story.

Since added the 70cm antenna I’ve been looking forward to a decent tropo opening, and early February wasn’t going to disappoint! Apologies for the length of the blog that follows, but it was an exceptional tropo opening…

Worked and heard maps 8-12 Feb 2015

144MHz worked and heard, 8-12 Feb 2015

432MHz worked and heard, 8-12 Feb 2015

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