{"id":981,"date":"2015-03-25T09:08:57","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T09:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/?p=981"},"modified":"2016-01-09T08:39:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T08:39:16","slug":"transatlantic-aurora-on-50mhz-17032015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/?p=981","title":{"rendered":"Transatlantic aurora on 50MHz, 17\/03\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent most of the afternoon and early evening hours during the “St Patrick’s Day” aurora<\/a> on 144MHz but when that started to fade I thought I’d follow the aurora westwards, listening on 50MHz where\u00a0I had already heard a few very strongly auroral GMs, peaking at an azimuth of around 320\/330\u02da.<\/p>\n

At 21:02z I heard a weak and\u00a0different-sounding signal, certainly auroral but more “Tone 5” than “Tone A”. After peaking the signal at\u00a0an antenna azimuth of approximately 295\u02da, \u00a0it turned out to be K2PLF<\/strong> in FM19 at a distance of 5272km! Unfortunately my 100 Watts wasn’t enough to be heard by him but it was the start of a fascinating couple of hours, listening to many weak signals popping up as stations in the USA and Canada called and worked each other.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The estimated auroral oval at a slightly later\u00a0time hints at why this path was possible:<\/p>\n

\"Auroral<\/a>

Auroral oval 17\/03\/2015 23:15z<\/p><\/div>\n

Several North American stations were aware there was a transatlantic possibility and tried hard to optimise antenna headings, etc. In particular John, W1JJ<\/strong>, was heard here on and off for more than an hour but never got strong enough for my lower power\u00a0to be heard. Fortunately, for a short while Doug VE1PZ<\/strong>‘s signal switched from aurora to auroral Es and came up considerably in strength – just long enough for a contact with myself and (the bit more QRO!) Tom, EI4DQ<\/strong>. It was fascinating listening to Doug’s signal switching between different modes of propagation, with all sorts of doppler effects and fading – the table below includes a few audio clips.<\/p>\n

The log of (identified) stations I heard is below with audio where available, including one contact with VE1PZ. One thing to note is that a lot of these signals seemed strong enough to have been easily workable with QRO at this end – something to consider next time, whenever that might be!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
17\/03\/15 UTC<\/th>Call<\/th>QTF<\/th>Loc<\/th>km<\/th>comment<\/th>audio<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
21:02<\/td>K2PLF<\/td>295<\/td>FM19sp<\/td>5272<\/td>first station heard<\/td>n\/a<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21:11<\/td>W1JJ<\/td>295<\/td>FN41gp<\/td>4802<\/td>heard on\/off for >1 hour<\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21:49<\/td>N4DB<\/td>295<\/td>FM07oi<\/td>5591<\/td> ODX heard<\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21:58<\/td>K2GV<\/td>295<\/td>FN30fq<\/td>5005<\/td>working VA3DX<\/td>see VA3DX<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21:58<\/td>VA3DX<\/td>295<\/td>FN03jd<\/td>5216<\/td>weak, working K2GV<\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21:58<\/td>VE1PZ<\/td>295<\/td>FN85qr<\/td>3958<\/td>calling VA3DX?<\/td>see VA3DX<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
22:22<\/td>K2MUB<\/td>295<\/td>FN21or<\/td>5019<\/td>difficult, too fast<\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
22:30<\/td>N3RG<\/td>295<\/td>FM29ki<\/td>5203<\/td><\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
22:37<\/td>VE1PZ<\/td>295<\/td>FN85qr<\/td>3958<\/td>auroral<\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
23:07<\/td>VE1PZ<\/td>295<\/td>FN85qr<\/td>3958<\/td>Mixed AU\/AUE. QSO! Also with EI4DQ<\/td>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

To give an idea of the distances and geometry, I’ve translated the locations on to a map:<\/p>\n

\"50MHz<\/a>

50MHz transatlantic aurora heard\/worked on 17\/03\/2015<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent most of the afternoon and early evening hours during the “St Patrick’s Day” aurora on 144MHz but when that started to fade I thought I’d follow the aurora westwards, listening on 50MHz where\u00a0I had already heard a few very strongly auroral GMs, peaking at an azimuth of around 320\/330\u02da. At 21:02z I heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-50mhz","category-aurora","category-auroral-es"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1124,"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ei3kd.73tu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}