2m - a Band of Two Parts

Like the incoming tide washing away a beautifully constructed and elegant sandcastle, bit by bit, this week’s tropospheric ducting crumbled away with equal inevitability.

At its height, this radio superhighway, formed by different layers of air density and temperature, ‘hotwired’ parts of Europe together on 2m and above like they were connected with RG45 coax itself.

The opening was heralded, accurately, by William Hepburn’s tropospheric ducting forecast (see http://www.dxinfocentre.com/). This site also explains various propagation modes on VHF and above, in a clear and informative manner.

Let me tell you a little about my 2m station here in North Wales. I have a lovely Icom IC-910HX and my antenna is an HB9CV. Yes, you heard right, a peashooter. Two small elements phased together and put up on a pole on the side of the house. You see, I’m starting modestly because our national culture demands that we never do things the easy way. Added to the equation of difficulty, I have a range of 3000ft mountains not too far away from me. Did I mention the HB9CV was fixed? It points plaintively towards the south-east in cold, metallic expectation of flux. It points towards the long, golden beaches of the low countries, the rolling fields of northern France, the great cities of Western Europe and finally, the snow-capped Alps and beyond. But it also has a ‘heart’, a cardiod footprint in fact. The characteristics of the HB9CV trade-off a modest gain with quite a wide beam-width, with a sharp null behind it, giving it its heart shape.

The humble HB9'

You need good hearing. The receive gain is lacking for weak-signal work, but work it does. And this week I worked a station (OE2XRM) in Salzburg, Austria. 5,5 both ways! The pure magic of hearing a man who may be wearing lederhosen over what is normally a line-of-sight form of communication, is thrilling! A couple of stations from Bavaria followed and I was then content to listen as the chatter of stations from France and the Netherlands filled the band.

Later in the afternoon, fuelled by electromagnetic excitement, I ventured onto a local hill (178m/584ft.) with my lovely FT-817 and a 9-element 2m yagi. I also took along a 70cm yagi for fun.

A quick scan through the beacons bought in HB9HB in Switzerland! The Alps, the chocolate and cuckoo clocks! Unleashing my 5W on Europe didn’t produce much, unfortunately – just a couple of cheery calls from the UK, so I thought I’d swing the beam round to Spain. Now, the DX cluster was not showing any propagation in this direction and I wasn’t hearing any of the beacons on the north Spanish coast. But suddenly, out of nowhere, and at 5,9+, came a signal booming in. Danny, EB1LA, on the northern Spanish coast was stunned to hear me at 5,9 with my humble five Watts. What a result! I can only conclude that the beacons may have been situated too high to ‘tap in’ to the duct. How many people in the UK and Ireland must have been beaming away from Spain that day having assumed that no beacon = no path? I wonder. A quick scan on 70cm revealed no traffic, but I did receive the Netherlands beacon PI7CIS. Quite a trip for UHF.

My hilltop station

The two metre band can be sublime, but comes in two parts. The FM part of it is like an amateur ‘pub’. It seems the place where people gather in the evening to discuss their day and engage in chat (For example, one QSO I heard earlier this year was despairingly on the subject of “my favourite biscuits”). But the lower portion of the band has the elegance and sophistication of a Grand Cru. It’s as if it’s optimised in terms of antenna size, required power and number of users to give you a fighting chance of achieving glory in the aether. And I did.

Postscript 03 Oct. 2013: Just read EI3KD's excellent blog about this tropo opening. It coincidentally contains an audio capture of the end of my QSO with OE2XRM! Recommended reading (and listening).

FT-790R, 1W of Forlorn Hope? Part II

I’m treasuring my multimode, single band transceiver of yesteryear. They really ‘don’t make them like that any more’. When the FT-790R was manufactured, the UK still happily built cars that broke down and industrial action was a continuing popular pastime. Thank goodness the Japanese manufacturing success story was at its zenith.

In my previous blog, FT-790R, 1W of Forlorn Hope? I outlined my trepidation, my dreams and anticipated joy of achieving hilltop 70cm SSB contacts over phenomenal distances. This was in the face of an antagonist old-timer who thought a little too much RF had leaked into CPU of my head. So what was the reality?

Since taking delivery of the ‘790, I’ve managed to test most of the functions. With a radio of that age I shouldn’t have been surprised that the front panel illumination bulbs have long since ruptured their once-bright filaments, probably in the early 1990’s. A simple removal and refit of the battery tray, which holds eight ‘C’ cells was required to reconnect the internal power.

Powered by 8 'C' cells

Straight away, I connected a spare telescopic antenna for 2m to the front panel BNC and gave a call on FM. I enjoyed two great local contacts with stunning audio quality. Excellent audio reports came back too. Two quick tests with local station John GW4ZPL confirmed that SSB was working fine, albeit a little off frequency with his TS-2000 shack-in-a-box. Then we tried CW (my first CW attempt, ever). Apparently John hadn’t heard ‘chirp’ like mine since working Russian stations in the 1980’s! Luckily the operation manual comes with a full schematic diagram. I’ll have a look and see if a key click filter is misbehaving, for example.

Realistically speaking, I do know that a random 1W call on 70cm SSB is unlikely to attract an answer under normal conditions. My plan was to get to a modest local hilltop with a small beam antenna. If there was any tropospheric enhancement or lift, all the better. Unfortunately, the Welsh weather of late prevented this. Following the advice of Tim, G4VXE, a competition evening would give me a fighting chance.

Casually having a chat on D-STAR the other evening, someone mentioned that a 70cm activity evening was due to start in around half an hour at 20.00. No time to get up a hill and where the heck was my BNC to SO239 adaptor when I needed it to hook up my homebrew 9 element beam? So, if you can picture me leaning out of the upstairs window with a small, non-resonant, telescopic antenna pointing out at a jaunty angle, then this was my big chance. My only chance, so far.

I scanned the SSB portion of the band. Nothing. I twiddled the telescopic antenna and re-scanned. Nothing. But then, a quick call in a clipped English tone and a GD (Isle of Man) callsign. After a couple of failed attempts, antenna adjustment, more leaning out of window, the received signal came up to 5,9. The other station adjusted to my offset frequency and SUCCESS! - Gave me a 5,4. He said he was using 400W and a 23 element beam that wasn’t even pointing my way. The distance was around 73 miles or 117km, admittedly mostly over a great sea-path.

He’d been calling out rather robotically but had a chuckle and warmly wished me 73 when he heard about my operating set up. I forgot his callsign in the excitement and my bemused YL heard a whoop of joy from downstairs.

Anglesey to the Isle of Man

For every person that has told me that an FT-817ND would be the ideal rig for me (and it would), there has been another that has regretted getting rid of their FT-2/6/790R. My FT-790R is a solid, brick-like joy to own. When I get up to a hilltop to try it out again, I’ll be supremely hopeful!