40m WSPR

From wikipedia:

The band is most useful for inter-continental communication for one or two hours before sunset, during the night and for one or two hours after sunrise. It is extremely useful for short to medium distance contacts from local contacts out to a range of 500–1500 km or more, depending on conditions, during the day. In higher latitudes, daytime intercontinental communication is also possible during the short days of winter, for example a good path often opens between Japan and northern Europe in the hours leading up to European midday from late November through late January, with a long path opening to the west coast of the United States and Canada after midday.

It never occured to me that DX on 40m is possible at daylight. Till my 1W WSPR signal was spotted in VK and VK7 in the afternoon. I did receive stations from VK as well. Unfortunately the number of error decodes is very high at 40m compared to 20m. However the last 24 hours I ended at number 10 in the challenge list with 240 unique stations received. TRX was my FT-817, 1W and the 2x20m inverted-V @12m apex.

My 1W TX signal heard in last 2 days on 40m.

WSPR watch (apple)

No we're not talking about a apple watch! We are talking about a real good app to follow and analyze WSPR spots.

Just before the new year I was listening on 20m WSPR 24/7 but at a certain moment I was disappointed since propagation seems to be poor and I was not even appearing in PE1ITR's challenge list anymore. Then I was busy with the beverage experiment but since I have some issues with it I'm back on WSPR. 40m WSPR RTX this time, the first 30 minutes gave me immidiatly a first new one, Sardinia for number 91! Just 9 to go for 100, I will do my best to accomplish that hopefully this year. Though I hope that there will be more stations that listen as well as transmit from "unique" locations.

To keep an eye on things happening I use this WSPR watch app on my Iphone...
(There are other similair apps for Android) I begin to like this app more and more and it is updated very often with new features. You can even transmit with it if you have a transmitter just by holding the phone near to the mike and transmit the audio for 2 minutes. The app is made by fellow HAMradio blogger VK2TPM Peter. The program features usable graphs, you can view both TX or RX spots, unique spots and a map. Some screenshots:

This is not a commercial app. Some people think you have to pay for every app on a apple Iphone but that is not true. This app is free. I certainly think Peter deserves some etra credit for this app since it is very much usable. Tnx Peter!

2018 statistics

2018 statistics @PE4BAS. It has not been a real ATNO DXCC year due to low propagation and lack of time. My target bands were mainly 60m and 6m. I rarely visit other bands except in contests. I worked a lot of "new" band ones on the before mentioned bands. And it seems I was more active this year since the number of QSOs is 400 more compared to last year. The amount of DXCC was less but expected. Still SSB seems be my most populair mode especially in contests.

DXCC worked

DXCC confirmed

For 2019 I don't expect any new DXCC ATNOs to be worked at all. Instead I will concentrate on 60m and 6m again. Of course I will try to fill in some new DXCC with 1W WSPR but these days it seems most WSPR stations are transmitting instead of listening so it will be difficult to reach those last 10 DXCC for 100 in total. Has anyone counted the DXCC that have been listening on WSPR? I'm WSPRing since 2009 and have been heard in some pretty exclusive DXCC but still I'm on 90 DXCC overall in 10 years of time. Of course I was on/off the air so I could have been missing a few.

Like always Feb. and March are the months with most of my activity. However I worked a fair amount of stations on 6m in the ES season which explains the sudden rise in July.

I worked on all bands. Should I concentrate more on 30m? It is a great DX band but 60m wins at the moment. 80m is mainly contest QSOs, I still haven't got 100 DXCC worked there...When propagation is rising again in de upcoming years (hopefully) I should really concentrate on 17m-10m again. Well, that's years ahead... 

I once had a dream working as many modes every year as possible. But these days everyone seems to be addicted to FT8 me included. What a change from 114 JT65 QSOs in 2017 to only 2 in 2018!!

But still SSB is my most favorite mode and I don't think this will change...