Wednesday, December 11, 2019

#10m #FT8 #MSK144 Meteorscatter fun!

SFI:70 SN:0 A:4 K:0

Another day of bad propagation. Same propagation numbers....it didn't look very promising. But....there are surprises.


ODX PY4AZ 9387km today.

I started monitoring FT8 early (6 UTC) and threw out a few CQs, I was received in Germany already. Then around 12 UTC I did a few CQs again via remote. And again I was received in Germany and Kaliningrad. But the big surprise was in the evening. I tried some CQs to the south and was received in Germany and Switzerland. Just for the fun of it I turned the antenna west to see if anyone from the UK was listening, I saw some traces but at first there was no decode. Then I started to receive some meteor pings from 2E0XXO Stu. He was even transmitting "METEOR PINGS" but FT8 is just not suitable for Meteor Scatter. Luckely I was just checking my e-mail and found Stu's message if I would like to try MSK144. So I started WSJT-X (JTDX has no MSK144) and just tried....and surprise surprise, we did make a valid contact. My first meteorscatter contact on 10m.


Actually Stu proposed 28.385MHz but I made a typo and entered 28.365MHz. I wasn't aware of this but Stu still found me....I really don't know how he did it? I think this contact is just as memorable as the contacts I made with Australia at the 1st of this month. Real 10m magic...

7 comments:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, gefeliciteerd met je eerste Meteor scatter. Op 10 meter begrijp ik, want bij de selector voor de banden staat op 6 meter. 73 Paul

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, op 10m. Zie de frequentie. De selector staat op 6m omdat er geen 10m meteorfrequentie bestaat. Men gaat er altijd vanuit dat meteorscatter alleen op VHF/UHF gedaan word. 73, Bas

John, EI7GL said...

That's excellent Bas, great to see some meteor scatter experiments on 10m.

If you are planning another session, maybe you should put up a post the day before and some others might listen in.

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, it might be an idea. However time is an issue. And especially meteorscatter takes a lot of time. At the moment I don't see any "pings" and I cannot forecast if they will be there tommorow evening for instance. However you're welcome to organize it if you like to experiment. 73, Bas

stu said...

Hi Bas/all.
Great to make the contact last night with you Bas.
There is a major shower just coming to its peak this weekend.
i will give it a try and see if anyone arrives. i sometimes spot myself
to try and drum up a bit of business ! 73 stu

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Tnx Stu, I'm concentrating on the ARRL 10m contest right now. But certainly interested in meteorscatter. It's a fun experiment. 73, Bas

stu said...

will listen out for you on cw at the weekend. GL 73