Propagation Beacons are your best indicator of the condition of any band at any given time. List Them in a log and track them, when you hear them document the signal report of the beacon station along with solar and geomagnetic activity at the Time of copy, dedicate a few memory channels on your rig for beacons of your favorite bands. after a few months of beacon spotting and logging you see patterns emerge that will allow you to predict when and where a opening is likely to be, for twelve and or Ten which are closely related the WWV in boulder Colorado operate a station at 25.mhz running 2.5 kw that is a great high band propagation beacon and encourage signal reports as this is a experimental broadcast send reception reports to <wwv@nist.gov>73
I am always tuning around. And this weekend has been phenomenal on 15/10m. I haven't had qso on 10m for quite some time, so it was a surprise to hear so many stations up there. Probably the best weekend I have had this year on the HF.
I had a nice QSO with "Fred" near Albany, NY yesterday evening on 10. The way things are now, we just have to "stick" our noses in the door once in awhile to see if sum'pin a-happ'nin'!
Sporadic E isnt related to space weather so near impossible for any of the usual sources of propagation forecasting to predict, and thats what is responsible for the sudden openings at odd times. It helps to know what type of propagation is occuring in order to have a full understanding. Remember always: "1000 receivers make no noise"
Revision:. Sporadic E isn't positively related to Solar cycle. Space weather does seem to play a part in that the ions may come from Sol... but there are several other factors involved.
You did see the attachment, right? You do realize by now that Sarcasm is my middle name, right? Right? Worked ZF2ET and ZW0HQ on 40m last night. Nice and loud up here. Bands were packed (don't know about phone).
Hi all, like most hams I also check band conditions.Com to see what I can expect on a given day, usually I find they are correct sometimes with 59+ noise coming through on some of the bands, I usually listen around 20 meters and spin the dial actively looking for CQ calls, and answer those that can hear me, just recently propagation hasn't been too bad despite being told via the internet not to bother, so I suppose really its there as a guide as although there must be 100's of UK stations working on any given day (usually weekends) I seem to only be able to actually hear the continent and hardly any UK stations. 73's
Based on how dead 6 meters has been during the last few "zero sunspot" weeks, I'm beginning to suspect that there's more relationship between 6m propagation and sunspots than most books on propagation (and I have read lots of them ...) would lead you to believe. But then again ....
Don't listen for CQ calls, call CQ instead. Y'all need to wake up the ionosphere from it's slumber. I just usually call CQ and at the same time check RBN to see where I'm spotted. Gets me all the time when nodes in VK land copy me loud enough, but nobody's there to answer.
Yep. Some say there is a correlation between thunderstorms and Sporadic E. One might in fact cause the other, but then, there might be something else causing both! Sporadic E is not wrll understood at all.
Hi K5BIZ here. I wrote bandconditions.com 3 years ago because there was simply no other 100% accurate propagation tool on the internet. It runs on it's own. I don't have anything to do with it other than sticking my nose into the closet to make sure Windows hasn't crash. It's a computer and like any computer system you should always take what it says with a grain of salt. Propagation websites, beacon stations, WWV and tossed Chicken Bones will always be as good as the next roll of the dice which is what a CQ call really is. But you can't work them if you can't call them. The only real way to know if your signal getting thru is to be there to receive it. So in addition to all the tools above - why not try http://websdr.org/ to get a remote control receiver and see how good your signal sounds at the other end? Just another tool no one has mentioned so far.
I have listened all over the six meter band since January ( when I got my FT450D) but I have NEVER heard anyone on the frequency, either my radio is deaf of no one seems to be using it ?, what is the best frequency to listen on, is there any calling channel on 6 ?
That's not a bad idea, my local SDR is "hackgreen" the UK secret nuclear bunker, I have loaded hat onto the laptop and will watch for my "waterfall" !
Well, I work mostly digital modes (JT65) on 6 meters, so there's really only one frequency to watch (50.276 MHz). The band seems to have some sporadic openings today -- worked a couple of eastern VEs and someone in ME from NC. There was a huge band opening (for me, anyway) about a month ago -- worked a few people in CA from NC (!!!) on 6 meters, but since then it's been kinda dead for me in "4 land". But I know what you mean -- there are some days when six meters is so completely lifeless that I check my connectors and resweep the antenna