2 meter FM Band Opening!

Hey
I had the chance to work some ducting back in the early 90s. I was in South Mississippi on the Gulf Coast. I was talking to guys as far away as Tampa Fla and even farther into  Houston Tx. I talked to a guy in Mexico through the repeator in Houston. It was neat you had to wait for all of the repeators to drop out before you could finish with a QSO. And quess what I did all that in my mobile using 25 watts and a 5/8 wave mag mount. Ducting is even better using SSB. Loads of fun. Maybe one day you might even work me way down here in Key West Fl.  73   Bob

 

Hi Andrew, It has been a while since I spent time on 2ssb. My tower blew down taking my 16 element KLM with it. I had 7/8 inch Andrews Heliax feeding it at 70 feet. My rig was a TS700A with a homebrewed 4cx250 amp. I have 21 states contacted and confirmed. Band openings are fun. My station was capable of day-in/day-out contacts of approximately 150 miles to other similarly equipped stations. I am located near Grand Rapids, MI. A normal daily (no skip) contact was Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Detroit/Windsor. I used to catch a trucker (mobile 2ssb) coming from Pennsylvania on the highway across Ohio on the way to Chicago and would converse with him all the way into the windy city suburbs.
Yes, 2 meter ssb operation is *FUN* !!!
A friend (WB8UZR - Wayne, Portland MI) used to keep a daily schedule with a station in Maryland, and another in Minnesota (Randolf, I believe). His had 4 11ele Cushcrafts on a H frame at 100 feet with 1/2 inch hard line and a 1kw 2 meter amp and a receiver preamp. There were some jealous locals who accused him of talking to dead air because they couldnt hear the other end of the contacts.
These were NON-Skip/NON-Band Opening contacts with an airline mileage of 450 miles each way. Long distance contacts on vhf are possible, and with a station like this guess what band openings would be like!
73 de W8NSI Jim

 

Andrew,

2-meters can be a blast when there is a good band opening. Although I prefer 6-meters FM for mobile and repeater DX, 2-meters has the advantage that you can normally identify the direction of the propagation by IDing repeaters.

A good site to use for getting an idea of propagation paths is Bill Hepburn's website:

http://www.iprimus.ca/~hepburnw/tropo.html

The maps show preductions on where possible paths may lay. I've used these a couple times when calling CQ looking for a certain state or region.

Fred Vobbe, W8HDU (grid EN70wr)
http://www.vobbe.net

 

Andrew, fantastic on the contacts made. The best opening I remember was while living in DeSoto, TX. Dallas Co.. The terrain in north Texas is fairly flat so when 2 mtr. FM tropo rolled in, it was good. I talked to Shreveport, La. and farther east, on around to Oklahoma City, Ok., on around to Abilene, Tx., on around to Austin, Tx. and San Antonio, Tx,. All in one night on one frequency, 146.940. I'd only been a ham for a couple of months and the thrill of these contacts, along with a 16 yr. old ham pushing me in the right direction, caused me to upgrade my license.
Good luck in all that you do. 73, Larry

 

That is great that you got to enjoy a opening. I have worked many DX stations on 2 meters. When I got my call back in 96 while in high school the first week I had it there was a major tropo going on. I used a handheld and repeater jumped every state from NC to TX. (southern states that is). I have in the last few months worked a few stations on 2 meter SSB. That is where the fun is. Repeater jumping is fun but I guess you could say that is kinda cheating. The again when you work somone on a band that is intended to only work line of sight it is great. So any way you work it you had fun and that is all that counts.

I once worked a station one night in Clearwater FL on my fire dept handheld. They were running the same PL and frequency as us. I was calling dispatch and got them. Was pretty interesting trying to explain to them where we was.

Keep DX'ing

Troy KC5SSj

 

was probably talking on a repeater with echolink or irlp.

 

Andrew,
 What sort of equipment are you using for these contacts?

 I was really hit hard when I was making a 150 mile, FM contact talking on a little Yaesu 1500M hooked up to a set of batteries, an' using a two element (if there is such a thing) Yagi. . .  A reflective Di-Pole, that I made out of some copper pipe and nailed on the peak of my house's gable!  The great thing was the strength I was hitting the other stations with that far away! . . .   But then again, just reading about all this fun stuff gets MY juice’s a-run'en all over again!  I guess it don't take much to wind me up!
 

 Well, maybe I'll just go up on the roof with a torch and solder, an' burn another stick o'copper onto that thing, twist it over to your direction, and see if I can make the distance!  Wadd'ya think?  Worth a try?

   

 73's Buddy!  Hang in there. . . .  It only gets better!


 KD7YMR
   Rob

 

Hi Rob,

I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back with you, but I am running an Icom V8000, and it has 75 watts of output, and a homemade J-pole that is up in the air about 35 feet. Wow that was pretty good! Yeah sure, give it a try lol! Who knows, that would be neat if you could reach all the way over here. I got to talk on a 6 meter opening the other day at a friends house, and was talking to a few people in North Dakota, and Minessota, and I thought that was prety neat too.

73's, and have a good one!
Andrew

 

If you like 2 meters, you should try 6! Keep in mind that I am in Ohio. In the last two weeks I have worked from Nova Scotia to Homestead, FL to Clovis, NM to Devil's lake, ND and all of this was on 15W or less. I am running a Heathkit HW 101 with a Tentec 6M transverter into a 4 element yagi about 6 feet above the roof of this single story house.

During the VHF contest this weekend I was hearing San Diego but didn't have quite enough to reach him.

Like I said, if you like 2 meter openings, try 6 sometime.

73
Herman

 

Hi Herman,
I have got a chance to talk on 6 two or three times, and I really liked it. I don't have a 6 meter radio right now though, all I have is an Icom-V8000, and its only 2 meter. I am wanting to get a Yaesu FT-920, or a Icom 746, not a pro, just a reg. 746 if I can find one cheap enough and in good enough shape. I like the IC-718, but it doesn't have 6 on it. Thats the only thing I don't like about it.

73

Andrew
KI4DWG

 

I can remember my first "super" DX on 2M FM. I was in the far NW suburbs of Chicago, my contact was 150 miles north of the Washington state border with Canada. Both of us were using Icom 32AT HTs with rubber duck antennas. He did have a little help though. He was in the cockpit of an airliner at 45,000 feet. He had called into a "local" Chicago suburb repeater (actually all of them across US and Canada on the same frequency and without a CTCSS tone) to ask about the Chicagoland weather to give a "eyeball" update to the flight crew. I could hear him clearly on the repeater input frequency and switched transmit to the output of the repeater to answer him. He heard me clearly. We could thus, hear each other fine on simplex.