Thursday, February 16, 2017

Antarctica worked on 15 metres


During the last week, I worked RI1ANC on 21 MHz cw. He was located at the Russian Vostok base in Antarctica and the signal was quite weak...the type that is ok on cw but probably too weak for ssb.

With a Solar Flux of 75, the conditions on the higher HF bands are pretty poor at the moment with 28 MHz being closed most of the time. While East-West paths are a problem, the best paths are often North-South.

Often the higher bands can throw up suprises like this. Because the multi-hop path is just about open, the footprint can be quite small. It can allow you to work the DX without the pile-ups that you might find on the lower bands.

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