[ADXA] VP8STI 160 Meters - A Wild Night!

[Joel Harrison]

It was a wild night on 160 meters last night as VP8STI came of the band
for the first time.

The night is short on South Sandwich Island. The sunset (SS) is around
2243z (4:43 PM local) and the sunrise (SR) is around 0515z (11:15 PM
local) so a little over six hours of darkness is all and it really doesn't
get into a very "deep" darkness this time of year. Use DX Atlas or a
feature in your logging program to see the gray line movement. Our SS in
Arkansas is around 2325z (5:25 PM local) and it is not too common for us
to get a peak at that time from another station in darkness. It does
happen all the time on 80 meters but 160 is a different bird.

Around 0100z (7:00 PM local) VP8STI was working Europe (EU) and worked
just a couple of U.S. stations in the northeast but then focused solely on
EU. I did not hear a peep from them listening to the SE (the direct path).
Not hearing them I decided to switch the RX antennas to the NE to listen
to the EU pile that was calling and BAM! there was VP8STI booming in about
5 dB above my noise floor from the NE !!!! K5UR was experiencing the same
RX path. This path continued until 0200z when they went QRX for some local
QRM. When they returned about 10 mins later their signal was much weaker
until the propagation faded.

About an hour and a half later, around 0330z VP8STI's signal was back
right at my noise floor, floating in and out and peaking in a range that
moved from NE through E to SE and then what seem to be rotating through
that scenario again. About 20 mins or so before their SR, around 0500z,
the signal peaked to the direct SE heading and remained there until they
faded into their SR.

Other stations reported the skewed path as well with K4SV and W4ZV
reporting a peak from the north at their location. The south Texas boys
were receiving STI's sig from the SE direct path.

Skewed paths are not uncommon and occur on 160 meters at times. As I said,
160 meters is a very strange propagation band and some have studied it for
years. I have a very good friend, Carl Luetzelschwab K9LA, who spends a
lot of time documenting propagation on 160 meters and other bands as well.
I highly recommend.....actually, I insist you read his material. It is all
located on his website, free of charge. URL links don't come through on
our reflector but just go to K9LA dot US and all the links are on the
right. He has tons of VERY GOOD STUFF that you should read. Regarding the
skewed path experienced on 160 meters last night I would direct you to his
160 meter link and read his article "Arrival Direction of FT5ZM in NA on
160m" from early 2014. FT5ZM's signals from Amsterdam Island were arriving
via a similar skewed path.

Unless you have some good low band RX antennas you will most likely NOT
hear VP8SSI on 160 meters. My purpose with this email is to encourage
those of you that haven't read anything about 160 meter propagation to do
so and learn a little about it. It is really amazing and when you reach
the point of actually hearing VP8STI or similar stations and you're having
that chat with your non-ham buddies that golf all the time and rib you
about ham radio, just throw out the next hand grenade from your bag -
"Hey, I received the equivalent of an AM broadcast station, that you
normally can't hear 50 miles down the road, from the south pole on a
little station in my hope that I built!!"

Oh yea.....and be sure to remind them about all of the world class guys
you were in there competing with on the same field!

73 Joel W5ZN


www.w5zn.org