[ADXA] Member Standings for Pat, W5VY

[HamOP]

Great info Pat.. Many guys are not DXCC chasers on 6m because of lack of F2 long haul and having to rely on E skip, transequatorial pathways with its increase indices and such. Used to be ZL and VK were only allowed as experimental stations and I worked ZL years ago. VKs lagged behind on being allowed to be on 6m. 
So with poor Es and especially trans-equator coupling being unpredictable, I have NOT checked and listened because of what I usually hear on 6m are E openings, single and double hop, nothing to EU and only some short openings coupled to South America and Central America. Thus, I have NOT worked VK … Congrats on that. I have 108 worked on 6m and got DXCC certify a few years in 2012, thankfully! Guess need to listen and see the VHF spot activity on ON4KST.. A great chat site and grid maps on side panel for activity going on..
San

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From: Pat Patterson
Sent: Wednesday, March 6, 2019 11:57 AM
To: ADXA
Subject: [ADXA] Member Standings for Pat, W5VY

I did a LOTW DXCC application last week and it was approved in about four hours. Over the summer Es season I added quite a few new ones on 6M....all on FT8.  One of the "cool" 6M FT8 Qs was with legendary DXer Kan, JA1BK.  There were openings where signal levels would probably have supported CW but I never could stir anyone one up on CW.  FT8 has the big advantage of providing a single freq where everyone can participate in openings and the weak signal decode capability allows marginal propagation to support QSOs.  The downside is that everyone stays on 50.313, FT8, and doesn't check CW/SSB.   The 6M Winter Es thing is real.  On January 3rd I picked up NH6Y (KH6) around 0100 UTC and on January 12th I worked five VKs in 16 minutes...all on FT8. The last Q, around 0130 UTC, was VK5PJ, Peter, near Adelaide in South Australia...over 9,500 miles.  
The path has shown up quite a few times before during Jan/Feb.  It has been suggested that it's a combination of multi-hop Sporadic E on the North American end that couples into Trans Equatorial Prop to cross the equator then more Es "down under".  Jim Kennedy, Ph.D, KH6/K6MIO, has done a lot of study of the path and has written a couple of papers describing his theory. There are lots of moving parts and they usually don't stay aligned very long.  For a couple of weeks after that event I would point SW around that time of day and call CQ for a few minutes....you just never know!  Someone has to make some noise.
I was looking at Bouvet (3Y0-B) on Google Maps and found a large batch of photos taken by Nodir, EY8MM, during the unsuccessful attempt of the 3Y0Z group last year.  The photos are spectacular and provide insight as to why it is such a difficult entity to activate.  Check it out. 

Nice seeing everyone at the Russellville meeting.  Another FB Hamfest put on by the ARVARF club.

73,
Pat, W5VY

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