[AK-VHF] Results: Six Meter Sprint

[Brandon Clark]

Hi guys,

Mike, that's awesome that you left the station listening and waited to see
what it would decode. That appears to have been quite an opening, running
from 2213 to 0030 UTC. That puts it at 1413 to 1630 local time, which makes
sense since that would be late afternoon when the sun has had time to
increase ionization. I'm not sure what the weather was like over the north
Pacific, but it's possible that could have also played a role.

This lends some support to what I've been suspecting: openings occur, but
no without someone on the Alaska end listening they go unnoticed. And this
opening occurred during the lowest part of the sunspot cycle, which is
encouraging.

As a club I really think we need to set up a few monitoring stations to
listen for openings so that we can look for trends, and eventually predict
openings. When I get the 6 M noise at my place tracked down I'll set up one
station here. If others are interested in putting their 6 M antennas to
work on the project (when you're not using it, of course) let me know and I
can get you set up with the hardware.
Brandon



On Fri, May 15, 2020, 13:11 Mike KL6M <melum at alaska.net> wrote:

> Point of interest: I configured 6 meter FT8 for the sprint and left the
> system on all that weekend and saw nothing.  But I left it on into the week
> and there was actually a band opening on Wednesday, so I cut an pasted some
> of it below.  Interesting that it opened to Hawaii, NW US and finally
> Japan.  There is an internet site that you can subscribe to that will alert
> your phone of band openings.  I may try that later.  Some of the FT8
> signals were strong, probably enough for analog QSOs.  This is all with the
> 5 element beam headed south.
>
> I actually worked KL7HBK earlier but I did not get any of the action
> during the opening.  I didn't realize it happened until hours later.  I
> just turned it off so not monitoring any more.  Maybe later.
>
> 200512_221315    50.313 Rx FT8     -3  1.9 1443 KH6U KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_221345    50.313 Rx FT8     -1  1.9 1437 KH6U KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_221500    50.313 Rx FT8     -7  1.8 1431 KH6HI KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_221530    50.313 Rx FT8     -5  1.9 1431 KH6HI KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_221630    50.313 Rx FT8     -8  1.9 1431 CQ KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_221700    50.313 Rx FT8    -14  1.9 1431 CQ KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_232630    50.313 Rx FT8     -6  1.8 1441 W7EW KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_232700    50.313 Rx FT8    -16  1.8 1438 W7EW KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_235945    50.313 Rx FT8    -19  1.7 1379 JE1BMJ KL7HBK BO49
> 200512_235945    50.313 Rx FT8      0  1.7 1439 JE1BMJ KL7HBK BO49
> 200513_000745    50.313 Rx FT8      3  1.7 1450 JG1TSG KL7HBK R+02
> 200513_000815    50.313 Rx FT8      1  1.7 1450 JG1TSG KL7HBK 73
> 200513_000945    50.313 Rx FT8     -1  1.7 1452 JL1MJD KL7HBK -16
> 200513_001015    50.313 Rx FT8     -1  1.7 1453 JL1MJD KL7HBK RR73
> 200513_001045    50.313 Rx FT8     -1  1.7 1453 JN1NZO KL7HBK -12
> 200513_001115    50.313 Rx FT8     -5  1.7 1453 JN1NZO KL7HBK RR73
> 200513_001245    50.313 Rx FT8      0  1.7 1455 JS1MRA KL7HBK -16
> 200513_001315    50.313 Rx FT8      3  1.7 1455 JS1MRA KL7HBK -20
> 200513_003000    50.313 Rx FT8      1  1.9  628 JD1BHA KL7HBK 73
> 200513_003030    50.313 Rx FT8      3  1.8  629 JD1BHA KL7HBK 73
>
>   73
> Mike, KL6M BP51dc
> http://kl6m.com/
>