[Elecraft] OT: Propagation

[Julian, G4ILO]

Don Rasmussen wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> The bands are opening for the Fall, and I'd like to know what paths are
> open at any given moment, using a web based resource. 
> 
> If I checked right now I might find that 15 meters is open between Africa
> and North America, and that 20m is open between Hawaii (or Japan) and the
> West Coast of USA. 
> 
> I have the W6EL program that makes a pretty good MUF frequency map. But
> that is just a projection based on solar flux. 
> 
> www.eham.net has some DX spotting too, wondering what may be better. 
> 
> Anyone have any suggestions?
> 
> Thanks in advance - Don. 
> 
> 

Whatever happened to just turning the radio on and listening. :)

Having been foolish enough to write and make freely available a program
(VOAProp) that displays graphical maps of predicted propagation based on
VOACAP, I have become aware that a lot of hams think you can predict
propagation as accurately as the weather given a couple of solar indices. It
just ain't that easy. If you happened to subscribe to RadCom, then in this
month's issue you would have found an excellent article  describing exotic
propagation modes that even the best propagation models cannot predict.

So there is really no substitute to turning the radio on and listening. If
you really can't be bothered to do that, then looking at what is being
spotted on the DX Cluster by spotters near your location may give you an
idea of who is actually working what at any given time.

An interesting variation on that is the Reverse Beacon Project
http://skimmer.dxwatch.com/ which plots stations heard by people using the
CW Skimmer software, however there are far too few users (and Skimmer is
prone to mis-copy calls) for it to be very useful at the moment.

-----
Julian, G4ILO. K2 #392  K3 #222.
http://www.g4ilo.com/ G4ILO's Shack   http://www.ham-directory.com/ Ham
Directory    http://www.g4ilo.com/kcomm.html KComm for Elecraft K2 and K3 
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