[ILQSO] 20 meters- a further analysis

[Hank Greeb]

John:

You're on the right wavelength.  In several Ohio QSO parties in the past 
years before 2000 - don't remember exactly which, I was able to work a 
bunch of Ohio Counties on 20 metres from SW Ohio, and many, many on 40 
metres.  And, 15 and 10 metres worked well for DX.  This is in stark 
contrast to ILQP 2006 and 2007, where  it was next to impossible to get 
a run going on 20 metres, and difficult to work stations at all some of 
the time.  Somewhere on the internet there's a predictor for the Maximum 
Usable Frequency - which is the highest frequency which can be reflected 
from the ionosphere from any angle.  A high MUF means that you stand a 
good chance of working DX on 10, 12, 15, 17, or 20 metres (depending on 
where the MUF is). The other  "critical" component of propagation is the 
Critical Frequency (no pun intended), which is the highest frequency a 
signal can go straight up and come down at the same point, which means 
you can hear stations generally within a 200 mile radius or more.

Aside from QSO parties, I remember working Antarctica in the 1950's on 
20 metres, and running phone patches for the personnel there because 
there was no such thing as the internet.  The skeds were usually between 
midnight an 3 a.m..  And, we'd work Australia and New Zealand on 20 
metres at 3 a.m.  20 metres was open 24 hours per day, except for an 
occasional solar flare which wiped out all communication.

73 de n8xx Hg

n9msg at insightbb.com wrote:

>It would be interesting to have further data beyond 1999/2000... This seems to plot pretty close to sunspot decline... Will the 20M rates improve as the spots increase?   Will higher spots indicate better conditions for more local 20M contacts (shorter band)?  Anyone have data to support this?
>
>John
>N9MSG
>