I did some band soundings on 40, 20, and 17 meters shortly after 1000 local with CW CQs to exercise the RBN. Used my IC7300 at 100 watts to my 40 meter dipole at 45 feet and my 20 meter quarter wave ground plane wire vertical with feed point at about 20 feet (force fed on 17 with the internal 7300 antenna tuner.40 to west coast was no joy, as expected no propagation west of the Midwest and Midwest was marginal. 17 even with a less than optimal antenna lit up AZ and one CA RBN near San Diego (NQ6T). NQ6T SNR was 16, not too shabby. 20 did OK into AZ but No CA, not clear why. You can see my results just search on AJ1G as DX station for at least the last 10 hours to get you back to the 1000 local today time frame. Apply single band display filtering to display the data best, select last 100 spots to see the maximum amount of date. All spots are time and date stamped. You can also search on individual spotters the same way to see what else they have been detecting, not sure if you can search a specific time slot but you can always look back at their last 100 spots on a specific band by using single band display filtering. Good luck out there. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you, there’s not going to be any soap in that rain!I won’t be doing any more CW ops on 40 20 or 17 today so my spots from about 1000 will stay as the most recent in the queue.73 de Chris AJ1GSent from my iPhoneOn Sep 21, 2023, at 19:04, Tim <timsamm@gmail.com> wrote:Hi Chris - I agree, I think you are calling it right. Pretty narrow propagation windows over this path with the expected equipment...The CW RBN is a very powerful propagation test tool, I use it frequently. No "predictions", it's actual reception reports of real signals (Not FT-8. Ahem...).I'll probe it tomorrow and see. Looks like Gilbert will be having "training" WX.If it's raining, it's training, if it's sun, it's fun!TimN6CCOn Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 12:52 PM Christopher Bowne <aj1g@sbcglobal.net> wrote:I can’t be at Gilbert this year but will listen for the East-West comms exercise. Based on recent daytime operations both from home and mobile here, 1000 Eastern will be at best marginal at more than 3 hours past local sunrise to the west coast. It would be excellent at local East Coast sunrise on 40, but very early on the West Coastfor the operators. 20 and 18 might work, would think 20 would be better. 20 lately has been staying open virtually worldwide from New England in the early morning hours here around 2 AM at later and stays open to the west for a long while. Suggest you do some soundings by calling CQs on CW on the bands at various times tomorrow to see how you light up the Reverse Beacon Network nodes, there are many on both the East and West Coasts on 40 20 and 18 MHz.Chris AJ1G Stonington CT.Sent from my iPhoneOn Sep 21, 2023, at 15:20, Tim <timsamm@gmail.com> wrote:Hi Ray - I agree that prop looks pretty poor for this E-W path. I ran the predictions again using today's solar data and it looks even worse for the power/antennas we have. (Higher power, CW, more gain etc. helps considerably..) https://www.voacap.com/hf/I will be up on Saturday morning, 18145 kc USB at 1700Z to give it a try. Not likely that 7296 kc would work out here with these parameters and "fall" conditions. But there are always "surprises"....We can always try again, anytime, but I agree, playing with these radios in field setups makes the challenge fun at several levels.Have fun at Gilbert with your local ops. You guys always get an enthusiastic turnout.73, TimN6CC______________________________________________________________On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 10:59 AM Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI@salisbury.edu> wrote:Looking at your path predictions seventeen don't look too good, but forty may be a possibility so we will be up on 7296 at 1000 local and depending on how bad the weather is on our end ,may not want to stick around too long on my end. Will try 18.145 at 1300 local and see what happens but we also have AA83 coming up in October and that may be another opportunity and that will be from Fort Miles in Delaware right on the coast.
Ray F/KA3EKH
From: W6MQI <W6MQI@protonmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2023 5:03 PM
To: MRCG-West@groups.io <MRCG-West@groups.io>; Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI@salisbury.edu>
Cc: MMRCG@groups.io <MMRCG@groups.io>; mrca@mailman.qth.net <mrca@mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [MRCG-West] Saturdays East-West Mil Commo Test
Doesn't look too promising if I'm reading it right.
Dave, W6MQI
Sent from Proton Mail mobile
-------- Original Message --------
On Sep 19, 2023, 12:46 PM, Tim N6CC < timsamm@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Ray - I'm planning for the Gilbert - West Coast military radio check upcoming for this weekend, Saturday 23 Sept.I will be operating a PRC-174 from a field location out this way. So I ran the VOA propagation prediction for the CA-MD path at 1800Z (11AM PDT, 1400 EDT). Freq= 18.145 mc.Variables I entered are SSB, quarter wave verticals at each end, 50 watts (split between 100 W GRC-106 and 20 W PRC-174). Prediction uses current solar activity.. I find these predictions to be fairly accurate for my purposes...
It does not look good for propagation success: prediction (18 mc brown curve) is less than 5% for an acceptable SNR with those parameters. See chart. Other bands not usefully better..But I guess we try anyway., maybe some mid-west / west coast Mil rock crushers may try also...But otherwise a good excuse to get out in the field..
FYI, TimN6CC
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