[OKDXA] Working Heard Island in 2014

[Roger Simpson]

I am just finishing up here with paperwork for the K9W operation. 

I decided to setup a propagation grid for the third Myanmar operation that is coming on any time. I only worked Myanmar on one band/mode before. That was during the second of the three operations by the JA team. Myanmar is a very hard path from the Central USA. The short path starts out going over Canada skirts across the Arctic Ocean and then sweeps down across Siberia, Mongolia, and China. The heading is about 340 degrees from Oklahoma. 

I was wondering to myself, “if Myanmar is this tough then the upcoming Heard operation in early 2014 is going to be impossible for me to have and QSOs with”.

Well, I decided to do a couple of VOACAP runs here. These might not be exact, since VOACAP is only guessing right now at what the sunspots are going to be doing in 2014. However, regardless of any likely fine tuning of the VOACAP prediction to Heard Island by the time the Heard operation starts, the path to Heard path is much more favorable that with Myanmar. For one thing, and this totally blew me away, the short path from Oklahoma to Heard starts out going across Dallas, then the Yucatan Peninsula, then Malpelo, then the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, then grazes across Antarctica and approaches Heard from the south. Propagation on 20, 17, 15, and 12 meters is markedly better than to Myanmar. Myanmar does have a couple of decent openings per day of 15 and 17 lasting about 90 minutes, but Heard is expected to have decent opening on 20, 17, 15, and 12 that last for 3 to 6 hours per day. It is too soon to tell -- but it looks now, based upon SSN prediction VOACAP is using now, that 10m and 12m openings to Heard are possible from W5.  

And this is really cool: IF THE GUYS ON HEARD ARE USING ANY TYPE OF BEAM AND WORKING NA THERE WON”T BE ANY JA WALL OR EU WALL in the way!!!! We will only be competing with guys in NA. 

K5RK will be having a field day working Heard. He will be in our line of fire to Heard. However, he might run interference for me again like he did when I worked Maquarie a couple of years ago. The DX said, “The K5RK  ??? . . . go ahead”.  So Larry -- the real K5RK -- and the interloper guy K5RKS came back. K5RK, down there in Houston says to the DX, “I think there is another K5RK. . .  call sign in there”  It is always good to have a friend in high places with lot of aluminum.  I told Larry in an email that if we ever have an eyeball QSO that I owe him a free steak dinner. 

See you guys in the pileups. 

73  Roger K5RKS