[OKDXA] Working Heard Island in 2014

Mon Nov 18 13:37:18 EST 2013

-----Original Message----- 
From: John Geiger
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2013 9:07 AM
To: Oklahoma - DX news and information
Subject: Re: [OKDXA] Working Heard Island in 2014

Thanks for the analysis. I am thinking of putting up a 15m monoband antenna
soon. Are you able to model the path from OK to FT5Z to see if there is much
chance of working Amsterdam on 15m?  That might help me decide if a 15m
antenna would be worth it or not.

73 John AF5CC

---- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Simpson" <rksimpson1 at cox.net>
To: "Oklahoma - DX news and information" <okdxa at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2013 9:02 PM
Subject: [OKDXA] Working Heard Island in 2014

>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
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> OKDXA mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/okdxa
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:OKDXA at mailman.qth.net
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

______________________________________________________________
OKDXA mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/okdxa
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:OKDXA at mailman.qth.net

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

================================
Reply at 17:30UTC        18 Nov 2013

John [AF5CC], Gene [W5LE] and all OKDXA members:

I have just started to look at the situation relative to propagation to 
Amsterdam Island. Gene, W5LE, pointed out to me that I had my calendar 
crossed.
I was thinking that Heard was in early 2014 and Amsterdam was in early 2015. 
But I was mixed up over here. I guess I was having a senior moment.

In any case, I am going to go the VOACAP website and find out what the 
expected propagation is to Amsterdam in January/February 2014.

By the way, some initial work I did last night regarding Amsterdam really 
blew me away. For us in the OK, KS, and CO areas, Amsterdam is virtually at 
the extreme opposite side of the world from us. So the question is, "Which 
way do we point our beams?".  I am going to make some runs here to calculate 
the beam headings for major cities in OK, KS, and CO. This will be very 
crazy because the headings will BE VERY DIFFERENT for the short path from 
various places. However, the short path and the long path distance will be 
virtually the same.

This all seems crazy.  But it makes sense when you consider that the 
antipode for Amsterdam Island is about 10-15 miles SE of the town of Lamar 
CO.

So if you are in SE Colorado at the antipode point, then any beam heading is 
the same in terms of the distance to Amsterdam. And any path is both a long 
path and a short path. The propagation could be radically different, 
however.  For example, for a path that starts out with a heading of 90 
degrees (east) compared with a heading of 0 degrees (north) the propagation 
might be drastically different.

I have found VOACAP to be very accurate regarding predicting the propagation 
to Myanmar, Banaba, and Wake. So I guess VOACAP will also give reliable 
predictions to Amsterdam.

I expect to put up a post regarding propagation and beam headings to 
Amsterdam by the end of the week.

I'll also give you driving directions to the exact spots in SE Colorado to 
the antipodes (i.e the opposite "side" of the earth) from the Antonelli and 
Mataf cabins.  These cabins are about a mile or so apart and they are on the 
northern shore of Amsterdam Island at the edge of the Martin des Viviers 
Base.

If you have a 4WD truck, or at least a vehicle with a fairly decent ground 
clearance, and a GPS unit you should be able to drive to within about a mile 
or so of the antipodes. Then you will have to hike the remaining mile or two 
to reach the "exact" spots. When I say "exact", I mean +/-  1000 to 3000 
feet because the coordinates for the Antonelli and Mataf cabins are only 
stated to the nearest arc minute of longitude and latitude on the FT5ZM 
website. On the ground, at a latitude of around 37 degrees a minute of 
latitude is about 6000 feet and a minute of longitude is about 5000 feet. If 
any place is "rounded up/down" to the nearest integral coordinates in arc 
minutes then the worst case error will be half the resolution which would be 
3000 feet of latitude and 2500 feet in longitude.

73   Roger   K5RKS