[SJRA-Members] QSO Party Newbie Operating Question

Thu Jun 16 22:37:05 EDT 2016

I have to agree with Bob, 80 m at Night will be your best chance The H/V 20
db loss is for Ground Wave signals not DX. 40M NVIS during the day 80M NVIS
at night. Antennas low to the ground is what pushes the signal straight up,
us people with dipoles lower to the ground talk real good local not so much
DX. I had a hard time copying K2WB/100 40M other evening  we have to be
under 10 air mile or so from each other on. 

http://www.arrl.org/nvis

Dennis
AC2FO

-----Original Message-----
From: SJRA-Members [mailto:sjra-members-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf
Of Bob Beyer
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2016 9:53 PM
To: 'Mark Walters'; sjra-members at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [SJRA-Members] QSO Party Newbie Operating Question

Hi Mark,

Congrats on the first DX with your new General privileges.
What you're experiencing on HF is completely normal.  While it may be easy
to make contact with someone VERY nearby (say only a couple miles) it's also
entirely likely that your signals will hop right over each other if you're
more than a just a few miles apart.  Various bands have different
propagation characteristics; some will travel farther via the ground wave
effect and some will do better when bouncing off the different layers of the
ionosphere (E, F1, F2, etc.).  

In general 160m and 80m will behave well for close-in contacts and you
should be able to do well with stations both nearby and out to several
hundred miles after sun-down.  However, these two bands suffer from
atmospheric noise far more than the others so the noise level can be a bear.
On 40m through 10m, you may or very likely may not hear close-in stations
(other members).  There are so many propagation phenomena that trying to go
into them all in a single email would be tedious.  One common one is called
Near Vertical Incident Sky-wave (or NVIS) where signals go nearly straight
up and bounce back.  This doesn't give long distance but works for local
stuff in your vicinity and nearby, say a few hundred miles.  40m is famous
for this.

Making contacts on HF is not as predictable as a VHF or UHF repeater.  This
is what makes it exciting.  Some days the bands will be "hot" and at other
times cold.  Europe, South America, the west coast, and further can sound
like next door at times and not be there at all others.  Close contacts can
sometimes be as hard or harder to make than DX. Whenever I operate the ARRL
Sweepstakes in November, the Southern New Jersey section is actually one of
the trickier ones for me to get.

In general, 80m is probably your best chance of making a local contact on
HF, all factors being equal.  Be patient.  You're probably not doing
anything wrong.  With practice, you'll find what works best at your QTH.  I
contacted John, W2FDJ operating K2AA/100 the other night on 80m LSB with
ease but have a hard time hearing the folks south of me when they operate
40m CW.

One other thing; for now I would not concern myself too much with the
polarity of your HF antenna.  While it certainly matters to some extent, it
is nothing like the effect this has on VHF, UHF, and microwave signals.  On
10m it maybe a little more pronounced but I wouldn't start building new
antennas just to overcome this.  When a signal skips off the ionosphere
(like it does for all DX contacts) any polarization that was used to
transmit is lost so there is no point in trying to match polarization for DX
contacts.

Good luck,
Bob - KE2D

-----Original Message-----
From: SJRA-Members [mailto:sjra-members-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf
Of Mark Walters
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2016 8:47 PM
To: sjra-members at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [SJRA-Members] QSO Party Newbie Operating Question

Well folks, I have had one heck of a time trying to make contact with local
K2AA/100 operators so far during this entire QSO party as well as SJRA/100
self spotters. 
In fact, I have not been able to contact K2AA/100 operators at all while
operating as my own call despite chasing the schedules, chasing the flurry
of email self spots etc. 

I have a Yaesu FT-857D and when I bring it into the house I match it with a
YT-100 tuner, and a vertical multiband EZ Military HF antenna and a Diamond
vertical 2M antenna which I can hit most other local repeaters with(except
K2AA lol). 
This combination worked fairly well during the Jan VHF contest. 
My 6M dipole that I just built this week and tuned with a Comet antenna
analyzer and further tuned with the YT-100 did not seem to produce any local
or far contacts on 6M during my K2AA operator slots(I believe the band was
closed during my slots according to propagation sites for 6M). 

I did manage to make a few outbound contacts while operating as K2AA/100
early in the week on 2M repeaters (other than SJRAs) since I can not hit
K2AA from my low lying development . 

In my frustration, today I took down my temporary shack in my home and took
down all my temp antennas in my back yard and put the radio back in my
truck. 
Tonight at 7:15 I heard a band opening on 20M and managed to make my first
DX contact as a newly minted General, to a station in Italy like they were
sitting next to me. 

Subsequently, I turned back to the K2AA 10M net and could barely here Roy at
8:00PM. (I know I am cross polarized with a vertical ATAS-120 antenna on my
truck despite it also having a built in tuner). 

Summary, I am a newbie and have had a great deal of fun trying this week so
far but realize I have soooooo much to learn in Radio. 

Question to all the experienced SJRA operators >>>Does anyone have any
suggestions/feedback as to why I can't hit local contacts in HF but can hit
Italy like they were sitting next to me? 
...NVIS, cross polarized, band opening, right place/right time... all of the
above, none of the above... ??? 

Any suggestions on what might be going on here are welcome. 

Thanks in advance for your feedback :) 

Mark Walters KD2JPW/AG 

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