With just over a week to go, the Lord Howe Team are anxious to get on the Island.
The team activating Lord Howe are in the main from Japan but with a few other Members from further afar. The operation will take place between the 11th and 18th January, 2013 from their base within the Blue Lagoon Hotel, on Lord Howe Island.
The operators will be using their home callsigns/VK9L (JH3PBL/VK9L etc etc) and will be Qrv on 80-6m, CW, SSB and RTTY.
This morning see’s three packages (total 4.2Kilo) of Qsl cards on their way to the RSGB Bureau.
There are also just under 1.4 Kilo of cards that will be mailed in the next few weeks direct to the appropriate World Bureau’s. There are cards for none-RSGB Members that I manage.
If you have any questions about cards or requests you have made you can contact me (details here) or if it is related to an OQRS request, then just log back into M0OXO OQRS and you will find all information regarding your request there.
Well its the first JA station I have worked in months!
Nevertheless a good one to log and a surprise too, not too many spots and a check on Qrz reveals the QTH as Tokunoshima Island, Japan, part of the AS-023 IOTA Group (Amami Islands), new IOTA for MØOXO !
Administatively it belongs to Kagoshima Prefecture. Three towns are located on the island: Tokunoshima, Isen, and Amagi.
So another new IOTA logged bringing my total to #551 worked and #479 confirmed.
Listen out for sporadic activity over the next few weeks as Marc is Qrv again as V55A.
You will find V55A on SSB, CW, PSK & RTTY so give him a call !
Qsl cards via MØOXO OQRS
Well, as promised in a blog entry a few days ago, when the sun went down on Christmas, a pair of bright lights rose in the east; Jupiter and the Moon were having a holiday conjunction.
In Brazil, the pair were so close, the Moon completely covered Jupiter. Marcelo Domingues of Brasilia snapped this picture seconds before the occultation (tnx pic Marco!)
In case you missed it, there will be more lunar occultations of Jupiter in 2013. A complete list is available from the International Occultation Timing Association.
NOAA and USAF are predicting the 10.7 centimeter solar flux numbers at 115 for December 21-24, 120 on December 25-27, 100 on December 28-29, 95 on December 30-January 3, 100 on January 4, 105 on January 5-7, 110 and 115 on January 8-9, 120 on January 10-12, and peaking at 125 on January 13-14. The prediction shows flux values dropping below 100 on January 26-30, and then rising above 100 in February. We see planetary A index at 5 on December 21-22, 8 on December 23-24, 5 on December 25-28, 8 on December 29, then 5 on December 30-January 12. There is a big jump to 16 and 12 on January 13-14, then dropping back to 5 again into February.
Tom Morton, CXC7TT, from Rocha, Uruguay, writes about the ARRL 10 Meter Contest (December 8-9, 2012):“Due to house guests, I did not participate in contest, except for roughly 30 contacts. I turned the rig on right at 0000 on Friday night and 10 meters was pretty much dead (that’s 2200 local). I did hear and work XV1X (Vietnam) at 0001 beaming long-path over the southwestern tip of the US, so the band had gone really long. Vietnam is about 12,000 miles from here via long-path. The next morning, typically good for Europe, was pretty dead. The few big guns in Europe were coming through, but not with really big signals. FH8PL at 1217 on SSB and T6LG at 1218 on CW were pretty easy to work. The next day, A45XR at 1600 on 10 meters CW was another easy catch. Around 1400 on Sunday, the band really opened up to the US. My rig had signals from 28.001 MHz that finally tapered off around 28.091 MHz, and SSB was crowded from 28.300-28.553 MHz. It was definitely a South American day, as two local multi-single stations were running big time. CW5W and CX5BW were within 200 contacts of each other by mid-afternoon on Sunday. I think Jorge and his crew, CW5W, may have the top score with more than 3200 contacts.”
Peter Matsunaga, WH6EAU — who operates from the South Coast of Oahu with 50 W into an end-fed wire — also had 10 Meter Contest comments: “From a limited time working during the contest period, propagation seemed better on Saturday than it did on Sunday. On both days, I could work only one US station, in Texas. My location seems to be in a dead spot for much of Continental United states, due to a nearby mountain mass. Otherwise I could work Southern Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and Australia on Saturday, and Japan on Sunday. The signal strength to Australia was particularly strong at times.”
Kevin Seeger, NC6V, of Corona, California, also wrote about the 10 Meter Contest, “I noticed that the band just kept going dead from time to time. I checked my antenna and coax a few times to see if they were still there. E-skip openings were very, very rare to almost nonexistent. The strangest propagation was a severe echo on Sunday; I was hearing from stations on CW located in Ohio and Pennsylvania. At times it was so bad I couldn’t copy their calls. I worked most states east of the Mississippi, but I missed the whole W7 call area and a big part of the W0 call area. I worked several Japanese stations on Sunday afternoon, and working into South America was a breeze.”
Gerald Fasse, W8GF, of Warren, Michigan wrote: “Among the toughest DX paths from Southeast Michigan is to Cambodia (regular path heading 350 degrees, and 14,000 kilometers.). My only need was — and still is 30 meters. Many 30 meter spots were noted on the DX cluster, coupled with frantic dial spinning, but no copy here. But I did manage to make a single 20 meter CW contact at 1830 on December 14. Checking for openings to the Southeast Michigan area, I saw that possible openings occur between 1600 and 1900 for that date. The point being that XU1A called again and again that day with few contacts noted, probably because mid-day openings to Southeast Asia are not expected. Don’t always depend on the DX cluster for rare and unusual DX info. Tune your radio!”
All times listed are UTC, unless otherwise noted.
Amateur solar observer Tad Cook, K7RA, of Seattle, Washington, provides this weekly report on solar conditions and propagation. This report also is available via W1AW every Friday, and an abbreviated version appears each Thursday in The ARRL Letter. You can find a guide to articles and programs concerning propagation here. Check here and here for a detailed explanation of the numbers used in this bulletin. An archive of past propagation bulletins can be found here. You can find monthly propagation charts between four USA regions and 12 overseas locations here. Readers may contact the author via e-mail.
Mr McKinley calculated the strength of the Earth’s radio signals, and found that listening in on us would be feasible, provided an alien civilisation had far superior technologies to our own. Our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri, is approximately four light years away from Earth.
The MWA telescope is highly sensitive to radio frequencies in the 80-300 MHz range and has been designed to search for the very faint signals from the formation of the first stars in the early Universe. To avoid man-made radio frequency interference from nearby radio and TV stations, the MWA is located in the outback of Western Australia, at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory
Qsl Cards for Alessio IZ0UIM should arrive in the mail soon.
I was informed yesterday by Alessio that they will mailed to the UK as soon as possible.
VK3HF Cards are also almost prepared. I have the final design from Gennady UX5UO and I am just awaiting the VK3HF Team ‘signing off’ on the design and then we can go to print. I will post image and details on the blog as soon as I have further information.
The Lampedusa 2013 DXpedition is comprised of an international team from 6 countries.
They will be on the air October l 17 thru October 30, 2013 running 4 stations on 160M through 6M (SSB/CW/RTTY).
This will be a great opportunity to work IOTA AF-019 if you still need it.
Leo, PP1CZ will be active from Fernando de Noronha as PY0F/PP1CZ between January 15-21, 2013. He will pay most attention to the lower bands of 80 & 160m.
I have it confirmed on several bands including 40M but 80m would be nice…..but sadly no 80M antenna in the air at the moment 😉
Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago of 21 islands and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, 354 km offshore from the Brazilian coast. The main island has an area of 18.4 square kilometres and had a population of 3,012 in the year 2010.
