Thanks Dave,
It is as I suspected. I opened my eyes (sort of!) at 0150Z and decided
to just take a quick look to see if anything really interesting was
happening. I discovered aurora on 6 meters and made my first QSO at
0155Z. So I missed the 222 activity! This is not surprising since I have
found over the years best aurora signals generally happen in the late
afternoon through early evening, say 4 to 7 PM. It then usually fades
for a while and re-intensifies later, but by then a lot of people have
shut down.
I have no solution for the problem of evening availability here, but I
sure hate missing a good aurora! It has been many years since I worked
aurora on 222 (or 432, where I have insufficient power these days).
73,
Paul N1BUG
On 3/25/23 12:12, David Olean wrote:
Hi Mr BUG,
I noted that contacts were being made on 50 and then 144. I walked up to
the shack around 23:00 UT and fired up the 222 gear. Starting at about
2345 UT, I was answered by VA3ELE who was running just 25 watts on CW.
He had a good signal strength of 55A. A few minutes later, I worked his
neighbor VE3DS who runs more power and was very loud at 57A. Another
station worked was WX3K in PA, who also had a good signal. That was the
first ever 222 aurora contact for WX3K! I hope there are many more. I
worked WX3K between 00:00 and 01:00. Best DX heard was N4PZ in Chicago,
EN52 at 950 miles, but Steve could not hear me. He was a good 55A at
00:44 UT and again later at about 00:57 UT. The band dropped out
shortly after 0100UT. When things died down after 0115 UT I walked home
in the dark. I was sure that the aurora would come back around 11 PM,
but having a shack 1/2 mile away covered in snow prevented any more
monitoring.
I figured out a good plan for a pair of 16 el yagis. I am going to fix
them at 300 degrees as an AU detector.
Dave K1WHS
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|