I hope Fred, K3ZO, doesn't mind me forwarding this to the reflector. It
provides some insight into why South America is such a great place for 10m
propagation.
It also reminded me of something else I wanted to mention in the write-up.
All night, when the band was really open to zone 24 and 26, I felt like I
was operating a CW contest in the middle of the phone bands! SSB, AM, and
FM signals were everywhere.
Didn't really cost me any QSOs, but there were a few times I had to move my
run frequency a kHz or so to get away from a heterodyne. I suspect we are
going to discover new levels of encroachment this sunspot cycle - even
greater than we could have imagined.
Randy, K5ZD
- -----Original Message-----
From: Fred Laun K3ZO [mailto:aalaun@ibm.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 1998 4:03 AM
To: k5zd@ma.ultranet.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] ZW5B (op K5ZD) CQWW CW 28 Mhz Story (longer
than long)
Hi Randy:
Thanks for a fascinating story!
The reason that the band stays open all night down there (besides the fact
that it's summer down there so the sun is shining on the ionosphere above
you all day a lot longer than it is here, giving it more reflectivity once
it gets dark) is that the Geomagnetic Equator runs roughly through Lima,
Peru whereas the Geographic Equator runs through Quito, Ecuador. And for
propagation purposes the Geomagnetic Equator is the important one.
There is also something else going on. When I was in Cordoba, Argentina as
LU5HFI I had to coordinate the visit of a US Navy Earth magnetic field
mapping plane which was spending some time in Cordoba calibrating the
plane's measuring instruments with a local geomagnetic observatory there
before going on to the Antarctic to make measurements. The scientific crew
told me that for reasons that up to that point were unexplained, the
atmosphere over Argentina (and presumably over Southern Brasil as well) is
about 10,000 feet thicker than over any other point on the globe. I always
felt that's why the LUs seem to "own" 10 meters. I am also aware that
during the LUs' Sporadic E season in December/January they routinely have 2
meter short skip openings around Argentina whereas such openings are pretty
rare up here.
Glad to hear Zone 26 was so loud down there. We are working hard to get
more volume there so the next time you have an hour with nothing but Zone 26
your rate will be better HI
By the way try a phone contest there some time and check in on 29.6 FM to
run the 10,000 Chinese novice (BG prefix) stations all crsytal controlled
there with their 3-watt NBFM kits which their national club sent all over
the country a few years back to jump start HF activity! I have had
interesting runs from HS on that frequency -- what a madhouse! Just
filtering out the hams from the Hong Kong taxicabs using the same frequency
for business is plenty of work by itself.
73, Fred
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