I’ve never been one for morning TV but quite often, before I go to work in the morning, I’ll switch the wireless on and work a few stations using FT8.
This morning I tuned to 17m, pointed the aerial towards Europe and started calling CQ. It took a few shouts before an EA4 (thanks Antonio) called and my aerial automatically turned towards Spain. I worked him and then I was immediately called by a JA station. Again, my aerial turned but by the time it reached 32°, the signal had vanished completely. I knew straight away what was happening so I hit the 180° button on the SteppIR controller and bingo, the signal was back and decently strong.
From then on, for about forty minutes or so, all I worked was JA stations via long path. In between two QSOs, I quickly switched the aerial back to normal and physically rotated it to around 210° and switched off the automatic rotation.
At times I had eight or nine stations calling me at the same time and here’s one of the less busy periods.
I find long path propagation absolutely incredible and I’ve had long runs of working VKs on 20m LP before but whereas there’s still a good few thousand miles different between the UK and VK from short to long path, it’s absolutely huge between us and JA. Short path is just under 6,000 miles but long path is nearly 19,000 miles.
This picture demonstrates it perfectly. It was definitely grey line long path propagation – You can see my approximate location by the G6 marker in the middle and JA is where the green mark is. The path drawn between them shows both short and long path very close to the day/night terminator.
I really picked a serendipitous time to be on the wireless because sunrise today was at 07:59. I doubt I could have done it better if I tried. I had to cut it short so I could head off to work so I sent a couple of SRI QRT NOW messages and switched everything off. I really don’t like closing down when people are calling but I had to go.
*** update ***
Next day, I did it again. 39 JAs on 17m FT8 in 48 minutes via grey line long path before work.
Thanks for sharing this most intriguing knowledge.
My rig is quite basic, just a Xeigu G90 with a homebrew antenna switch to select 40m EFHW, 40m HWD or 10m base loaded QWV. With this I’ve worked stations across Europe, East coast USA and the Azores. With your inspiration I’ll see if I can work JA too on SSB.
I’ve had my Foundation since July 24 so I’ve got a lot to learn, currently working towards Intermediate.
Oh by the way, thanks for the Hamclock blog it was very helpful too.
Moz…
M7MWX
73.