Category Archives: Aircraft Scatter

NAC(?) 23 cm – October 2012

October 16th, 2012

The Nordic Activity Contest is always a very good opportunity to work . . . Italians!

Tonight everything was upside down. After loosing John, G3XDY in QSB – a fact that is very, very strange – I wanted to turn the dish via south to north, when Sergio, I1KFH was meeping me. We tried and had our QSO in SSB. What else to say? Giorgio, IK3GHY followed as well as Robert, IZ4BEH and Frank, IK3HHG and Walter, IW2BNA and finally Roberto, IK2OFO.

Mille grazie. Buona notte!

NAC to Italy

NAC to Italy

Aircraft scatter – very special

August 27th, 2012

In the evening I had the dish pointing to the moon to perform some echo tests. After finishig that, there was some office work to do. The pc was still tracking the moon and showing the spectrum around 1296.030 in a waterfall diagram. After a while I noticed a strong signal at  .050 keyed in F2. It lasted just for a few seconds before it disappeared. I watched the display and could see it every now and then with various signal strength. Very soon I identified it as HB9BBD. This beacon is always very strong here – as long as the dish is turned in the right direction (175°), but at present it was pointing to the moon with an azimuth of 130° and an elevation of 10°. While thinking about that, I was looking at the moon outside the window, hearing the signal coming up in QSB and seeing a plane passing the moon.

Since Frankfurt airport is not too far from my QTH in Mainz, planes are passing by in a wide variety of altitudes. Using planefinder.com I was was able to find a correlation between reflections and planes flying in certain heigths, distances and directions. May be it will be possible to use aircrafts not only for forward scatter. If anyone is interested to try aircraft side scatter, please contact me. It could be helpful, when obstructions like noise sources, buildings or mountains are blocking the direct path.

Time for DX

June 19th, 2012

The NAC is always an opportunity to work stations from Scandinavia on 23 cm. Yesterday I had QSOs  with Frank, IK3HHG and Giorgio, IK3GHY in JO65 over 570 km. The signals were quite poor compared to QSOs before but were accompanied by strange pings – lighting scatter as Henning, DF9IC explained me tonight. So I wondered how the conditions would be this evening and turned my dish to the north. I started with DL0VV (JO64AD / 538 km). After a while I heard OZ9KY (JO45VX / 683 km) calling CQ and could add a new square to my collection. He was followed by SK7MW (JO65MJ / 691 km) with another new square and new country for me. In the meantime more and more stations from the UK logged in at the KST chat. Now the dish was turned to 298°. John, G3XDY (JO02OB / 547 km) could be detected on .215 and after a meep in the chat he turned his antenna to me. John produced a big signal in ssb peaking here 57 with little QSB. It was the second new country for me tonight and square #50 at all on 23 cm.

gn all