About Last Sunday

A week ago,  I left the cryptic message about being blindsided by the day.  About it being a “busy day that got the better of me.  It didn't help that something I was hoping would happen showed up much later than would have been convenient.  I promise I'll get to that story.”  

I didn’t end that with “I'll get to that story someday,” but I should have.  Today is that someday.  This is all ham radio related, and in the narrow specialty of contacting (working) distant places on VHF frequencies.  In particular, the 6 meter ham band.  If you’re not interested, I expect to be back at regular topics tomorrow.

Last weekend was the third ARRL VHF contest: (June, September and January). My overall impression is that's the order from the best to worst of the three in terms of what I've heard, but I went ahead and started operating when the contest started at 2PM EST.  It wasn't open for long periods, and it was mostly to a very small area in New England, but it wasn't completely dead.  I worked a few stations in the locator grid squares called FN42, 43 and 44.  As the day went on, it shifted to the west like FN10 or 20 and EM19.  I worked a couple of grids that I worked before but haven't confirmed.  And then the band shut down and I heard nothing/nobody except for a handful north and south of us.  Basically from the Florida/Georgia line down to Miami.

Compared to Saturday, Sunday was very slow and there were many times I was honestly concerned my radio or station was seriously substandard.  Until it wasn't.  I went in to play on the radio around 1:30, after church and lunch, and for hours heard nothing but that same handful of guys spread north and south of me.  I'd get one 15 second interval where it would show someone somewhere north along the eastern seaboard; maybe Pennsylvania or Delaware, nearer or farther, but not long enough to identify whom to call let alone have a contact, yet I'd regularly hear one of the locals calling or working someone else out of state.  Suddenly, in the evening, it opened to Texas then Mexico and finally New Zealand. 

I started hearing the Florida side of the Florida to New Zealand exchanges, which has happened a few times before, and I suddenly started hearing the guys in New Zealand.  It was 0045 UTC or 7:45 PM EST when I started calling one of the New Zealand stations.  It took a minute of calling before he answered me, but after that, it was as close to ideal as contacts get.  I sent a signal report (15 seconds transmit), he sent my signal report (15 second listening) then another 15 seconds each to thank each other and my first New Zealand contact on 50.313 MHz FT8 was complete.  

But the night wasn’t over.  About a half hour later, 0113 UTC, I copied another guy from NZ calling CQ (“calling anyone”) and called him back.  Got him on my first call, and again, a minute later he was in my logbook.  This guy belongs to a 6m group I follow on groups.io and we’ve actually swapped emails.  That means he’s as close to being someone I actually know as there is in New Zealand.  Within 24 hours, he had confirmed the contact, using the American Radio Relay League’s online electronic QSL system called Logbook of The World.  (QSL is the ham Q-signal for confirmation of contact) 

That was around the time I came out to put up the blog post, but the fun continued on Monday (local time).  In a similar way, the band was dead virtually all day, until almost the exact same times.  Since I already had two NZ contacts, I was looking for other countries in the south Pacific showing up on 6m.  Monday night, I worked Australia.  Twice.  

Solar-terrestrial conditions were similar both days.  The 10.7cm solar flux was in the 180s and 190s, and the geomagnetic field K index was almost at minor storm levels and decreasing.  I’ve had good luck under those conditions.   

The conditions degraded over the next couple of days, so there were no more encounters like that.  There’s a line about flying an airplane that goes something like, “hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror.”  Substitute “excitement” for terror, and that’s hunting for those rare contacts on the radio.  After something like this, it might be possible to explain how the signals got from here to there but predicting it is another story.  I try to keep myself ready to go back to the radio room when the solar flux is above 170 and preferably when the K index is coming down from levels we ordinarily tend to avoid.  This is still the quiet time for 6m.  It will become more active as we get into spring.  This time of year in the southern hemisphere is like mid July here when conditions are better.