Checks and Balances

My XYL is fond of reminding me that life is all about checks and balances. When it comes to amateur radio under the auroral oval that is especially true. When the high-latitude K-index is zero (as measured at the NOAA station in College, Alaska, only a few degrees south of us) propagation will generally be good. Higher than zero is not as good, and more than two is just plain bad. According to my research, there have only been 15 days this year where the high-latitude K-index was zero for the whole day. That means that for any particular event, like a contest or dxpedition, the chances of having good conditions are only 1 in 23 or about 4%, just slightly better than the odds of rolling snake eyes on a pair of dice. The rest of the time we just struggle along and do the best we can under the circumstances. More sunspots certainly help but that also increases the frequency of solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other solar badness that rains down from space and stirs up the aurora.

I’ve been pretty lucky this past couple of years with having those long odds come in during expeditions and contests. If you’re planning an Arctic dxpedition you can at least try to increase your chances a bit by scheduling it for a period during the sun's 27-day rotational cycle with no recurring coronal holes. Coronal holes increase the solar wind and generate high K-indices. For contests and other fixed-date events though, it's all luck of the draw. I managed to hit the low K numbers for most of my island expeditions in 2010 but our trip to Tent Island in June this year was something of a washout due to the poor conditions. For many years I had fantasized about what the ARRL Sweepstakes contest would be like without aurora and this year it finally happened. The K-index was at zero for the entire duration of the contest and it was everything I always dreamt it would be. The high bands were open late, the low bands were productive, and new records were set. Only two weeks later I decided to get on during the CQ World Wide CW contest and maybe pick up some new countries for DXCC. A little bit farther south of us conditions were being reported as great although many had difficulty working stations on paths that crossed over the pole. The K-index here peaked at 4 and there was a solar radiation storm to boot. I could hear a few weak signals from the west coast of the USA but that was it.

The high Arctic certainly is an interesting place to live but it's all checks and balances when it comes to ham radio.

ARRL 10-meter Contest

Call: VE8EV
Operator(s): VE8EV
Station: VE8EV

Class: SO CW LP
QTH: Inuvik, NT
Operating Time (hrs): 14

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 322    63
SSB:
-------------------
Total: 322 63 Total Score = 81,144

Comments:
Just 100 watts and a vertical for this one so I decided to go CW only. The marginal antenna, low power, aurora, low SSN and lack of time all conspired to keep the numbers low. Given my limited CW prowess it was probably just as well. When I had time to get on the radio I'd find a quiet corner at the higher end of the band and run callers with only an occasional foray to S&P the loud guys. I got up early Saturday and CQ'd away for four hours without a single caller, hoping for that mythical morning opening to Europe. It didn't appear and I suspect that from this part of the world in December it never will. Still, the band was open to everywhere in North America for at least five hours both days so I certainly can't complain.

My ability to copy CW is still a bit ropey and I was kind of nervous at the very beginning. Wouldn't you know the very first answer I get to my cq was 7K4QOK! Once I got through that the rest was fairly smooth sailing. The rate meter actually hit 100 for a few short bursts so I guess I'm starting to get the hang of it. Worked a pretty good cross section of W/VE, a handful of Asians, VK/ZL, and a few South Americans (although not as many as I remember from the old days on 10m).

Lots of giggles in this one for some reason. The best was working the W8 with the drifting TX. He was zero beat at the start of each call but his frequency would increase with every key stroke until he was out of my passband. After three tries I finally opened up the filter to 3K and got him in the log. For some reason it sounded hysterically funny and I chuckled about it all day long. I also found it very amusing that it took me three tries to figure out why the KH7 station was laughing at me instead of sending his exchange. Is this what normally happens to people after listening to beeping for hours on end?

Happy Holidays and hope to hear everyone in the RAC Winter Contest next weekend!

73
John VE8EV

SS SSB VE8EV Single Op HP

Call: VE8EV
Operator(s): VE8EV
Station: VE8EV

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Inuvik, NT
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:      0
80:       1
40:      95
20:     431
15:    1009
10:     198
------------
Total: 1734  Sections = 80  Total Score = 277,440

Comments:

I had a whole assortment of issues all weekend but, oh boy, did the conditions ever make up for the things that went wrong!

I stayed in the chair for the whole 24 hours and for the first time ever I didn't run out of propagation. 15m was the money band all weekend. 40m was slow Saturday night but at least the rate meter never hit zero. When 15m got a bit too crowded for my liking on Sunday I went up to 10m and had a great run there for a couple of hours. I avoided 20m like the plague. It was wide open to everywhere at once and everyone was stacked two or three deep from one end of the band to the other although I did manage a nice run there during the last hour Sunday when it finally started to thin out a bit.

I went hunting for PR (last thing before bed Saturday night on 40m) and VI (first thing in the morning on 20m) and lucky I did as they were the only ones heard. All the rest came to me and the sweep was in the bag early Sunday. Also bested the old NT section record by almost 50K.

The computer crashed about a half a dozen times Sunday afternoon before I figured out the problem, apologies to those that I stranded in the middle of a contact. Despite the glitches, PowerSDR and the Flex worked like gangbusters dealing with the QRM and finding gaps to slide into.

Thanks to all for the Q's, especially all the '1 Alpha's that called in and muddled their way through the exchange for me to make the contact.

73 John VE8EV

As Good as it Gets

As regular readers might know, propagation at this latitude is always dominated by the aurora. Right overhead almost all the time, it seems that HF conditions here only seem to vary from "poor" to "nil". As this solar cycle started to ramp up (finally!) it seemed that things got even worse as the increased activity stirred up the aurora more than it improved propagation. Finally, though, I think we’ve reached the tipping point where the solar flux is high enough that signals are able to push through most of the auroral disturbance and thanks to a rare lull in the geomagnetic activity this past week the propagation has been absolutely astounding!

I’m in the process of moving so I haven't bothered to put the yagi back up after taking it down in July. With only a 23ft non-resonant vertical as a backup antenna I haven't been very active lately. Most of my contacts have been limited to the odd JT65 or CW QSO in the evenings. It was becoming rare to even hear stations on SSB (never mind trying to actually work them!) and I was beginning miss the days of zero sunspots and zero auroral activity when I could at least count on 20 meters to be open for a little while each day. Last weekend, though, with the sun spot numbers firmly in the triple digits and the solar flux index around 150, my perception totally changed. 10m and 12m were both open late into the evening here and 15m and 20m seemed to be going around the clock.

Friday evening I went out to the shack and was surprised to hear the T32C Kiribati expedition on 10m SSB. I easily worked them and then heard them again on 12m. And worked them. And then again on 15m. And worked them. In fact, just in the space of 90 minutes I had them in the log on 8 different band/mode combinations! With a just couple of hours again on Saturday evening and an early morning excursion Sunday for the low bands I had them on every band except 160m and a total of 18 band/mode slots all in one weekend. I’m usually happy just to make any contact with a big dxpedition. A couple of years ago I blogged about chasing the K5D Desecheo group and back in January I spent almost two weeks trying to work the VP8ORK expedition, only managing to eke out a single ESP-strength CW contact on 20m the one day that I could even hear them. And that was with the yagi and the amplifier!

According to the scientists predictions, this is it: the peak of cycle 24. Hopefully these conditions will last at least for the next several months. I sure hope so because the geomagnetic activity peak usually lags the sunspot peak by a few years. The forecast for this latitude a few years from now could be pretty gloomy...



The amazing conditions continued for the rest of the expedition!

Shack of Ages

I was going through an old family photo album and found a picture I didn't recall seeing before.  As a young 13-year old SWL this was my first "shack".  The old Philips receiver was an early 60's solid-state unit and I remember that it was supposed to be powered by a dozen D-cell batteries but I had it wired up to an old car battery and a charger.


1977 - I used the little 3-channel CB to talk to my buddies with "walkie-talkies"

Many happy hours were spent tuning the world and collecting QSL cards from short wave broadcast stations and my walls were decorated with the schedules and posters the broadcasters used to send along with their verifications.
 
I pursued other interests as a teenager and it wasn't until my late twenties that I became interested in radio again.  A new Yaesu FRG-8800 all-mode receiver quickly led to my amateur license and a second-hand Cubic Astro 151 rig.

1993 - The original ham shack. I spent a lot of time making digital contacts on AMTOR and the new (then) PACTOR mode.

A couple of years later I moved to a new QTH and upgraded to a Yaesu FT-767GX with the 6m/2m/70cm option modules.  I also modified my FRG-8800 receiver with a 70cm downconverter and the factory 2m option module and worked the world via the AO-13 satellite.  It was still a few years before cell phones, the internet, and text messaging and visitors to the shack were wowed by the amazing communications abilities via HF digital modes, intercontinental contacts through high-orbit satellites, and global messaging via LEO store-and-forward packet satellites. 

1995 - World traveller Gwen VK3DYL calls home from the Arctic.

Life goes on and when I started a new family and a new career ham radio fell by the wayside.  The equipment was disassembled, the shack converted to a children's room and there was very little free time left over for hobbies.  It would be another ten years before I was finally able to get back on the air.  This time I built the shack in a portable trailer so I could relocate it at will.  A new Kenwood TS-2000 replaced the old radios and new soundcard modes in software replaced the TNC's and dedicated computers.  Now, all the station functions were on a single PC and a single radio.

2008 - Back on the air after all those years.

The first time I ever saw an HP TouchSmart computer I knew I wanted one for the shack.  I had been contemplating a rack mount console arrangement for a long time and the touchscreen was finally the motivation to build it.  Both sides of console tilt forward for easy access to all the cabling in the back while all the controls are within easy reach.  A wireless mouse and keyboard keep the number of exposed wires to a bare minumum.

2011 - A Flex 3000 software defined radio is the latest addition.

Having used the new console layout for over a year now, I find it to be completely satisfactory in all respects.  I expect the layout will remain essentially the same for the foreseeable future and new efforts will all be focused on towers and antennas.  That will be a good topic for a future posting :)

VE8EV/P - Instant Expedition

I'll be operating from Victoria Island NA-006 this weekend during the IOTA contest and as time permits.  Hope to hear you!

Edit: operation was July 30 - August 1, 2011