wow cycle 25 might just be ok

Well what a crazy night for uk skip im in the west mids and tonight i was beaming north on a moxon i broke into a quiz night on the south coast with a 20db signal also spoke to Bradford ,southport, sussex, northumberland, north and south Ireland and Scotland and probably others ive forgot   bang   cycle 25 kicks in 73's and good dx

Yep. Wow! What a night. It's been awesome!

Was that quiz night on Chan 40? I did hear DXers asking them to move as they using the channel first 

cant remember but it was worthing i think and they probably have a quiz night every friday so they shouldnt move ha ha but i hope if this is anything to go by im looking forward to the summer ! apart from now Oscar is playing Barry white on T5 

Great to hear we are getting good conditions.

Sporadic E short hop (from the E layer) which is what your DX was likely to be, is not subject to the 11 year cycle as it comes every year. So it is probably not an indicator of if a 11 year solar cycle peak for the F2 layer will be good or not. In fact nothing can predict a good cycle or not with any degree of reliability... it is a case of wait and use your radio.

You can have a read here:

"The relationship between sporadic-E ionization and the 11 year solar cycle is less clear, but data from three long-term studies, presented in Fig 4, suggests that sporadic E may peak during solar minima."

http://www.uksmg.org/content/sporade.htm

What we can be sure of is any peak is going to offer a LOT more really long dx contacts than we can typically achieve now.. so the only way is up the next few years.

Glad you enjoyed your contacts though.

Point taken and thank you ilrasdy but obviously not on uk contacts with south america ie brazil chile and a few others not on ukfm im sure these where not sporadic E but i do respect your advice wait and use the radio   many thanks

Its almost certain that contacts to South America are with a first sporadic E hop this end and then on to a F2contour high enough to support the higher HF nearer the Equator . There have been times this year when the F2 layer has crept up into Southern Spain to allow pure F layer propagation in that direction as SC25 begins to have an influence but in the main its sporadicE that completes the path in fact I worked Paraguay the other week on 10m SSB and I'm as certain as possible given the evidence of various propagation/jetstream maps it was a first Sporadic E hop my end then F2 then Sporadic E his end to complete the path , which maybe why it was possible in the early afternoon. Gotta love the VOODOO magic when it happens however it gets there.

In the original post I only had those short hop UK/Ireland contacts to go on : )  Well done with the subsequent listed S.American stations.

As mentioned impossible to know if E layer had something to do with it with any certainty, it may well have done though...what might suggest not to me... is we can assume a higher incident angle for the lower E layer and therefore shorter hop refracted angle which does not make much sense for the DX from the F2 layer that tends to come in (and out) between 2 and 10 degrees. I have had a couple of contacts down that way Oct/Nov time on 11m.. and S.Africa, all fleeting contacts... but super exciting.

Longest E layer contact I believe I have had is Israel... a double hop suspected. Almost had USA one summer a few years back but cannot count it... one of those... 'the one that got away' stories. Dropped out too fast.

Unless somehow that first refraction came down at a very low angle for bounce 2, can that happen from the E layer (different angle outgoing than incident) ?

Grey line (sunset) window from UK is always a good bet down into S America.

Though feel free to explain with more detail if I am wrong here !

I look forwards to getting on to 10m, in a year or 2 or 3 for F2 I am cutting my ham teeth on 20m as I am a relatively new full licence ham. I filled my boots with sporadic on 11 so happy to hang about elsewhere this summer.

The take off angles for long range hops are not much different if at all whether its sporadic E or F layer propagation its just the difference in length of the hop because of the higher altitude of the F layer gives the longer hop , the maxiumum distance for an E hop at zero degree take off is 2352km where as for F layer 3000km hops are common and those blessed with very low take off angles can achieve 4000km in a single hop. There are two Ionosodes in the UK and the Ionogramms are freely available to all which are update at least every 15mins and these give the MUF for F layer propagation for a single 3000km hop via F2 layer propagation, if the MUF is no where near 10/11m then something else must be in play , sporadic E around the Bay of Biscay area ( jetstream is a give away here) will often bring in not only Spain and Portugual but open up a path to South America . Your contacts in Oct/Nov most likely were pure F layer propagation as the SFI was quite high at the time due to the large number of Sunspots at the time or the umbra of the many Sunspots (etc) and 10/11m was open to all Continents at the time.

Well im impressed with both of you your knowledge is fantastic i do look on real time dx maps but im not as clued up as you both many thanks for your input .

Yes that makes sense Bean.

And I do like a look on the close to live dx maps, for the various bands, though you can quite easily get a wrong impression as well. Quite often it makes things look a bit more open than they are dependent on your power and antenna. If you are running juice and a beam it will be more accurate indication of what you may expect compared with an vertical and radio power.

Take a very broad look at them to get a very rough idea.

Sometimes you get totally thrown as well, and get a contact completely unexpectedly... I was out with little antenna one day and a big the next, and neither day exactly super conditions and still made a couple of 6,000 miles contact on both days. You also get the odd hour of the day which perks up out of no where.

You just have to get on there when time permits, that is where and when the DX happens for you for real.

Also worth bearing in mind we are all putting out some super low angle radiation, the question is... is it enough for the conditions prevalent or not in that day, hour or minute. Clearly some antennas fair better than others but they almost all still dx with the conditions to allow.

Even very poor antennas and few Watts dx fine when there are exceptionally low attenuation hops on offer.

well cycle 25 is alive dont think anyone now will disagree with asia australia africa and if course usa all being worked its all looking good happy dxing to all