High Pressure VHF tropo

experimenter

At the moment I am hearing London VHF Volmet on 128.600. Very strong and readable.

Also there's at least four Spanish EA repeaters on 145Mhz..

Also the EA1VHF beacon is 579 on 144.404MHz...

Lots of sigs from South UK on 145Mhz..

As well as some weird stuff on 154MHz that I never heard before.

1030 on the barometer

watty

Good Monday Morning too, talked to station in Malin Head via West Tyrone 2m from Rathcool / CityWest / N7 Mobile area nearly to Newlands Cross.

experimenter

MMMMmmmm never found repeater contacts that challenging!:D

PauloMN

experimenter wrote: »

MMMMmmmm never found repeater contacts that challenging!:D

Why not? If it's a dx repeater it's as interesting as making a dx simplex contact in a lot of cases.

experimenter

I wouldn't regard a repeater as been DX!

You won't win too many awards for working repeaters.

But that's my opinion and everyone to their own.

PauloMN

experimenter wrote: »

You won't win too many awards for working repeaters.

Ah right. If awards is what you're looking for, you're probably right. There's more to radio than awards for me, I enjoy working repeaters I normally can't access when there's a VHF/UHF lift on, and enjoyment is what it's all about for me.

Anyway DX=long distance. Whether a station is an operator or a repeater, DX is DX.

experimenter

DX for me is long distance i.e. around 1000km or more on 144MHz

I am not interested in awards, my log is sufficent.

But I suppose any acivity is better than none.:D

Njoy.

watty

My 13 element yagi rotator is stuck, and on the gable end, not car.

I agree that direct simplex is the real challenge. But the repeaters can be regarded as beacons indicating conditions and working Manchester repeater from Dundalk mobile, Belfast from Limerick Mobile (with the local repeater on SAME channel a challange) and Dundee repeater from base aerial with 1W FM are still a cut above "ordinary" repeater working.

Working Devon with 20W SSB (144MHz) from Limerick and getting and SWL email from Oxford 5mins later is kind of good. Maybe when contitions good I'll get 2m to Spain & France. But did get Germany once on 5W on 50Mhz using a military Bicubical on 10ft pole on front lawn. :-)

And indeed somedays I hear the NI 2m beacon. London beacon etc and call ... and nothing...

Indeed if a station is on a good site 200km is easily possible on 2m in "flat conditions" so I won't argue with the 1000km 144Mhz rule of thumb for a base station. But for mobile FM to get 200km 2 way could be argued to be DX compared with 50W SSB on a 13 element beam

experimenter

I was hearing good bursts from SM (Sweden) last night, good tropo from UK to Central EU at the moment.

Also GB3NGI/b has had antenna upgrade and was readalbe last night on the South coast of EI.