Although US radio amateurs do not yet have access to 630 meters, Canadian licensees do, and one of them was on the North American end of the first two-way contact between Canada and Australia. Steve McDonald, VE7SL, in British Columbia, Canada, and Roger Crofts, VK4YB, in Queensland, Australia, completed a contact between 1225 and 1319 UTC on September 15 using JT9digital mode. The distance covered was on the order of 7000 miles.
“This morning a historic QSO for the Amateur Service was completed!” commented John Langridge, KB5NJD, who also holds an FCC Part 5 Experimental license WG2XIQ. “This is also the longest two-way QSO on 630 meters ever completed.” The contact took place on 474.300 kHz.
McDonald said band conditions were just good enough to get the job done. “Well, it wasn’t pretty as in ‘pretty-quick,’ but it’s done,” he told Langridge in recounting the contact. “Signals were way down compared to last week, but I was running barefoot only then. Today the full 5 W EIRP helped a lot.” McDonald told ARRL the band “was not particularly good this far north and was much better just a few hundred miles to my south.” He said the band had been improving each day over the past week, “little by little.”
Crofts agreed that he and McDonald had a tough time of it. “It was a real struggle, but finally got there,” he told Langridge in an e-mail. “I thought we were going to miss out because all the big signals had taken a dive. Obviously the path to VE7 was still hanging in there.”
McDonald said his antenna is “basically about the size of a 160 meter inverted L, but over extremely poor ground,” while Crofts, with what McDonald described as “a monster antenna” was doing the heavy lifting for the contact. McDonald was using a transverter that VK4YB had sent him for beta testing, driving an LF MOSFET amplifier converted for 630 meter use.
Meanwhile. Joe Lowe, NU6O, in California, reports that Crofts also heard his WI2XBQ Experimental Service beacon on September 14. “I was running 0.5 W ERP, 50 W TPO, into a 43 foot vertical in the backyard,” he told ARRL. “Very low power and simple equipment are capable of DX on 630 meters!” Lowe said he was using WSPR mode.
An April 2015 FCC Report and Order, Order, and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking(R&O/NPRM) proposed a new secondary 630 meter MF allocation at 472 to 479 kHz to Amateur Radio, implementing decisions made at WRC-12. It also allocated 135.7 to 137.8 kHz to the Amateur Service on a secondary basis. A Report and Order is pending.
App - Mobile
A New App Visualizes the Radio Waves All Around Us
Radio Waves The modern world is awash in a sea of radio waves — currents of electromagnetic radiation upon which our digital lives depend. What if you... Read more
RUMlogNG2Go for iOS version 3.5.2 now available
Thomas Lindner, DL2RUM, is happy to announce the availability of version 3.5.2 of his RUMlogNG2Go logger for the iPhone and iPad. RUMlogNG2Go can be ... Read more
New ARRL Repeater Directory Will Leverage Crowdsourcing Technology
ARRL partner RFinder, the creator of a web and app-based directory of Amateur Radio repeaters worldwide, will supply all data for the 2017-2018 ARRL R... Read more
Contesting
Raw Scores Before Checking – 2015 WPX RTTY Contest
2015 WPX RTTY Contest Claimed scores as calculated before log checking. Last update: 2015-05-08 Please report any errors to the Contest Directo... Read more
FT8 in the ARRL RTTY Roundup 2019
ARRL RTTY Roundup The popular digital mode makes its HF contest debut January 5 – 6. Follow these instructions and give it a try! Joe Taylor, K1JT The... Read more
Cabrillo Log Check for CQ WW DX Contest
“The Cabrillo Log Check page will check the format of your Cabrillo log file for the CQ WW Contest. Use this to check your log and then s... Read more
Review
Unboxing the Radioddity GS-5B Dual Band FM Handheld
Professional VHF UHF Radio: Dual band, dual watch, dual standby, up to 128 channels. Equipped with an 8.9-inch long antenna, this solid 5W radio can r... Read more
Boeing Antennas
Aircraft antenna Aircraft antennas , Garmin, AeroAntenna Technology, and more Com Antennas, Couplers, Diplexers, Combiners, DME/Transponder Antennas,... Read more