1296MHz Tropo.

The past week end made for some surprising propagation on VHF/UHF into my area (Greater Copenhagen)

I did not work much o 144MHz, apart from what I call "local tropo) propagation. That is distances up to about 300km (200mi). We had some good contacts within that distance, running FM with a vertical.

The more interesting band for me this time was 1296MHz.

Both Saturday and Sunday provided beacon reception (by ear), from several countries.

Of course, the local OZ7IGY is always audible here., then 2 other OZ beacons, further away.

3 German beacons were there.

The Swedish SK1UHF, on the island of Gotland at quite a distance.

The Norwegian LA3SHF at 370km (230mi)

The Polish SR1KOL at 270km (170mi)

Finally, the Czech beacon OK0EKL at 580km (360mi)

The only antenna available at this moment is a monoband 23cm vertical with over 10dB gain. All beacons transmit with horizontal polarization, so the attenuation is considerable. With a good horizontal antenna (yagi etc) I estimate the signals would have been 10-15dB stronger, and I would likely have heard several more beacons.

Best 2-way DX was DC7QH in Berlin at 345km (216mi). This was unusual. I heard him call CQ in FM and called. When he heard "OZ" he pointed the antenna in my direction, and the signals disappeared.

Then, when he pionted the antenna about 180 deg. away from me, the signal went to S9+. Probably a reflection. He was working with 200W into a 1.5m (5') dish with horizontal polarisation. ( am running only 10W, at the antenna about 4W.

During all this there was a lot of noise from radars (at least 3 different ones), sometimes wiping out most signals. I had good use of the narrow CW filter (250Hz) when listening to the beacons. The radar peaked far above S9.

On Sunday afternoon I decided to get my radio running with WSJT-X, so I can run some DX tests. That took a few hours, but it finally worked.

Best distance "heard" with FT8 was UR5WCE at 1029km (about 600mi).

Come spring, I need to mount a (small) yagi on a tiny rotator I have available. It will be very interesting to see the improvements, including raising power to about 40W at the radio. Perhaps later a PA/preamp near the antenna, raising the power at the antenna to about 100W, also running digital modes like FT8.

This was a spectacular week end on 1296MHz, let's see what's in my future.