Sunday, September 12, 2021

The FM Season 2021 on 71 Northern Latitude

Anyone interested in browsing my 2021 FM logbook should click this link. The logbook is sorted by day, and by time within the day. There may be double entries within a day.

The season came off to a slow start, as I was late erecting the FM antennas. Also, it wasn't anywhere near as productive as the 2020 season, except maybe the last part of July and the beginning of August. And I must admit there were openings I didn't bother to check since it appeared quite predictable which stations would be heard.

I did hear a new country though. Iceland was heard several times, although limited to the northeastern part of the country.

Next year I think I will change tactics a bit. To the south, the one-hop Es possibilities are more or less explored the last 3 years. So it may be more interesting to point the antennas to the west-northwest, and to the east. Iceland (and beyond) may be interesting, as would Siberia, Kazakhstan and Xinjiang.

The SDRPlay RSPdx SDRs work well, although my PCs limit effective sampling rate to 6 MHz each. For the same reason, the Elad FDM-S3 can't sample more than 12 MHz. So I decided to focus on the lower part of the FM band.

The SDRs made 24/7 IQ recordings, and I spotted openings by examining continuosly saved waterfall images. HDSDR and SDR Console were my tools, together with two 8-element antennas from  InnovAntennas, and splitters/preamps from Cross Country Wireless. And a number of 8-TB hard drives. The logbook is from FMList.org.

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