recent VHF/UHF/SHF DX

last week was pretty good for propagation from Sydney, with the High pressure cells sitting over the Tasman sea for days, we were presented with consistent tropo ducting up and down the coast of NSW and across the pond to ZL as well as trops across the Great Australian Bight which provided paths from vk6 to vk5, vk3.

As far as paths from Sydney, we had openings to Tamworth to both their 146.750 and 439.950 repeaters,  paths to Buladelah 147.100 regularly, good paths to south coast such as 146.825 near Bega, 146.625 Goulburn  was strong on quite a few occassions, in fact one day it was 60/9, with Mt Ginini 146.950, and the local Canberra repeaters 146.725 and 147.175 heard on occassions. One one night I found 147.025 from Mt Canobolis (Orange) accessible, I called someone to come up on it, but that repeater faded into the noise before we could make a contact.

monday night this week, heard activity on 146.700 near Nowra.

Last week several VK2 and VK4's made it across the pond to ZL1 on 2m,70cm and 23cm SSB, even ZL1TPH/p was receiving the Dural VK2RWI 1296.420 beacon on more than one day, that's pretty impressive, but makes me optimistic that more regular 23cm contacts across to ZL are probable. It provides me with more incentive to get 23cm SSB gear active and a dish up and aimed at ZL next summer.

I did note that the tropo just does not extend inland and with enough intensity for contacts on 2/70/23 to ZL, I think the inland inversion ducting is the much more common propagation mode, which of course occurs mainly at night.