Summer 2003 Issue

Experimental North American
144-MHz Sporadic-E Alerting Service

Due to the increased interest in sporadic-E propagation on 2 meters in North America, a DX robot has been developed by Allard Munters, PE1NWL. DXRobot, Gouda, The Netherlands is described in the following article extracted from the website of W8WN.1


By Shelby Ennis,* W8WN
 

Europeans seem to get many more 144-MHz sporadic-E openings than those of us in North America. It appears that while they really do get more, much of the difference is in the fact that there are many more active VHF DX operators in Europe and they have better alerting systems. Thanks to Allard Munters, PE1NWL,2 we now have an experimental 144-MHz alerting service set up for us in North America. Note that this is still experimental, and changes in the way it works are being made. If you like the idea, please subscribe and use it properly.

How to Subscribe to The NA Alerting Service
You can subscribe/unsubscribe to the North American 144-MHz alerting service at <http://gooddx.xs4all.nl/cgi-bin/gooddxvisitors>. The list’s name is “eskip-na.” You can also subscribe to some of the European services if you’re interesting in seeing what happens over there.

Enter your e-mail address in the box indicated, go to the next page with the different alerts, and check the “eskipna” box (plus any others in which you’re interested). You also might want to subscribe to the daily European Es summary. It’s fascinating to see what they have worked!
The information can also be sent to your pager, so you might want to consider getting alerts by that method. At least you would know what you missed while you were not available. When a report that contains a “key word” concerning sporadic-E is uploaded, the DXRobot will send out an alert to those who subscribe to the service.

If you log on to <http://gooddx.xs4all.nl/eskipNA>, you can get a listing of the loggings that were harvested by the NA DXRobot. Each of them would have caused the DXRobot to generate an Es alert. This North American summary is not sent out automatically each day. You must manually go on the web and read it, so you may wish to bookmark this page.

Where do Alerts Come From?

Remember that the alerting system works only if you report your sporadic-E observations. These reports must be made to the 144-MHz Propagation Page (<http://dxworld.com/144prop.html>; bookmark this page). When you report, you must use Es, es, e’s, eskip, Eskip, or e-skip in the post, along with the location of each end of the propagation (if known).

Caution: When entering a sporadic-E report on the 144-MHz Prop page, use the text box at the top of the page and include your callsign and grid! Do not use the box at the bottom for your call, because the DXRobot strips this off.

Please do not abuse this service! Don’t report or comment on sporadic-E on the 144-MHz Prop page when there is none! The DXRobot can be set to disregard anyone who continually misuses the service. However, remember that the page is for reporting all types of propagation. Simply specify what you are reporting. The DXRobot ignores any posts that do not include one of the sporadic-E key words.

Does it work? The North American service has been available only for a short time. Even so, those who subscribed have already received immediate notices for several small sporadic-E openings. However, how well it works will depend on the reports available to the DXRobot on the 144-MHz Propagation web page.
 

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