OK, so I was mostly motivated here to experiment with posting audio files to my new blog, and testing some automatic cross-posting that I hopefully have pushing content to Twitter and Facebook. But while scratching my head about what to post, I came across this audio file from JL8GFB. For my non-ham friends, Man-san is a fellow ham radio enthusiast in Japan. The photo here is of his huge antenna farm. On 02 July, 2009, I managed to make a quick QSO (radio contact) with him on 6 meters (the 50 MHz band).
Normally, 50 MHz is good for communicating with someone maybe in the adjacent ZIP code. Or with a good station, maybe someone 100 miles away or so. But when the radio propagation gods are in a particularly good mood (and this happens very rarely), it’s possible to communicate on 50 MHz with someone quite far away. Japan isn’t the longest distance contact I’ve ever had on 6 meters, but it is the longest I’ve ever had using this so-called “multi-hop sporadic E” propagation. Man-san recorded our QSO, so here you can enjoy the contact from his end. I still get goosebumps every time I hear that N4GN call sign (that’s me) pop out of the noise.
By the way, Man-san is in grid square QN03rh, and I’m in EM78fc. So that’s a distance of 6088 miles, or 9798 km! You can read more about Man-san’s amazing VHF exploits on his blog.