PA4EME

Dutch Amateur Radio Station

Frank Veldhuijsen

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MMMonVHF

 

For those who like to work real DX on 144 MHz, the MMMonVHF webportal is the place to be. The webpages are maintained by a group VHF-enthousiasts, all well known VHF-DXers.

Teammembers are: DL8EBW, DK5EW, PA3BIY, HA5CRX, DG2KBC, PA4EME,  IV3NDC, PA2DW, PA3CMC, DK5YA, DK3XT, DL8YHR, OZ1LPR and DL8HCZ/CT1HZE.

 

The website is giving you the most actual news about DX-peditions, propagation and beacons.  We are also organising a meteorscatter contest during the maximum of the Perseids meteorshower; we call it the MS Sprint Contest. The number of participants is growing every year and more and more people are going to rare locators during this contest. The number of participating stations from eastern Europe is remarkable.

DX-pedition of the year is another competition. It is a survey to find out which person or expedition is to be rewarded for his expeditions and trips to give us new DXCC and locatorsquares. In the first 3 weeks of a year an expedition can be online selected and the person/expedition with most votes is winning. It is a title of honour and a T-shirt comes with it. The contest is open for every person/expedition but however with one restriction: the activity must have been announced on our webpages.

My task for MMMonVHF is the maintanance of the summery-pages for tropo and Sporadic E. These pages will give you information which stations were workable during a particular event. I am alway trying to be actual as possible. During big Sporadic-E openings the information is often almost realtime. The number of visitor during such events is high. People are asked to publish their logs so everyone can benchmark his own results and see whether his results are better or, unfortunatly, less. It will give you directions to work on your operator skills or station.

 

The maps are used in various magazines by editors of VHF-columns. This is allowed without further notice under the strict condition that the MMMonVHF logo is not removed from the map.

 

You can click on one of the maps to see them in real on the MMMonVHF webpages.

 

Scroll down to read more about the MMMonVHF webpages.

This is an example of the kind of maps that are created. We are using special software to create them. The data from the contacts that are reported to MMMonVHF are analysed and the radiopath is drawn on the map. As you can see there are blue and red lines. The blue lines are contacts that are reported on a DX-cluster and the red lines are contacts that are realy reported and in our database. During an ongoing opening I mostly start with information from the DX-cluster as everybody is sill bussy working the DX! But those who are visiting can see right away where the DX is.

 

The contacts are reported to MMMonVHF by using a special entryform. Creating of the map is not a fully automated process. To prevent spam and the fact that there are many logbook programs and many ways to write down a contact, every log is viewed and corrected if neccessary (and it is neccessary!). But our webmaster Ansgar has programmed special custumized tools and the creation of maps is done within a few minutes.

This is an example of a map that has been created from data from reported Sporadic E. In the early days of VHF we only knew that Sporadic E occured during the summer (or sometimes mid-winter) at certain hours. During the last decennia more and more data is gathered realtime online through the internet and it becomes visual what is happening. A good example is LiveMUF from G7RAU.

 

In fact it is simple. When a Sporadic E QSO is reported, the general rule is that the reflectionpoint is exactly in between (so half the distance between both stations). So the trick is to beam that centerpoint which represents the ES-cloud. The crosslines are representing this cloud too and it becomes visible how big it is, what Maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) and how it moved in time.

 

Once you learned this trick and ES is reported and within your range, you will hardly miss any ES. I still remeber the old days waiting many hours for ES and often without succes!

MMMonVHF is representing more than just a portal webpage for VHF enthousiasts. Teammembers became friends and try to meet each other when possible. Of course...radio...Skype...E-mail...it is all possible but we try to meet each other whenever possible and are talking about radio, life or whatever.

 

In recent years we are looking once a year for a central place to meet: the MMMonVHF meeting. We were in Kruen (Southern Germany), Kerkakutas (Hungary), Dwingeloo (the Netherlands) and Sigmaringen (Danube valley, Southern Germany).

Picture from Kruen 2008

 

Standing left to right: PA4EME, DK5EW, IV3NDC, PA2DW.

Sitting left to right: HA5CRX, DL8EBW.

 

Picture from Kerkakutas 2009

 

Dutch invasion in the unfinished shack from Geza, HA4XG. We stayed as first guests in his new pension. Here we talked to Erwin, DK5EW, who was not able to join us, by using Geza’s station.

 

On the picture: PA3BIY, PA2DW and PA4EME.

 

The pension was not finished yet so we did some DIY-jobs for Geza as well….

 

During a walk, the theory of meteor-scatter was discussed between Massimo and me. It looks serious!

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