Events

December 21: NARA NVIS Test

Mark Galbraith

• 2 min read

The Nanaimo Amateur Radio Association invites you and your local club members to participate in some NVIS radio propagation tests on the 60m band. Here is the essential information:

  • Date - Sunday Dec 21 (shortest day)
  • Time - 11:30am to 2:30pm
  • Callsign - VE7NA
  • Mode - USB
  • Frequency - 5.346.5 MHz (dial freq.) (On channelized radios use 5.348 MHz)

NARA’s NVIS tests on Dec. 21 allow us all to get together again on the 60m band, to exchange season’s greetings and test the range that we can achieve on the 60m band in daylight when the D-layer prevents longer distance communication.

The scenario for these tests is to simulate voice communication (USB) from an emergency operations centre (EOC) trying to communicate on the 60m band over several hundreds of Kilometers during daylight.

Here is our local resource page about the 60 meter band

One of the reasons that the Amateur Radio Service gained the 60m band in 2002 was because these frequencies were recognized as being very useful for emergency communications.

While the 60m band is often forgotten it can produce good ranges during daylight and much longer distance communication at night when the D-layer is not present.

Note that the attenuation through the D-layer is both as the signal goes upwards and downwards! Also because of the geometry, as distances between two stations does up the attenuation also increases.

Many amateur radio stations may not have 60m antennas but with some ingenuity amateurs should be able to load up one of their wire antennas to radiate a signal on the 60m band.

VE7NA will act as net control station for these tests. In addition to VE7NA transmitting from the Nanaimo area, we also welcome listener reports/logs from other stations. Especially noting what stations were calling VE7NA but who were not heard by VE7NA.

VA7NA will put out voice calls on the above frequency during the test period every 10 minutes but do call in at any time. Please do consider participating in these propagation tests and please advise your friends. Any queries or reports should be sent to: nvis@ve7na.ca.

Hoping to work you on 60m, 73 NARA.