Welcome to Tropical band

To most people the phrase "tropical bands" bring a pretty clear picture to mind - a bunch of shirtless guys playing calypso music. But to experienced shortwave DXers those two little words express the most challenging and enjoyable part of the radio hobby. The phrase kindles memories of a DXer's best catches and favorite QSLs, of exotic stations, music and of early morning listening sessions. (Don Moore)
I like the "Tropical band" name for new 60m allocation. (OK1RP)

Effective from 1st Jan 2017 please paper QSL via OM-bureau only.


Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Cuba Active (regularly) on 60m (55m band to us) by Pavel, CO7WT

"Hi OMs.

Cuba has an assignation in the "60m" band (that our regulatory agency call it "55m band") and it was mostly empty spectrum, until now.

A group of Cuban hams are activating the band between 1700 to 2100 local (2100z to 0100z) every day possible in a informal way, we are talking about antennas/rigs/propagation/arduino/etc
(In Spanish but we can speak in english too).

We have a continuous segment between 5418 to 5430 Khz and we are using 5425 Khz USB for this informal net.

This initiative was an idea of Josue CO7RR and backed up by me (Pavel, CO7WT) as we are kind of network controllers for this experiment; since last week we have summed about 12 Cuban stations to the freq and more are interested on it.


The idea was to use the band to evaluate it for national communications in disaster situations (in the view of the recent Matthew hit), so far we have coverage for all the Cuba island just after 40m band closes for national QSOs and up to 4 hours later around 9 to 10 pm local with good to use signals (nothing big than S9+10 but quite readable ones with just S4-5 of noise floor), from this point (~9:30pm local) the propagation disappear...


That was using just regular homebred and commercial surplus radios with ~30W and 40m antennas via twin open wire feeder and Manual tuners. Of course you will hear some 100W and even 150W signals in from time to time.

Reception reports are welcomed, if you hear us and want to make a Split QSO or just report reception you can send a SMS to me (Pavel CO7WT) to my cell (+53 53 847 819) with the split details (I will TX on 5420 to not disrupt the net, and you have to send me the RX DIAL freq I have to use and the USB/LSB mode) we have a experienced CW operator on the net (CO7RR) so if you hear him and want  a CW QSO SMS me with details and I will tell him about.

73 Pavel CO7WT."
(Originaly published on 60M Yahoo Group"


73 - Petr, OK1RP
.../-.-

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