Excellent Propagation From My DIY Multi-band Fan Dipole Antenna

That was S79VU from Seychelles, coming here 5,9+20 dB, thanks to his hexbeam towards VU and his solid state homebrew 600 Watts linear amplifier. Previous day I had heard him 5,9+30 dB, which was the highest ever signal strength I have ever heard a DX station with. He gave me a 5,9 report and I was quite happy.

This is the propagation map on Reverse Beacon Network over the past eight days since my multi-band fan dipole was mounted. CQ calls in CW are picked up by various stations with CW skimmers and automatically posted to the RBN and it is available for viewing at the online portal within seconds. It is very useful to assess the propagation from your amateur radio setup. You have to type in your callsign in the “Spotted (dx)” box for getting your personal results. Filters for bands and period are available. The image can be zoomed in or zoomed out if needed. The map shows that my signals were picked up by RBN at North America, Europe, Africa and Oceania. Red spots indicate stations which have installed automatic RBN skimmers. We have three in India: VU2TUM, VU2CPL and VU2PTT.

Today I could improve my personal record a bit more when my CW signals were picked up by the RBN skimmer at TI7W from Costa Rica at a distance of 16755.8 km. My next aim is to continuously listen to the bands and try to convert these pick ups on RBN to actual two way contacts with those regions. I will also have to improve my CW skills for that, especially with most stations operating at high speeds these days.