ARLA/CLUSTER: "Aircraft scatter" em 50 e 144 MHz na África do Sul

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Aircraft scatter on 50 MHz & 144 MHz

Mike Bosch, ZS2FM, reports that lately there has been a lot of
discussions and interest shown in Aircraft Scatter on the South
African Radio League's VHF Forum.

There were also many reports of radio signals heard and some contacts
made were via reflections from aircraft. The longest two-way contacts
of 430 - 470 km were established on 144 MHz SSB by "Van" v.d. Watt,
ZS6LW, in Germiston with John Fielding, ZS5JF, and Ben Smit, ZS5QM, in
Natal.

The ZS6JON beacon on 50,050 MHz was often seen on the WSJT waterfall
and heard in Port Elizabeth when the PE/JHB plane crossed the area of
the Orange River. These aircraft scatter signals lasted for a minute
or longer and could easily have sustained SSB contacts.

It is high time that we start exploring long distance operation on
Aircraft Scatter propagation in South Africa too as done in other
countries such as Australia.

Read more about Aircraft Scatter on the SARL VHF Forum (
http://www.sarl.org.za/forum/login.asp?target=forum.asp?FORUM_ID=16 ).