SV1DH - Interview

(Jan. 2015)

SV1DH audio interview

Hi,

My name is Costas Fimerelis and my callsign is SV1DH.

I started to be active on 6m using a special license in 1980, during my PhD thesis, when I commenced to explore the evening type of TransEquatorial Propagation between Europe and Africa from 28 up to 432 MHz.

During that period I was the only station active on 6m from Greece and among the few others from all over Europe.

My first experience on 6m was with South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) stations since during the peak of the cycle 21 very strong openings occurred daily, all afternoon and early evening hours.

From the African side two very dedicated amateurs and good friends later, ZS6PW and ZE2JV, helped me with this effort building special precise time pulsing beacons on 28, 50, 144 and 432 MHz.

During the morning hours, when TEP was not existing, I was listening for F2 propagation to other directions, using a poor 4 element modified television antenna and 10W transverter, without any results, until to my big surprise, I heard and worked Guam KG6JDX (in November 1981).

This first amazing experience drove me into the magic 6m world and progressively to become a fanatic user of this band for the next 33 years and 4 solar cycles.

During this long period, I experienced all possible propagation modes like Afternoon TEP, Evening TEP, Multihop F2 over short and long path, Multihop Sporadic E, Ionoscatter and Troposcatter, apart only from aurora.

Most impressive openings for me were the long path only to Hawaii (KH6) and American Samoa (KH8), with strong and clear signals during the morning window and weak fluttery signals during the evening one 12 hours later, without any intermediate signals from Africa.

Also impressive openings were the long path ones to Japan over South America with weak signals, and after all South American stations were vanished.

Finally, I should mention the very rare, two times only over the 33 years, short path opening to Fiji (3D2) via mutlihop F2, as well as the rare ones to East Caroline Islands (KC6, now Palau T8) and more often to Marshall Islands (V7).

During the low solar activity years with the enhanced multihop Es propagation, it became soon easy to reach Caribbean Sea with the many small island entities, as well USA and Canada.

It is interesting to mention here that I never ever heard West Coast and Alaska via short or long path F2 propagations, but this was finally achieved by multihop Es and strong clean signals.

Progressively over the years, the noisy 6m environment of my main QTH in Athens became useless for weak signal reception and I recently installed a bigger antenna array and a remote control station at my summer QTH in Athens, east of the city overlooking the sea to Asia and Pacific.

Unfortunately, the recent poor solar cycle limited the 6m DX openings to weak ionoscatter mode only and all F2 propagation expectations to Asia and Pacific have not been materialized, so far.

My over the 33 years 6m operations gave me really great times in exploring various propagation modes from Athens and also great fun with my good 6m friends all over the world.

My archival monthly propagation reports for the period of 1990 to 2014 have recently been uploaded to Dropbox and Box for free use for any amateur and research purposes.

My recent, terrestrial only, 6m entities score is 248, with a max of 249 for all active SV stations.

Except for the entities worked, several others were only heard like FK, P2, FW, VP6, and Antarctica.

Wishing good DX to all of you on magic band.

73 Costas, SV1DH.

SV1DH in his shack.

SV1DH 6m and 4m antennas